Friday, May 18

Western Character Actors

These character actors have populated so many westerns, particularly those in the 1950's and later, that fans of the genre would recognize the faces of many of them.  Some of you may recognize some of their names as well.  We aren't doing lengthy bios this time nor would I want to try your patience mentioning even most of their movies.  Let's face it, character actors have usually appeared in far more films than leading actors could possibly manage.  It's the photographs that may be the most fun this time.

While we're drumming up business here, I think it's safe to say that most of these men played villains a great deal.  Oh sure, they had the occasional nice-guy role but westerns needed villains.  Considering how many westerns were made prior to, say, 1965, these guys ran into one another all the time.  They loved a little hooch in their coffee as they sat around movie sets.  Horses and wranglers and stunt people occupied a great deal of their time and there was always plenty of opportunity to gossip, inquire into future projects and whether there were any available roles still to be filled.  Most of them, by the way, appeared in far more television than movies which makes them even more recognizable to some.

I don't know what Stewart, Wayne, Scott, McCrea, Gable, Taylor, Ladd and others would have done without these character actors.  When they were all reunited from film to film, it felt like family.  Wayne, for one, had a crowd that followed him from movie to movie... something he learned from his mentor-director John Ford.  

I thought they felt like family, too.  They certainly provided a familiarity that, even if they were playing bad guys, I could sink into my seat, reach into my bag of popcorn and luxuriate in the amount of discomfort I was about to feel.

Thanks, boys.

Okay, here we go.  There are 20 of them.  We'll start with the two busiest Mexican actors I ever knew... and I'm only speaking of American movies.  They made even more in their home land.  When they were mean, they played the meanest varmints, like, ever.  I shook in my boots.  I knew their names and, in fact, loved saying them, but I often confused them.  I would wait until the hoped-for end credits to see which one it was.












Rodolfo Acosta
81 movies.  He was born on a section of land that both Mexico and the U.S. claimed to own.  He made far more movies in Mexico but  enjoyed a long career in the states primarily as a villain and usually in westerns.  With his sinister look, he was one of the meanest villains ever.

He was memorable in The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), Hondo (1953), Drum Beat, (1954), Bandido (1957) and had a rare good-guy lead role in 1958's The Tijuana Story.  My favorites of all his roles was as the leader of Indian renegades in Rio Conchos (1965).  He was so watchable in all his films.  Acosta died far too young at 54. 





Alfonso Bedoya
81 movies.  Known as the smiling cutthroat, he dispatched many an opponent although he had the occasional nice guy parts as well.  He actually made few American films but was memorable with his unkempt look, sudden fury and laughing voice.  Born in a tiny Mexican village of Yaqui heritage, he was known to director John Huston who spent a lot of time in Mexico.

Huston hired Bedoya for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and the actor went on to make Border Incident (1949), The Black Rose (1950), California Conquest (1952) and menaced Randolph Scott in a few.  His best role came as a good-guy ranch hand in The Big Country but by the time the film was released in 1958, Bedoya had died at age 53 of an alcohol-related heart attack.  













Willis Bouchey
76 movies.   I will always picture him as he is in this photo... a cavalry officer.  He played many of them and a lot of other characters in westerns such as bankers, aging lawmen, judges and others in authority.  He was usually an upstanding citizen whose familiar baritone voice was on the side of doing the right thing, but occasionally he was a villain and a darned good one.  

He didn't even come to movies until he was in his mid-50s.  He worked with Stewart and Wayne a great deal and in a lot of those colorful B westerns.  He also had small roles in A films such as From Here to Eternity, The Big Heat and Pickup on South Street (all 1953), A Star Is Born and Bridges at Toko-Ri (both 1954), The Long Gray Line and Battle Cry (both 1955), Two Rode Together and Pocketful of Miracles (both 1961).  He worked a great deal and was a wonderful addition to any film he was in.   












Royal Dano
77 movies.  He could have been a Carradine.., doncha think?  Tall, thin, dark, serious (it's possible I've never seen him smile), carrying the world on his weary shoulders, deep voice that's used little... I don't know how a man that did so little could be so well remembered.  Like Carradine, too, Dano could have played Lincoln.  

