Jay Silverheels
Acting
Born May 26, 1912 · Six Nations Reservation, Brantford, Ontario, Canada
Biography
Jay Silverheels was born on a reservation in Canada to a Mohawk chief. He was a star lacrosse player and a boxer before he entered films as a stuntman in 1938. He worked in a number of films though the 1940s before he gained some notice as the Osceola brother in Humphrey Bogart's film Key Largo (1948). Most of his roles consisted of bit parts as "Indian." In 1949, he would work in a movie called The Cowboy and the Indians (1949) with another "B movie" actor named Clayton Moore. It was later that same year that Jay would be hired to play the faithful Indian companion, Tonto, in the televisio…
Known For · 40 titles
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Virginian
Rawhide
Daniel Boone
Cannon
The Lone Ranger
Wanted: Dead or Alive
The Brady Bunch
Branded
True Grit
Pistols 'n' Petticoats
Gunslinger
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Broken Arrow
Key Largo
The Movie Orgy
The Sea Hawk
The Lone Ranger
Alias Jesse James
Pistols 'n' Petticoats
Yellow Sky
Captain from Castile
The Battle at Apache Pass
War Arrow
Western Union
Saskatchewan
Family Honeymoon
Northern Pursuit
Smith!
Red Mountain
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing
The Phynx
One Little Indian
Yankee Buccaneer
Last of the Comanches
The Half-Breed
The Wild Blue Yonder
Four Guns to the Border
Tulsa
Lost in a Harem