mort mills (born mortimer morris kaplan; january 11, 1919 – june 6, 1993) was an american film and television actor who had roles in over 200 movies and television episodes. he was often the town lawman or the local bad guy in many popular westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. from 1957–1959 he had a recurring co-starring role as marshal frank tallman in "man without a gun". other recurring roles were as sergeant ben landro in the "perry mason" series and sheriff fred madden in "the big valley". in 1958, he guest starred as a particularly greedy bounty hunter who clashes with steve mcqueen's character of josh randall in the cbs western series, "".