Blue Bloods Star Tom Selleck's Acting Career Began On A Classic Western Series

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Long before Tom Selleck started playing no nonsense New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in "Blue Bloods," he kicked off his career with a one-off role in the CBS Western "Lancer," which ran for two seasons between 1968 and 1970. Selleck played Dobie in the Season 1 episode "Death Bait," in which a former lawman who blames ranch hand Jelly Hoskins (Paul Brinegar) for the loss of his hand shows up and starts terrorizing Lancer Ranch with a vicious dog that's part wolf. Selleck's character encounters the man in a saloon when he's looking for Jelly and quips, "Hey mister, you know, with a dog like that, why I bet you don't even take a gun when you go bear hunting."

Selleck wasn't the only notable "Lancer" guest actor who went on to have a successful career — in fact, "Death Bait" featured another future star in Sam Elliott, who plays T.L. Norris in Taylor Sheridan's Neo-Western "Landman." Other "Lancer" guest stars include Ron Howard, Stefanie Powers, Agnes Moorehead, Cloris Leachman, and Victor French. The show made something of a pop culture resurgence in 2019 thanks to its role in the plot of Quentin Tarantino's 1969-set movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" — Leonardo DiCaprio's almost-washed-up actor Rick Dalton appears in a guest role on "Lancer," messing up his lines and having a breakdown in his trailer.

Tom Selleck's big break came when he was cast as the mustachioed, Hawaiian shirt-wearing private investigator Thomas Magnum in the hit CBS crime drama "Magnum, P.I.," for which he won an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. However, the Detroit native is also well known for his Westerns, having starred in plenty of them throughout his career.

In 1979, Selleck teamed up with his fellow "Lancer" guest star Sam Elliott for "The Sacketts," a sweeping miniseries based on the Louis L'Amour books "The Daybreakers" and "Sackett." Selleck and Elliott star as brothers Orrin and Tell Sackett, who leave their home in Tennessee to start a new life in Santa Fe after the brother of a man Orrin killed during his time as a lawman shows up at his wedding and shoots his bride to be.

"It's no exaggeration to say that 'The Sacketts' changed me," Selleck wrote in his memoir "You Never Know," published in 2024. "I had found a genre where I was sure I belonged. I had been exposed to a lifestyle that I had never really considered but I wouldn't soon forget. That job changed my professional opportunities and my whole outlook on what my appetites might be — and not only as an actor. In all of my life. This life should be a part of my life."

A few years after "The Sacketts," Selleck and Elliott reunited for a TV movie adaptation of "The Shadow Riders," another Louis L'Amour novel. They play two brothers who return home after fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War. Selleck then went on to star in "Quigley Down Under," "Last Stand at Saber River," "Crossfire Trail," and "Monte Walsh," cementing his position as a Western star.