Doom and gloom came easily to his characters who were often not breathing by the finale, even though they were not an integral part of the main story line.  But there he was in Bend of the River (1952), Moby Dick (1956), All Mine to Give (1957), Trooper Hook (1958), Cimarron (1961), King of Kings (1962), The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and so many more.












Jim Davis

91 movies.  I always thought he had the makings of being a leading man and never understood why it didn't happen, except for once.  He was good-looking, had a strong, smooth voice and had a commanding way about him.  He'd made 17 mainly forgettable films, usually way down in the cast list, when he was assigned the leading male role opposite Bette Davis (!) in 1948's Winter Meeting.  It is considered one of her worst films and his reviews were scathing (he can't act).

He went back to minor roles in minor films, most of them at Republic Pictures (Jubilee Trail, Hell's Outpost, Timberjack, The Vanishing American, The Maverick Queen and many more, all in the 1950s).  He had a good role in 1970's Monte Walsh but did mainly television.  From 1978-81 he played Jock Ewing, the papa on Dallas, gray-haired and looking mighty handsome.  














Jack Elam
98 movies.   Clearly one of the most recognizable of the men listed here.  He was often a vicious villain who was always ready to shoot somebody in the back and he was scary enough.  Just looking at him.  Always scowling and with a left eye that didn't move, he was endlessly disagreeable and acted like he was just a bit off.  I know I have seen a great many of his B westerns and there were many.

He was somewhere between very bad and lethal in such western films as Rawhide (1951), High Noon and Rancho Notorious (both 1952), Vera Cruz (1954), The Man from Laramie (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Last Sunset and The Comancheros (both 1961) and The Rare Breed (1966).  Who, other than me, would like to forget a fly crawling all over his face for 10 minutes at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)?  Around this time he gained a lot of weight and turned to comedy... Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) is but one example.

 












Frank Ferguson
186 movies.  He is probably more well-known to folks my age for television.  He was the Swedish ranch handyman on My Friend Flicka (1955-56) and a semi-regular on Lassie (50s) and in the mid-60s on Peyton Place.  In western films he frequently played doctors, sheriffs and various townspeople.  He could be a good or bad guy but I think of him as being fairly invisible.  He was so often not even given screen credit.

Some of the better films he appeared in were The Furies (1950), Bend of the River, The Iron Mistress and The Winning Team (all 1952), House of Wax and So Big (both 1953), Battle Cry (1955), The Light in the Forest (1958) and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).












Paul Fix
234 movies and obviously one of the most visible character actors.  He did it all... big movies, small movies, movies no one's ever heard of.  He made 22 films with John Wayne.  He made as many non-westerns as he did westerns.  He could get scruffy and play a drunk; he's played a Chinese, he's often played men of quiet authority.

His most famous roles are likely as Elizabeth Taylor's father in Giant (1956), the judge in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and as Marshall Micah Torrance in TV's The Rifleman (1958-63).  He was a most reliable and cherished actor.  His son-in-law was fellow character actor Harry Carey, Jr.














Jay C. Flippen
50 movies.  A former comic and a minstrel in traveling shows, it seemed like I'd seen his craggy, bulldog-face and kinky gray hair in hundreds of movies in the 50's.  I remember him most from his Jimmy Stewart movies... Winchester 73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), Thunder Bay and The Far Country (both 1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), Night Passage (1957) and Firecreek (1968).

He was rarely a bad guy and though always a character actor, one might consider him a lead character actor.  He made an impression in The Wild One and Carnival Story (both 1954), The Killing (1956), Wild River and Where the Boys Are (both (1960).  In the late 60's, diabetes caused him to lose a leg but he continued acting in a wheelchair.    














Leo Gordon

66 movies.  Of this crowd, I thought he was the meanest villain of them all.  Geez, the dude even looked mean, now c'mon.  In my youth he scared the bejesus out of me with his sullen, loudmouth demeanor. But the few times I saw him as a good guy, I was so disappointed.

