The Wild Few

For Scott N.

" ‘The Wild Bunch’ is one of the great defining moments of modern movies."
Roger Ebert 1995

Up to the end of 95 years of a robust life, Ernest Borgnine seemed tirelessly driven in his joy of  performing, including an appearance in 2010’s "Red," starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren, and his final role, filmed in late 2011, as the star of "The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez." His voice work as Mermaid Man on episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" brought him newfound popularity among children.

His early career had him typecast as a bad guy, crystalized into sadistic delirium with his pitbull portrayal of "Fatso" Judson, the Pearl Harbor sergeant who fatally beats stockade prisoner Private Angelo Mazzio (Frank Sinatra) in 1953’s "From Here to Eternity" (above).

Only two years later, in "Marty" (above), the actor pulled a jaw-dropping switcheroo with his Oscar-winning portrait of a sweetly pathetic Bronx butcher who lives with his mother and whose dead-end life is suddenly revitalized by a chance encounter with a plain-looking and equally lonely girl.

Ernest Borgnine’s transformation from heavy to hero came into full bloom with his title role in the TV sitcom "McHale’s Navy" (1962-1966), playing the cunning and conning commander of a PT boat in the Pacific during World War II. The role was initially conceived as a non-comedic one in a straightforward drama entitled "Seven Against the Sea."

In his work on the screen, Borgnine found an affinity with director Robert Aldrich in such macho cinema as "Vera Cruz" (1954), "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965), "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), "Emperor of the North" (1973) and "Hustle" (1975).

When it comes to testosterone-fueled filmmaking, Ernest Borgnine made only two movies with director Sam Peckinpah. One was a dud, the other was a doozy. When Borgnine died of renal failure on July 8, 2012, the moviehouse immediately recalled his revelatory, restrained performance as Dutch in "The Wild Bunch."

For some time we had a good-natured debate with a good friend of ours (we’ll call him Scott) about which cast members of "The Wild Bunch" were still kicking, not unlike subsequently popular websites devoted to the morbid but unquestionably engrossing trivia of dead/not-dead celebrities. Years before the passing of Ben Johnson, who portrayed outlaw Tector Gorch in "The Wild Bunch" (below), Scott was firmly convinced that  the Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for "The Last Picture Show" was dead, only to be repeatedly surprised by the resilient actor’s continued employment in such films as "Red Dawn," "Cherry 2000" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys," until his demise at the age of 77, on April 8, 1996, from a heart attack while visiting his 96-year-old mother.

"Every actor was perfectly cast to play exactly what he could play," critic Roger Ebert praised "The Wild Bunch" in 1995, "even the small roles need no explanation." Borgnine’s passing left but a handful of that singular cast remaining. Before their mention, however, here is a memorial to those departed.

William Holden (Pike Bishop) was alone and drunk in his Santa Monica apartment on a November evening in 1981 when he tripped on a throw rug and lacerated his forehead on a teak bedside table. Ignorant of the severity of the injury, the 63-year-old actor didn’t seek medical attention and bled to death.

Robert Ryan (Deke Thornton) died from lung cancer at the age of 63 on July 11, 1973, three months before the release of his final film, director John Frankenheimer’s screen version of Eugene O’Neill’s "The Iceman Cometh," costarring Lee Marvin, Frederic March and Jeff Bridges.

Edmond O’Brien (Freddy Sykes),the star of the 1950 film noir classic "D.O.A." who was once an aspiring magician tutored by Harry Houdini, passed away from Alzheimer’s May 9, 1985, age 69.

Warren Oates (Lyle Gorch) succumbed to a heart attack, age 53, April 3, 1982. His last two films, "Tough Enough," starring Dennis Quaid, and "Blue Thunder," starring Roy Scheider, were released posthumously and were both dedicated to his memory.

Emilio Fernandez (General Mapache) died from a heart attack at the age of 83 on August 6, 1986. (Fernandez, a venerable director in his own right, nicknamed "El Indio," was an admirer and close friend of actress Dolores Del Rio, who was married to Hollywood art director-set designer Cedric Gibbons, the designer of the original Academy Award statuette. Fernandez was purportedly the model who posed nude for the figure now known as "Oscar.")

