In Remembrance: Jack Elam

     Jack Elam, the well-respected character actor and favorite Western villain who tormented good-guys with his signature mad eyes, maniacal grin, and murderous gunslinging has died. Elam, in failing health in recent years, died Monday October 20th, 2003, at his home in Ashland, Ore., of unspecified illness.

     It is listed that the actor was 86 years old, but it's also been rumored that he lied about his age as a youngster to get work.

     Born in Miami, Ariz., Elam's lazy eye was the result of a childhood fight in Phoenix. In Elam's own words, he said a fellow Boy Scout poked him in the left eye with a pencil during a scuffle at a troop meeting. He was rendered blind in that eye, which wandered lazily around its socket.

     Elam found work in the 1940s as a Hollywood accountant and had success as a bit player, usually uncredited, in the films Trailin' West (1949), and Love That Brute (1950).

     He helped arrange financing for the 1950 Robert Preston film The Sundowners in exchange for a larger role, as the husband of actress Cathy Downs. It was his role as the tough-guy Tevis in 1951's Rawhide, starring Tyrone Power, which helped make him a star.

     He soon found his way into highly regarded B grade film noir films such as Kansas City Confidential (1952) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955). He also appeared in Vincente Minnelli's version of Kismet (1955), and with John Wayne in Curtiz' The Comancheros (1961). He even managed to go uncredited as Cheesecake in Frank Capra's 1961 classic, Pocketful of Miracles.

     He didn't always play the hell-bent villain, he was sometimes cast as dirty old men or harmless drunks, sometimes with humorous faculty in comedies like Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), and Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978). He was featured in Hannie Caulder (1970), which starred Raquel Welch.

     But he disliked the modern villains that evolved in the 1970s, whose bad behavior was overshadowed by some type of psychological nuance. "The heavy today is usually not my kind of guy," he said in the Los Angeles Times in 1977.

     "In the old days, Rory Calhoun was the hero because he was the hero and I was the heavy because I was the heavy - and nobody cared what my problem was. And I didn't either," he added. "I robbed the bank because I wanted the money ... I've played all kinds of weirdos but I've never done the quiet, sick type. I never had a problem - other than the fact I was just bad."

     Elam continued working into his later years and appeared the screwball comedies Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984) as Dr. Nikolas Van Helsing, and the TV reunion shows Bonanza: The Return (1993) and Bonanza: Under Fire (1995), his last screen credit.

-John Gibbon