[1] He is remembered for roles on the television programs Gunsmoke, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, and Carter Country.

Both the movie and the series were based upon the same novel by Earl Hamner Jr. Like his father, French began his television career as a stuntman in mostly Westerns and anthology shows.

In "The Fulfillment", French plays blacksmith Curtis Norton, whose wife could not have children and subsequently adopts an eight-year-old orphan boy who has come to spend the week on Walton's Mountain.

[6] In other work, French starred opposite Elvis Presley in the 1969 Western, Charro!, and played the recurring character Agent 44 in the NBC series Get Smart in 1965–1966, where he portrayed an undercover spy who showed up in the worst, most unlikely of places (such as a mailbox or a porthole in a boat), and appeared in a few episodes of Bonanza, with Michael Landon.

Shortly before being teamed up once again, French made a guest appearance on Kung Fu as a corrupt, bigoted sheriff in 1973.

[7] He died at the age of 54 on June 15, 1989, at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital in Los Angeles, California, three months after being diagnosed with lung cancer while filming Rock-a-Doodle in Dublin.