Strother Martin ("Coffer") was 61when he died from a heart attack on August 1, 1980, less than four months after hosting "Saturday Night Live," appearing in a sketch that poked fun at his much-quoted line from "Cool Hand Luke" as Captain: "What we have here is failure to communicate!"

Albert Dekker (Harrigan, the railroad man) died before the release of "The Wild Bunch" in one of Hollywood’s most macabre, unsolved mysteries. On May 5, 1968, the body of the 62-year-old actor (star of the 1940 cult horror flick "Dr. Cyclops") was found naked, kneeling in his bathtub with a noose, looped over the shower curtain rod, around his neck. He was handcuffed, bound, blindfolded and gagged and had obscene phrases scrawled on his body in red lipstick. Although unanswered questions remained, the death was ruled accidental autoerotic asphyxiation.

Jorge Russek (Major Zamorra) passed away from a heart attack, at the age of 66, on July 30, 1998.

Dub Taylor (Reverend Wainscoat), a veteran character actor who also appeared in Sam Peckinpah’s "Major Dundee," "The Getaway," "Junior Bonner" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," died of heart failure October 3, 1994, age 87. (His son, Buck Taylor, portrayed Deputy Newly O’Brien on the last eight seasons of "Gunsmoke.")

Chano Urueta (Don Jose), a prolific director in his native Mexico, died on March 23, 1979, age 74.

"The great thing about Sam Peckinpah as a director," the late poet and novelist James Dickey (Deliverance) once said, "was that he could get unexpectedly good performances out of people who were more or less stereotypes." David Weddle, author of the 1994 biography of Sam Peckinpah If They Move…Kill ‘Em!, noted, "To appreciate the full magnitude of Peckinpah’s achievement, it’s instructive to watch Borgnine’s scenery-chomping performance in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ two years earlier, or L. Q. Jones’ cardboard characterization in ‘Hang ‘Em High’ the year before, or Edmond O’Brien’s healthy portion of ham in ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.’ The performances in ‘The Wild Bunch’ are a universe apart. These men are not acting in Peckinpah’s film, they’ve slipped into their characters’ skins…"

Weddle particularly singled out "Borgnine sitting in the dust outside the whorehouse, whittling a stick, listening to the distant laughter of Mapache’s men as they torture Angel, exuding with each stroke of the knife a palpable aura of self-disgust, and in the moment after they’ve killed Mapache urging Pike on with a high manic giggle and eyes that burn like carbon-arc spots, and crying out in his last moments as he staggers toward Holden’s bullet-ridden body - ‘Pike! Pike!’ - so shrill, so visceral in his physical pain and sense of emotional loss while he stumbles and bleeds and falls and gasps his last ‘Pike…’ that it chills one’s marrow."

L. Q. Jones, very much alive and still acting, was born Justus McQueen in Beaumont Texas, August 19, 1927. A former horse and cattle rancher, McQueen made his film debut in the 1955 World War II movie "Battle Cry," portraying a character named L. Q. Jones, which he adopted as his screen name from then on. He worked with Sam Peckinpah on five films, beginning with "Ride the High Country," as well as a number of TV series episodes in the 1960s directed by Peckinpah.

L. Q. Jones as T. C. in "The Wild Bunch"

Jones and Peckinpah remained close friends throughout the latter’s life, and more than once, the actor found himself serving as a moral sounding board for the director. Before shooting began on "The Wild Bunch," Peckinpah, apparently concerned about his own personality problems that always seemed to trip him up, asked Jones, "What’s the matter? What is it I do?" Jones bluntly replied, "Sam, you’re a horse’s ass, you’re stupid and you pick on small people. You don’t think and you don’t consider other people." Peckinpah nodded and said, "You’re right. Well, keep an eye on me and if you catch me doing that, point it out to me."