I first remember him in 1953 in Hondo and Gun Fury... two vicious roles.  He was a wacko in Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), a Tartar  captain in The Conqueror (1956), scary as John Dillinger in Baby Face Nelson (1957) and Randolph Scott's nemesis in four films.  He might have worked more but preferred his life as a writer.  He was married over 50 years to the same woman. 
 













James Griffith
88 movies.  Always a shadowy-looking dude, those lean, gaunt,  looks and slippery demeanor kept him working for four decades.  He always reminded me of Jack Elam although Griffith never had the success that Elam had.  If he ever had any real fame, it came in the early 50's when playing a series of real-life people and his roles were a little larger than usual.  Unfortunately all the films were mediocre offerings.

It's not easy to come up with many of his films because most of his roles were so inconsequential... many amounted to little more than a walk-on.  And yet that dubious, greasy look was memorable.  Some of his more notable films were In a Lonely Place (1951), Raintree County (1957), Spartacus (1960) and How the West Was Won (1962).    












Myron Healey
167 movies.  He was the best-looking of this crowd, almost too much so to be a villain.  But villainy was his specialty. He started way back when at low-level Monogram Pictures, with Johnny Mack Brown and also at Republic Pictures with Gene Autry.  Healey was also a familiar face in those serials that were fun for kids in the old days.

I remember seeing him for the first time in 1948's Ladies of the Chorus with Marilyn Monroe in her first lead role.  Before then he seemed to be in everything but westerns.  That soon changed and he was in just about every B western I saw... always a thug, a henchman for the lead bad guy.  Some mid-50's favorites were Silver Lode, Rails into Laramie, They Rode West, Rage at Dawn, Tennessee's Partner and Count Three and Pray.  He was also a screenwriter and appeared often on television.















Barton MacLane
148 movies.  Like a stripper, character actors generally have to have a gimmick, something memorable that will make casting directors think of them for a certain part or type.  MacLane made a career on being abrasive.  It didn't matter what else the role called for, he played it abrasively.  It therefore wouldn't slip anyone's notice that he was almost always the bad guy.  It seemed his characters were always frustrated and prone to bursts of anger.  Interestingly, he often played an alcoholic. 

Another of his gimmicks was to change his physical appearance  more than was needed.  Jack Elam, let's face it, always looked the same.  MacLane frequently did not.  He knew he was typecast... the least he could do was give it a fresh look.  He caused Bogart some grief in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and was a good-guy general in The Glenn Miller Story (1954).  A staple in westerns I've never heard of, he ended his career as a regular on I Dream of Jeannie












Strother Martin
63 movies.   We know him better than most of these gents because, although he began his career in 1950, it didn't ignite until much later.  His schtick was being a weasel... mealy-mouthed, sneaky, whiny, unkempt.  He's lucky indeed that he's the character actor who got to say what we got here is failure to communicate in Cool Hand Luke (1967).  He owes a lot to Paul Newman and John Wayne.  (Now, there's a pair of names one doesn't usually read in the same sentence.)

Whether his character was incidental or a good character part, he was always a snake.  No wonder we all know him with parts in The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Shenandoah (1965), Harper and Nevada Smith ( both 1966), The Flim-Flam Man (1968), True Grit, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (all 1969), Pocket Money (1972) and Slap Shot (1977) and a rare decent character in The Champ (1979).  He was a piece of work.














Michael Pate
70 movies.  He was an Aussie who first and foremost was a writer, primarily in radio dramas but also short stories and as a playwright.  Although he was a character actor, he always reminded me of a leading man type who simply never made it.  Regardless, he was a mesmerizing presence on the screen... not always a bad guy but quiet and menacing when he was one.  He made a great Indian.

He came to the States to play a slow-witted acquaintance of Claudette Colbert and Ann Blyth in the film noir Thunder on the Hill (1951).  He was Flavius in Julius Caesar (1953).  He was wonderfully imperious as the Chiricahua Apache chief, Vittorio, opposite John Wayne in 1953's superb Hondo.  It was a type of role he would play often and well.  He was a force as a pimp in 1956's The Revolt of Mamie Stover.  In 1979 he wrote and directed the tender-hearted romance-drama, Tim starring Piper Laurie and Mel Gibson.





