William Dennis Weaver (June 4 1924 - February 24 2006) was an Emmy Award-winning actor and was an American television actor, best known for his roles as sidekick Chester Goode from 1955 to 1964 on TV's first "adult Western" "Gunsmoke", as Marshal Sam McCloud on the NBC police drama "McCloud", which ran from 1970 to 1977, and as the protagonist in Steven Spielberg's feature-length directorial debut, the cult TV movie "Duel" in 1971. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Dennis Weaver. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Weaver