"As they were talking," according to Marshall Fine, author of 1991’s Bloody Sam, "the phone rang on Peckinpah’s desk…Peckinpah said, ‘Why, you unconscious cunt,’ and reeled off angry obscenities at whoever was on the line for five minutes before hanging up. Then he turned back to Jones as though nothing had happened and continued, ‘I’m serious. I want you to keep an eye on me.’ "

All too often, one of the "small people" picked on by Peckinpah was Strother Martin. In Bloody Sam, Jones recalled re-shooting a scene with Martin for "The Ballad of Cable Hogue." "We rush out to the set…and the sun is going down. We shoot it and Strother fucks up. We do it again - this is the last chance before we lose the sun. And I fuck up. Sam comes out screaming at Strother, ‘You cocksucker, I’m going to see that you never work again.’ Strother is a basket case and Sam is going on in this manner. I say, ‘Um, Sam - ‘ and he snaps, ‘Keep your nose out of this, L. Q..,’ and turns around and starts in on Strother. I finally say, ‘Sam, I was the one who fucked up.’ Sam didn’t even stop. He turns back to Strother and starts in all over: ‘You stupid son of a bitch, you let me make an ass of myself like that without telling me it was L. Q.’s fault. You’ll never work again!"

As two of the most loathsome of the "egg-suckin’ chicken-stealin’ gutter trash" among the railroad posse in pursuit of the bunch, L. Q. Jones (standing, far right) and Strother Martin (standing, far left) improvised some of their dialogue, "adding even more abrasive edges to their personalities," according to writer David Weddle, "and at the same time a childlike vulnerability to otherwise repulsive characters. Coffer and T. C. became, in the hands of these two highly skilled actors, a demonic Laurel and Hardy, lovable even in the depths of their depravity."

After the opening massacre, Jones recalled, "Sam wanted absolute intensity…The only thing Strother and I added was to take it to the point where we were screaming at each other, and then work in a little bit of gay feeling between the characters when I backed off and was almost ready to tear up because he called me a liar. That wounded me. We thought we’d try that to see if it worked. Now, it could have totally destroyed everything we were doing prior to that, you don’t know. That’s why you need your director as a good audience."

Jones and Martin revived their "demonic Laurel and Hardy" act as two former partners of Jason Robards in Sam Peckinpah’s "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" (1970). Jones had originally optioned the screenplay, hoping to direct it himself, before handing it over to Peckinpah. (Warren Oates wanted to play Hogue, but Peckinpah felt it needed stronger casting, and names such as James Stewart, Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda came and went before Robards was cast.)

For the role of Angel, the youngest member of the bunch who also happens to be an impassioned Mexican revolutionary, Robert Blake was offered $75,000, but after his head-turning performance as real-life murderer Perry Smith in "In Cold Blood" (1967), the actor, thirsty for starring roles, deemed the part too small, opting instead to appear in the title role in "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here," costarring Robert Redford and Katharine Ross.

In his place, for $35,000, a New York stage actor named Jaime Sanchez was cast as Angel (above). Sanchez, born December 19, 1938, studied drama at the HB Studio, a school for the performing arts in Greenwich Village in New York City, and at the age of 18, played Chino in the original 1957 Broadway cast of "West Side Story." He had small roles in the films "David and Lisa" (1962), directed by Frank Perry, and "The Pawnbroker" (1964), directed by Sidney Lumet.

At a 2007 reunion of the original Broadway cast of "West Side Story,"
Jaime Sanchez (third from the right) is flanked by Chita Rivera and Carol Lawrence.

Once the screenplay for "The Wild Bunch" was completed, Peckinpah added the character Crazy Lee, the simple-minded grandson of Edmond O’Brien’s Freddy Sykes entrusted with the bank hostages in the opening robbery. "I’ll hold ‘em til hell freezes over," he tells Holden’s Pike Bishop, "or you say different ." His memorable last words, before going out in a shotgun-blaze-of-glory, are, "How’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?" Before being cast as Crazy Lee (below), Bo Hopkins had only a few television credits on his résumé.

Hopkins was born William Hopkins, February 2, 1942, in Greenville, South Carolina. As a youngster, Billy, as he was called then, was no stranger to truancy, juvenile crime and reform school. He dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Army and served nine months in Korea. In Hollywood, he parked cars while studying at the Actors Studio, where one of his classmates was Martin Landau, future costar of TV’s "Mission: Impossible" and Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for "Ed Wood." He decided upon the name Bo from the character Beauregard Decker, which he played in his first off-Broadway play, "Bus Stop."

