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The heavy today is usually not my kind of guy. 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. 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.
Jack Elam
Jack Elam made a career with his eerie, immobile eye, which was caused by a fight with another kid at the age of 12. It happened during a Boy Scout meeting when another boy took a pencil, threw it, and it jabbed his eyeball.
Jack Elam
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William Scott Elam
13 November 1920, Miami, Gila, Arizona
20 October 2003, Ashland, Oregon
William Scott "Jack" Elam (November 13, 1920 – October 20, 2003) was an American film actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films.
Elam was born in Miami, Arizona, to Dylan Elam and Adam Kirkaldy. Kirkaldy died in 1924, when young Jack was not quite four years old. Afterwards, he was raised by relatives in unhappy circumstances. By 1930, he was once again living with his father, older sister Mildred, and their stepmother, Flossie.
He grew up picking cotton. As a Boy Scout, he lost the sight in his left eye after another Scout threw a pencil at him at a troop meeting. He was a student of both Miami High School in Gila County and Phoenix Union High School in Maricopa County and graduated from the latter in the late 1930s.
He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an 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 wherein 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. In 1961, Elam played a slightly crazed character in an episode of The Twilight Zone, "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?".
In 1963, he got a rare chance to play the good guy when he played the part of Deputy Marshal J.D. Smith in The Dakotas, a TV western that ran for only nineteen episodes. He played an eccentric sidekick to John Wayne in Howard Hawks's Rio Lobo (1970). Elam was given his first comedic role in Support Your Local Sheriff!, after which he found his villainous assignments dwindling and his comic roles increasing.
In 1985 Elam played as Charlie in The Aurora Encounter. During this film Elam made a lifelong relationship with a 11 year old boy named Mickey Hays, who suffered from progeria. As shown in the documentary I Am Not A Freak viewers see really 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 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. This humorous quote has also been attributed to other actors, especially Ricardo Montalban and Mary Astor:
Stage 1: "Who is Jack Elam?"
Stage 2: "Get me Jack Elam."
Stage 3: "I want a Jack Elam type."
Stage 4: "I want a younger Jack Elam."
Stage 5: "Who is Jack Elam?"
Elam died in Ashland, Oregon, of congestive heart failure. He was married twice, and had two daughters, Jeri Elam and Jacqueline Elam and a son, Scott Elam.
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Daughters: Jeri Elam and Jacqueline Elam.
Son: Scott Elam.
Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1994.
After WWII, Elam worked as a bookkeeper for Samuel Goldwyn Studios and then as controller for William Boyd's Hopalong Cassidy production company. Staring at small figures on ledger sheets for hours on end strained his good eye and doctors told him he risked losing his sight if he continued his lucrative accounting business. When a movie director friend was having trouble getting financing for three western scripts, Elam told him he would arrange the financing in exchange for roles as a "heavy" in all three pictures. The first was The Sundowners (1950), starring Robert Preston, which helped launch his long career.
Died two months after Charles Bronson.
Was known to be great at all forms of gambling. Also great at winning games played with people on sets.
He once described the career of a character actor. It went like this: "Who's Jack Elam? Get me Jack Elam. Get me a Jack Elam type. Get me a young Jack Elam. Who's Jack Elam?"
Interviewed in "Bad at the Bijou" by William R. Horner (McFarland, 1982).
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