Tom Lester

Born in Laurel, Mississippi, on September 23, 1938, Tom Lester graduated in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Mississippi, and was on his way to becoming a doctor, when he decided to try his luck as an actor. His friends told him, “‘You’re crazy. You’ll never be able to do that,'” he recalled in an interview. “You’re too tall, too skinny, too ugly. You have a southern accent and you’ll never make it to the movie business. You don’t look like Rock Hudson .”

Despite everything, he moved to Hollywood, to take acting classes with Lurene Tuttle. In the early 1960s, Lester acted in a play with Kaye Henning, the daughter of CBS producer Paul Henning. He suggested that he audition to play Eb Dawson in Latest Model Farmer . Despite four hundred actors auditioning, he was eventually given the part because he was the only one who really knew how to milk a cow, since she had grown up on a farm. At first, Dawson had a very secondary presence, but she became so popular with the public that she eventually became one of the most important secondary. 

He also appeared as Dawson in The New Rich and Petticoat Express , other sister series. At the end of the fiction, he intervened in two animal films, Benji and Gordy , and in a chapter of The Fantastic Car . In 2007,  Tom LesterHe married Kailye, also an actress, who accompanied him until his death.