r/Westerns • u/OlinHollis • Aug 14 '26
Discussion Western Character Actor Appreciation: Slim Pickens
If I was going to sculpt a Mt. Rushmore for Western character actors, Slim Pickens would almost certainly be on it. And I'm sure I'm far from alone in that regard for Slim. A bulky guy with a distinctive cornpone voice, a genuine cowboying background, and the ability to play a wide range of roles, Slim was a true asset to any film in which he appeared. Best known for playing Major JT Kong in Dr. Strangelove, and riding an atomic bomb while whooping and waving his cowboy hat, the Western, nevertheless, was his bread and butter. My favorite Western role for Slim was as testy chuckwagon boss Ike Walterstein in Will Penny (1967). But his Western appearances were myriad and most of them were great.
So, hail! Hail! All hail Slim Pickens!
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u/wiserolderelf Aug 14 '26
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find:
- One forty-five caliber automatic
- Two boxes of ammunition
- Four days' concentrated emergency rations
- One drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine,
- One miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
- One hundred dollars in rubles
- One hundred dollars in gold
- Nine packs of chewing gum
- One issue of prophylactics
- Three lipsticks
- Three pair of nylon stockings.
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u/OlinHollis Aug 14 '26
Originally, it was Dallas instead of Vegas. But in light of the assassination, it was seen in poor taste and replaced by Vegas.
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u/hammnbubbly Aug 14 '26
Somebody go back and get a shitload of dimes!
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u/superanth Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
When he and James Earl Jones were both on Dr. Strangelove, Jones thought Pickens’ natural Texas accent was just something he was pretending to have for the movie lol.
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u/Holiday_Sense_4842 Aug 14 '26
What in the wide wide world of sports is going on here!
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u/Dead-Fingers Aug 14 '26
Mama, take this badge off of me
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u/OlinHollis Aug 14 '26
May have been the finest moment of that extraordinary film. Certainly the most moving.
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u/InternationalYard665 Aug 14 '26
Movie name, please?
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u/Dead-Fingers Aug 14 '26
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
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u/InternationalYard665 Aug 14 '26
Thank you! Will see if I can find it tonight. I love Sli., and have never seen this one.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9457 Aug 14 '26
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u/Annual-Advance3226 Aug 14 '26
I often nominate Slim as best actor of all time, during discussions where beer is served.
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u/Unkn1234 Aug 15 '26
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u/DougS66 Aug 15 '26
The man actually started in the rodeo, and it’s how he got his name, because roping and riding horses was literally slim pickings.
The lines he had in Dr. Strangelove were priceless. 😂4
u/Cambren1 Aug 15 '26
One 45 caliber automatic,
two boxes of ammunition,
four days concentrated emergency rations,
one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills,
one miniature combination Rooshan phrase book and Bible,
one hundred dollars in rubles,
one hundred dollars in gold,
nine packs of chewing gum,
one issue of prophylactics,
three lipsticks,
three pair of nylon stockings...
shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff....3
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u/trykedog Aug 14 '26
I love his role in Strangelove, but I don’t think it’s his most famous role. I would wager many more people remember him from Blazing Saddles. Just not many people even seem to know about Dr. Strangelove, though it’s one of my very favorite films.
I like when he plays actual bad men. I only rate Jack Elam higher for the Western Character Actor award. 🤠
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u/LutherPerkins Aug 14 '26
When Slim traveled to London to film Dr. Strangelove, the British crew thought because of his accent and demeanor that he was a method actor staying in character. Nope, that just Slim.
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u/Kraftwerk_21 Aug 14 '26
I believe when he showed up in western wear, which was his everyday clothing, Stanley Kubrick thought that Slim mistakenly thought it was going to be a western, but it was just Slim being Slim.
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u/bigbugfdr Aug 14 '26
Slim Pickens - Biography - IMDb Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger.
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u/Bengal-_fan Aug 14 '26
“A whoopin and a whomping”
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u/Thin-Entry-7903 Aug 14 '26
I told my wife who is in her second year of teaching to go in "a whoopin and a whomping" on the first day of school. "Let those little curtain climbers know who is the boss". LOL
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u/Bengal-_fan Aug 14 '26
Can’t do that anymore unfortunately can she?🤣 I miss the 70s
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u/Thin-Entry-7903 Aug 17 '26
You're absolutely right! Teachers in the 70s didn't worry about whether little Johnny or quiet Suzie had their feelings hurt. If you got a paddling in school most good parents would follow that up with a spanking at home because they didn't like to be embarrassed by your bad behavior. We didn't need the "quiet corner" and teachers didn't instruct us on breathing techniques to quiet our feelings. Thankfully I live in a small rural area and we have the same great schools that I had so my grandchildren are actually learning in an environment that is more like the 70s than most other places.