Following "The Wild Bunch," Hopkins’ first major film role was in "White Lightning" (1973) as Burt Reynolds’ sidekick, but it was that same year’s "American Graffiti" (above) that gave the actor his most enduring fan base as the overage j.d. who adopts wide-eyed Richard Dreyfuss as an honorary Pharaoh (a role he repeated in the disappointing 1979 sequel "More American Graffiti").

Bo Hopkins autographs photos from "American Graffiti."

Hopkins, who had a brief but outstanding role in Sam Peckinpah’s "The Getaway" (1972), was initially considered, along with singer Jackson Browne, for the role of the fictitious outlaw "Alias" in Peckinpah’s "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973) before it went to Bob Dylan. (Johnny Crawford, who played Chuck Connors’ son in "The Rifleman," a TV series which debatably evolved from a Peckinpah-scripted pilot titled "The Sharpshooter," unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Alias.)

Burt Young and Bo Hopkins brood in "The Killer Elite."

Bo Hopkins’ squinting, stoop-shouldered, mumbling characterizations inevitably led to comparisons to James Dean, and nowhere else is this unabashed mimicry more evident than in his mannered performance as hired gun Jerome Miller in Peckinpah’s "The Killer Elite" (1975), starring James Caan and Robert Duvall.

Captain Herrera, a toothsome, grinning lieutenant of General Mapache in "The Wild Bunch," was played by Alfonso Arau (above). Born January 11, 1932, Arau was a nightclub and television personality popular throughout Latin America. He was a drama disciple of Seki Sano, a Japanese stage director and Method-acting teacher who had been a classmate of Lee Strasberg under Stanislolvski in Russia.

During the 1950s, Arau performed on Mexican television and in films with Sergio Corona as the dancing and singing comedy duo Corona y Arau. (Corona currently portrays a non-Muppet repairman on "Plaza Sesamo," the Latin "Sesame Street.") In the mid-1960s, Arau, after studying with mime instructors Etienne Dacroux ("the father of modern mime") and Jacques Lecoq in Paris, traveled the world with his one-man pantomime show, "Happy Madness."

For his role as the disarmingly ingratiating Herrera in "The Wild Bunch," Arau noted, "Peckinpah told me that…he wanted to make a homage to Alfonso Bedoya (above), the Mexican bandit in ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,’ the one who says, ‘We don’t have to show you no stinking badges!’ A fantastic scene. Peckinpah said, ‘I want to do that.’ I loved that film, it’s one of my favorites, so immediately we had a connection."

In "Romancing the Stone" (1984), starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, Arau enjoyed a comedic role as a druglord who surprisingly turns out to be a fan of Turner’s romance novels. Two years later, Arau goodnaturedly poked fun at "The Wild Bunch" with an over-the-top turn as Mexican bandit leader "El Guapo" ("The Handsome One") in "Three Amigos" (above), starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short.

As a film director, Alfonso Arau (above) imbued "Like Water for Chocolate" (1992) and "A Walk in the Clouds" (1995), featuring Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn, with a remarkable lyrical beauty that could rival Peckinpah at the height of his fevered, poetic vision.

Sam Peckinpah directs Warren Oates in "The Wild Bunch."

As for the maestro, director Sam Peckinpah, seriously ill after years of alcohol and cocaine abuse, fell victim to heart failure at the age of 59, December 28, 1984. Two weeks later, in early January 1985, a tribute was held at the Directors Guild building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sadly, so many of those assembled to honor the late filmmaker are themselves departed: director Don Siegel (who initially took Peckinpah on as a "gofer"), James Coburn, Lee Marvin, Jason Robards, Robert Culp, Brian Keith.

"Peckinpah possibly identified with the wild bunch," Roger Ebert observed in 1995. "Like them, he was an obsolete, violent, hard-drinking misfit with his own code, and did not fit easily into the new world of automobiles, and Hollywood studios."

L. Q. Jones (above), who once said, "Sam made one picture fourteen times -it’s about himself, a guy who comes along at a time he doesn’t belong," spoke at the memorial: "You can tell this is a Peckinpah production. We got started late and nobody knows what’s happening."

Afterward, in the sunlight outdoors, a rare chicken hawk was sighted soaring overhead. One of the mourners commented, "If he shits on us, we’ll know it’s Sam."