BY LEE PFEIFFER
Actor Alex Cord has died at age 88 in Texas. Cord overcame a childhood battle with polio to become an active horseman who could perform impressive stunts. Those abilities, along with his rugged good looks and lanky build, helped him land jobs as an actor. He appeared in popular television series beginning in the early 1960s including "Ben Casey", "Laramie", "Naked City" and "Route 66" before transitioning to the big screen. He made his feature film debut in with an uncredited role in "The Chapman Report" in 1962 but it was in the all-star 1966 remake of John Ford's classic 1939 Western "Stagecoach" that Cord was cast in the star-making role of the Ringo Kid, a sympathetic outlaw on a trail of vengeance. The role had launched John Wayne's career to a new level and if Cord didn't enjoy the same meteoric rise, the film's success did enable him to work steadily throughout the rest of his career. Although there were a few underrated gems after "Stagecoach" (i.e. "The Last Grenade", "A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die", "The Brotherhood"), most of Cord's work on the big screen was in "B" movies. He fared much better on television, where he continued to be a regular presence in guest star roles on popular shows such as "Night Gallery", "Gunsmoke", "Mission: Impossible", "Police Story", "Police Woman", "The Love Boat", "Fantasy Island", "Murder, She Wrote" and "Walker, Texas Ranger". In 1984, he was cast as a dapper and mysterious spy who went by the name of Archangel opposite Ernest Borgnine and Jan-Michael Vincent in the action/adventure show "Airwolf". Although the series never became a major hit, it was popular enough to run for three seasons.