Warren Oates
July 5, 1928 - April 3, 1982
Happy 81st Birthday to our Big Toe, Sgt. Hulka.
Warren Oates was tough. He was a man. He smoked and drank and ate red meat every day of his life. He played tough guys on TV, and even tougher guys in the movies. That's because in the movies they let you kill people and say dirty words. Yeah, all of them...even that one. I know which one you're thinking. Turns out I'm a man, too. And I learned all the mannish manly things I know by watching macho tough guys like Warren Oates.
While he's best known as Sgt. Hulka in Stripes, he played John Dillinger in Dillinger, Lyle Gorch in The Wild Bunch, Specs O'Keefe in The Brink's Job, and Frank Stewart in Race With the Devil. That must have been the toughest role of all, because he played Loretta Swit's husband. You know how freakin' tough of a nail-spitting real man you gotta be to put it to Loretta Swit? Or how great of an actor you have to be to pretend to do so? You have my infinite respect, sir.
But that was just in the movies. On TV, he was the go-to guy when an actor didn't want to (or was too dead to) reprise his movie role for a made-for-TV movie. He was Rooster Cogburn in True Grit: A Further Adventure and took Bogart's role in the 1977 TV remake of The African Queen. He was even in the 1973 musical adaptation of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, playing Muff Potter. Are you aware of what kind of bad ass you have to be to play a character named "Muff Potter"?!? You're the kind of bad ass that all other bad asses have a picture of on their walls that says "Our Leader". That's what kind of bad ass you are.
And he worked all the time. Even after he died of a massive heart attack, he refused to stop working. "Dead? That ain't gonna stop me!", he might have been heard to say, and his projects continued to appear. He was even seen kicking substantial hiney a year after his death in Blue Thunder. The last thing with him in it appeared in 1985, and then he retired. Take that, Hollywood girly-men!
But the question I have is this. Warren Oates and Katherine Helmond were born on the same day. I mean the same day, in the same year. She was the man-hungry Mona on Who's The Boss, which hadn't even aired yet when he died. But he's been dead for twenty-seven years now and she's still going strong. What's up with that?
Perhaps it's as Neil Young said...it's better to burn out, than do a sitcom with Tony Danza.
2 comments:
I just saw Public Enemies, and while it was okay, I could never shake the feeling I was watching Johnny Depp.
That's probably Warren Oates' fault. He *was* John Dillinger.
I agree. Johnny Depp is a good actor but he always looks clean, even when he's a pirate. Warren Oates owned the part and it shouldn't have been redone. Dillinger was a charming man and Oates had much of the same personal magnetism.
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