Denver Pyle
101 movies.  He did even more television than movies but in combining them both, this is a most familiar-looking character actor.  He appeared in many westerns but also non-westerns, particularly if they took place in the south.  His sharp features were covered in a full beard in his later years.  In real life he was a good friend of a frequent costar, John Wayne.

He appeared in such films as 7th Cavalry, The Lonely Man, The Horse Soldiers, Cast a Giant Shadow, Home from the Hill, The Alamo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Shenandoah, The Great Race and most famously for taking out Bonnie and Clyde.  In later years he had recurring roles on television in The Andy Griffith Show, The Doris Day Show and The Dukes of Hazzard.











John Qualen
134 movies and so recognizable because of his heavy Scandinavian accent which he certainly played up some for comic relief.  He was of Norwegian descent although born in Canada.  Rarely a villain, he was sad-eyed and usually played quietly in the background or was a bit bumbling but could flare up in the name of justice.  He was in some impressive non-westerns... Casablanca, Tortilla Flat, The High and the Mighty, The Sea Chase and Anatomy of a Murder. 

He made his mark, however, as a member in good standing of John Ford's stock company.  Their films together are Arrowsmith, The  Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home, The Fugitive, The Shepherd of the Hills, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Two Road Together, Cheyenne Autumn and Donovan's Reef, from 1931 to 1964.







Jay Silverheels
79 movies.  Well, he certainly couldn't complain about Native American roles going to other than Native Americans.  He made a  career being good Indians and bad Indians and did it well.  His strong voice but quiet demeanor meant that cowboy audiences were getting something a little special.  Born in Canada's Six Nations Reserve, he moved to California and entered the movie business as a stunt man.

Though most famous, of course, for playing Tonto in 10 years' worth of The Lone Ranger, both on television and in films, Silverheels, nonetheless made a ton of movies that enchanted my wild, young spirit.  He was a modern-day Indian, one of the Osceola brothers, in 1948's Key Largo.  Additionally, he thrilled us western fans in such 50's oaters as Broken Arrow, Red Mountain, The Battle at Apache Pass, Yankee Buccaneer, War Arrow, Saskatchewan, Drums Across the River and more.  Damn, now where's my horse?













Lee Van Cleef
81 movies.  Another snake.  Bad guy supremo.  Until the end of his career, did he ever play a decent guy?   His characters were never smart enough to run the show so he was usually one of a pair of goons who handled the rough stuff.  He had a mean-ass look, was never caught smiling and was always fidgety.

I first remember him in 1954 in two films, Rails into Laramie where, of course, he was one of two henchmen, and Gypsy Colt, where he was an irresponsible horse trainer.  He was ruthless in 1955's film noir, The Big Combo, a mean Mongol in The Conqueror (1956) and a scumbag in The Bravados (1958).  In the mid-60s something happened to him that doesn't generally happen to character actors.  He became a European star... courtesy of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns and a whole bunch of knockoffs for years afterwards. 















Robert J. Wilke
198 movies.  He was once a star football player for the University of Notre Dame who started in the movies as a stunt man.  He had icy eyes that were given to hard stares, a deep voice, a granite-face and always looked ill-at-ease.  No surprise that he was destined to play countless western villains, although he was the occasional good guy, too.  He started as a stunt man as a number of other character actors have done.

He was notable as one of the bad hombres who came after Gary Cooper in 1952's High Noon and throughout the 50's appeared in Powder River, War Paint, Arrowhead, The Far Country, Wichita and Backlash.  Along with scores of westerns, he also was in From Here to Eternity, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels and usually the good guy.  In his later years, it was almost exclusively television.     



Next posting:
5 More B Westerns

1 comment:

  1. Fine post. Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones were so believable as two vicious, dimwit bounty hunters in The Wild Bunch. Added together, they didn't make a halfwit. Then absolutely dripping with evil was Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. He was the very essence of Bad. Craig

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