- His great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Boone, was a brother of pioneers Daniel Boone and Squire Boone.
- Served in the US Navy during World War II.
- Turned down Jack Lord's role in Hawaii Five-O (1968).
- At the end of his life, he taught acting classes at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL.
- Struggled with alcoholism for most of his life, allegedly partly due to his experiences in World War II.
- He is a sixth cousin of singer and actor Pat Boone (Richard's five times great-grandparents, Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan, were also Pat Boone's five time great-grandparents).
- Boone was actually being examined by a dentist when a tumor was discovered. Soon afterward he was diagnosed with throat cancer.
- Before the United States entered World War II he had intended to be a painter.
- He was cast in the role of "Old Lodge Skins" in Little Big Man (1970), but a real Native American, Chief Dan George, ended up playing the part.
- He directed the final scenes of The Night of the Following Day (1969) at the insistence of star Marlon Brando, as Brando could no longer tolerate what he considered the incompetence of director Hubert Cornfield. The film is generally considered the nadir of Brando's career, though it didn't hurt Boone, who was cast as the heavy.
- His height was sometimes given as 6'2", although he himself gave his height as 6'0".
- He was sought to run for political office by the Republicans but declined.
- Turned down Robert Shaw's role in The Sting (1973).
- He often smoked 60-100 cigarettes a day.
- On a December 14, 1957, episode of Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Boone found himself stripped to the waist by Apaches and bound spreadagle-style between four stakes driven into the ground. So vivid was this scene that leading men in other TV westerns soon found themselves in similar circumstances, most notably Robert Horton in Wagon Train (1957) Ralph Taeger in Hondo (1967) and Peter Brown and William Smith in Laredo (1965).
- Due to sporting a similar appearance later in life (salt & pepper hair, distinctive mustache), Boone was sometimes confused with actor Charles Bronson, who was enjoying a highly active movie career as an action star while Boone's own career was winding down in the 1970's. The two men were actually friends, and Bronson guest starred several times on the television series "Medic" in the 1950's, on which Boone was the main star.
- His later career was seriously affected by his chronic alcoholism. He walked off the set of God's Gun (1976) before he had recorded his dialog. As a result his voice in the film had to be dubbed by someone else.
- He refused treatment after being diagnosed with cancer of the larynx and became a recluse.
- Taught acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City from 1974-75. He was temporarily replacing Sanford Meisner, who had become stricken with throat cancer.
- His father was of English, Scottish, German, and Welsh descent, and his maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Richard was very proud of his Jewish heritage, and starred in the first western to be filmed in Israel, Madron (1970). He received an award from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1979 for his contribution to Israeli cinema.
- Richard's only child, Peter Boone, from his third wife, Claire McAloon, is named after Richard's great-great grandfather.
- Enjoyed weightlifting.
- In the last year of his life he was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador.
- He was a chain smoker.
- Richard Boone was married to Jane Hopper of Sausalito, CA, for a while in the 1940's in San Francisco where they both studied art and drama at the California Art Institute. They were best friends, drinkers both, but the marriage wasn't working so they split up and divorced. In 1945, Jane became pregnant from an affair with Richard Stiegler of Connecticut, a recently discharged naval captain, and even though she and Richard had separated, he nevertheless saw Jane through her pregnancy and the birth of a baby girl on June 17, 1946. The baby was given the name, "Melissa Boone" at birth but because it was hard at that time for an unmarried woman to have a child, the baby girl was put up for adoption and consequently adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Douglas G. Campbell of San Francisco who renamed her "Gail Russell Campbell". Jane's family tells of much craziness in her and Richard's relationship, including an instance when Richard was practicing sword fighting for a drama class and while waving his sword around, accidentally cut himself substantially in the thigh. Gail R. Campbell resides in Eugene, Oregon.
- According to Joseph McBride's "Searching for John Ford" (St. Martin's Press, 2001 - ISBN 0312242328), director John Ford was urged to cast Boone and Anthony Quinn as the Little Wolf and Dull Knife characters in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), as both had Native American blood. Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland, who were of Mexican descent, were cast instead.
- In her 2004 autobiography "'Tis Herself", 'Maureen O'Hara' wrote that Boone and Peter Lawford, while filming Kangaroo (1952) in Melbourne, Australia, were arrested in a gay brothel "full of beautiful boys", but the studio prevented this from being reported by the press.
- He was an auto-racing fan.
- Uncle of Randy Boone
- Cousin of Nick Todd.
- He was injured in a car crash in September 1963.
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