生于加利福尼亚州圣莱安德罗。曾在加利福尼亚州大学受过教育。在上演轮换剧目的剧团中获得一些经验后，于三十年代后期在百老汇初次演出，扮演着现代装的《奥瑟罗》。1941年与哥伦比亚影片公司签约，在此后的四年中，演出了二十五部低成本影片，多数是西部片和剧情片。1945年成为自由演员，在许多影片中扮演了各式各样的角色，最著名的要属西部经典《正午》。1998年去世前还凭借客串《宋飞正传》获艾美奖提名。他也是演员杰夫·布里吉斯的父亲。
A rather wanderlust fellow before he latched onto acting, Denver Pyle--who made a career of playing drawling, somewhat slow Southern types--was actually born in Colorado in 1920, to a farming family. He attended a university for a time but dropped out to become a drummer. When that didn't pan out he drifted from job to job, doing everything from working the oil fields in Oklahoma to the shrimp boats in Texas. In 1940 he moseyed off to Los Angeles and briefly found employment as a (somewhat unlikely) NBC page. That particular career was interrupted by World War II, and Pyle enlisted in the navy. Wounded in the battle of Guadalcanal, he received a medical discharge in 1943.
