Jack Elam
William Scott Elam, known as Jack Elam (November 13, 1920 – October 20, 2003), was an American film and television actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies (sometimes spoofing his villainous image). American film actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films.
BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: William Scott Elam
NickName: “Jack”
Description: Actor, USA
Known For: Elam was given his first comedic role in Support Your Local Sheriff!,
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 13th November 1918
Location Born: Miami, Arkansas, United States of America
Date Died: 20th October 2003
Location Died: Ashland, Oregon, United States of America
Cause Of Death: Heart failure
Memorial:
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Jack Elam
An American film and television actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies (sometimes spoofing his villainous image). His most distinguishing physical quality was the iris of his left eye, which was skewed to the outside, making him look unnaturally “wide eyed” (the opposite of cross-eyed). Before his career in acting, he took several jobs in finance and served two years in the United States Navy during World War II.
Elam played in 73 movies, and made an appearance in 41 television series. His most known works consist of Once Upon A Time In The West, High Noon and the television program, The Twilight Zone.
Elam was born in Miami in Gila County in south central Arizona, to Millard Elam and Alice Amelia Kirby. His mother died in 1922 when Jack was two years old. By 1930, he was once again living with his father, older sister Mildred, and their stepmother, Flossie Varney Elam.
He grew up picking cotton and lost the sight in his left eye during a boyhood accident when he was stabbed with a pencil at a Boy Scout meeting. He was a student of both Miami High School in Gila County and Phoenix Union High School in Maricopa County graduating from there in the late 1930s.
Elam attended Santa Monica Junior College in California. After that, he worked as a bookkeeper at the Bank of America in Los Angeles and as an auditor for the Standard Oil Company. In World War II, he served two years in the Navy and subsequently became an independant accountant in Hollywood; one of his clients was movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. At one time, he was the manager of the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles
In 1949, Elam made his debut in She Shoulda Said No!, an exploitation film where a chorus girl’s marijuana smoking ruins her career and drives her brother to suicide. He appeared mostly in westerns and gangster films playing villains. Elam made multiple guest star appearances in many popular Western television series in the 1950s and 1960s, including “Gunsmoke”, “The Rifleman”, “Lawman (TV series)”, “Bonanza”, “Cheyenne”, “Have Gun Will Travel”, “Zorro”, “The Lone Ranger” and “Rawhide”. In 1961, Elam played a slightly crazed character in an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?.”
In 1963, Elam got a rare chance to play the good guy, Deputy Marshal J. D. Smith in the ABC/Warner Brothers series, The Dakotas, a television western that ran for only nineteen episodes. He played George Taggart, a gunslinger-turned-marshal in the NBC/WB western series, Temple Houston, with Jeffrey Hunter in the title role. Elam got this part after James Coburn declined the role; the series ran for only twenty-six weeks.
In 1968, Elam played perhaps his shortest role in Once Upon a Time in the West where he was a gunslinger sent to kill Charles Bronson’s character. In that part, Elam spent a large part of the original scene playing with a fly he managed to catch in his gun barrel. He played an eccentric sidekick to John Wayne in Howard Hawks’s Rio Lobo (1970). In 1969, Elam was given his first comedic role in Support Your Local Sheriff! and later in Support Your Local Gunfighter, both opposite James Garner, after which he found his villainous parts dwindling and his comic roles increasing.
In 1985, Elam played Charlie in The Aurora Encounter. During this film Elam made a lifelong relationship with an 11-year-old boy named Mickey Hays, who suffered from progeria. As shown in the documentary I Am Not A Freak viewers see how close Elam and Hays really were. Elam said, “You know I’ve met a lot of people, but I’ve never met anybody that got next to me like Mickey.”
In 1986, Elam also co-starred on the short-lived comedy series Easy Street as Alvin “Bully” Stevenson, the down-on-his-luck uncle of Loni Anderson’s character, L. K. McGuire.
In 1994, Elam was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
Elam classified the stages of a moderately successful actor’s life, as defined by the way a film director refers to the actor suggested for a part. (He said this on a George Plimpton ABC documentary about the making of Rio Lobo.) This humorous quote has also been attributed to other actors and writers, such as Harvey Miller, Ricardo Montalban, and Mary Astor:
Personal life and death
He was married twice, first to Jean Elam from 1937 to her death in 1961 and second, Margaret Jennison from 1961 until his death in 2003. Elam had two daughters, Jeri Elam and Jacqueline Elam, and a son, Scott Elam. Elam died in Ashland, Oregon, of congestive heart failure.
Jack Elam died in 2003 of congestive heart failure, leaving behind two daughters and one son.
Films include:
“She Shoulda Said ‘No’!” (1949)
A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950)
American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950)
High Lonesome (1950)
Bird of Paradise (1951)
Rawhide (1951)
High Noon with Gary Cooper, as drunken Charlie in jail (uncredited) (1952)
Kansas City Confidential (1952)
Rancho Notorious (1952)
Ride Vaquero! with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Howard Keel (1953)
Ride Clear of Diablo with Audie Murphy(1954)
The Far Country with James Stewart (1954)
Vera Cruz with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, as Tex (1954)
Cattle Queen of Montana with Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan, as Yost (1954)
Kiss Me Deadly, as Charlie Max (1955)
Man Without a Star (1955)
Wichita with Joel McCrea and Vera Miles, as Al Mann (1955)
The Man From Laramie with James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, as Chris Boldt the town liar (1955)
Kismet (1955)
Jubal (1956) with Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine
Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957)
Night Passage (1957)
The Gun Runners (1958)
The Girl in Lovers Lane (1959)
A Pocketful of Miracles (1961)
The Comancheros (1961)
The Last Sunset (1961)
4 for Texas (1963)
The Night of the Grizzly (1966)
The Rare Breed (1966)
The Way West (1967)
The Last Challenge(1967)
Firecreek (1968)
Never a Dull Moment (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Support Your Local Sheriff! with James Garner, as Deputy Jake (1968)
The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969)
Support Your Local Gunfighter with James Garner, as Jug May (1970)
Dirty Dingus Magee as John Wesley Hardin (1970)
Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County with Dan Blocker and Nanette Fabray (1970)
Rio Lobo as Philips, a rancher (1970)
Hannie Caulder (1971)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1975)
Hawmps! (1976)
Creature From Black Lake (1976)
The Winds of Autumn (1976)
Grayeagle (1977)
Hot Lead and Cold Feet, as Rattlesnake (1978)
The Villain (1979)
Louis L’Amour’s The Sacketts (1979)
The Cannonball Run, as Doctor Nikolas van Helsing (1981)
Jinxed! (1982)
Sacred Ground (1983)
Cannonball Run II (1984)
The Aurora Encounter, as Charlie (1985)
Once Upon a Texas Train with Willie Nelson (1988)
Where The Hell’s That Gold? with Willie Nelson (1988)
The Giant of Thunder Mountain (1991)
Shadow Force (1993)
Uninvited (1993)
Bonanza: The Return (1993) (TV)
Bonanza: Under Attack (1995) (TV)
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