Personal Life
Blocker was drafted into the United States Army and served in the Korean War as a first sergeant. He married Dolphia Parker, whom he had met while a student at Sul Ross State. All of their four children's names begin with a 'D': actor Dirk Blocker, producer David Blocker and twin daughters Debra Lee (artist) and Danna Lynn.
A Free Methodist (Gus Finley, Austin American, May 20, 1972), Blocker was among Hollywood celebrities who supported Pat Brown's re-election in 1966 as governor of California against Ronald W. Reagan. In 1968, Blocker backed then U.S. Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota for the Democratic presidential nomination. Blocker later supported the eventual Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, also of Minnesota, for the presidency against the Republican Richard M. Nixon. Blocker so opposed the Vietnam War that it helped influence him to uproot his family in 1971 and move them to Lugano, Switzerland. ("Bonanza", Bear Family Records liner notes; "Bonanza: Scenery of the Ponderosa: Episode Guide- Season 14"). He kept a house in Inglewood, California and commuted to NBC. His 6,000-square-foot (560 m2) Tudor style mansion in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles is currently owned by Rob Zombie.
On the 2010 PBS special, "Pioneers of Television: Westerns", actor Mitch Vogel who played the young brother Jamie Cartwright on Bonanza, said that Blocker "was so easy to get to know - the kind of guy you could go and have a beer with."
Blocker, a performance automobile fan, once owned a 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle SS396 "Z-16" (RPO Z16 option) as Chevrolet was the commercial sponsor of the show. He also owned a 1965 Huffaker Genie MK10 race car, nicknamed the "Vinegaroon." The car was run by Nickey Chevrolet in the 1965 and 1966 US Road Racing Championship series as well as the 1966 Can-Am championship.
Read more about this topic: Dan Blocker
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Take two kids in competition for their parents’ love and attention. Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other; the resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other; the personal frustrations that they don’t dare let out on anyone else but a brother or sister, and it’s not hard to understand why in families across the land, the sibling relationship contains enough emotional dynamite to set off rounds of daily explosions.”
—Adele Faber (20th century)
“The Heavens. Once an object of superstition, awe and fear. Now a vast region for growing knowledge. The distance of Venus, the atmosphere of Mars, the size of Jupiter, and the speed of Mercury. All this and more we know. But their greatest mystery the heavens have kept a secret. What sort of life, if any, inhabits these other planets? Human life, like ours? Or life extremely lower in the scale. Or dangerously higher.”
—Richard Blake, and William Cameron Menzies. Narrator, Invaders from Mars, at the opening of the movie (1953)