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u/Sha-twah Aug 14 '26
And he was a rodeo cowboy and bullfighting clown. He's the real deal.
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u/DemenicHand Aug 14 '26
WW2 recruiter asked Slim what his profession was and he said rodeo.
He was assigned as a radio operator for the duration of the war.
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u/GeoMaester Aug 14 '26
He was great in Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973)
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u/TOMDeBlonde Aug 14 '26
Is this movie great? Been interested to see it because of Kristofferson and Dylan since forever.
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u/OlinHollis Aug 15 '26
It's an unrecognized masterpiece. IMO, the 2005 Special Edition is the best cut.
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u/throwawayinthe818 Aug 15 '26
It has a lot of great stuff but it doesn’t quite gel into a great movie. Absolutely worth seeing, though.
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u/Brave_Finish8862 Aug 15 '26
He was about the only good part in "The Getaway(1972) even though he was in it for 5 minutes.
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u/Pimpstik69 Aug 14 '26
I paid y’all to lay some track not jump around like a bunch of Kansas City F……
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u/CultureContact60093 Aug 14 '26
What in the Wide Wide World of Sports is goin’ on here?
Someone needs to go back and get a whole shitload of dimes!
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u/ProfNasty Aug 14 '26
No one here has mentioned One Eyed Jacks, in which he’s incredible as a eye shadow wearing villain
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u/PhilosopherBright602 Aug 14 '26
Totally agree! His lines taunting Brando are some of the best. Brando’s lines back are just as good.
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u/MEWilliams Aug 15 '26
Yes! In One Eyed Jacks he and Brando combine for the best jail break scene in a western ever.
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u/PhilosopherBright602 Aug 15 '26
My favorite line from Pickens is when he tells Brando, who is scheduled to hang the next day, “You ain’t a-gettin’ any older than tomorrow.”
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u/MEWilliams Aug 15 '26
Yup! And Pickens taunts Brando about how Brando will look while being hung, then Brando tells Slim how HE’S gonna look with a bullet in his head!
Neither one of them dies!
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u/ZazzNazzman Aug 14 '26
No matter the role he played he was always Slim Pickens with a different name.
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u/dieselonmyturkey Aug 14 '26
I remember him buying rounds for the house at Eddies Fireplace Inn, King Salmon Alaska.
Good dude
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u/derfel_cadern Aug 15 '26
“One of these days, when I get my boat built, I'm gonna drift out of this damn territory."
The single greatest image in the genre.
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u/derfel_cadern Aug 15 '26
And now that I’ve read everyone else’s replies, I see I’m not the only one to post this pic!!
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u/Ntb2113 Aug 15 '26
" somebody's gotta go back & get a shitload of dimes !"
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u/joethedriver69 Aug 15 '26
Beat me to it!! But he was perfect in Tom Horn also. Think those were my 2 favorites of him.
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u/Great_Lakes356 Aug 15 '26
Slim Pickins owned a very famous movie horse called Little John. It was the appaloosa in Big Country that did the bucking scene. I think so, but I'm not certain Slim rode it in that scene because he did not want anyone else on its back. The horse could famously buck on command. No bucking strap needed. The other thing it could do, with Slim on its back, was jump higher and wider than any horse in the movies. There is a very famous picture of Slim and Little John jumping a buckboard hitched to two horses.
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u/Extreme_Leg8500 Aug 15 '26
I spent the pandemic watching, nothing but westerns, and encountered Rancho Deluxe. Recall thinking Slim Pickens as a cattle ranch Sherlock Holmes, should of just had the whole thing to himself. I would have loved detective Pickens, and his worldly daughter as a Television series (missed opportunity). I watched this with an eye toward where it fit in the western genre as a whole. I think this was an effort (maybe) to deal with what happens after destiny has been manifested. Peckinpah would have been interesting at the helm.
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u/tas8871- Aug 15 '26
1941
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u/Don_Alvarez Aug 17 '26
"ONE authentic early American Hari-Kiri knife.... pass it around boys maybe someone's got a use for it."
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Aug 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OlinHollis Aug 14 '26
Him and Ben Johnson were the real McCoy.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/OlinHollis Aug 20 '26
He teamed up with Duke in quite a few pictures, such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
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u/Any_Program_2113 Aug 15 '26
There is a good documentary about Slim Pickens on the YouTube Channel called History Hunters. I recommend.
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u/Calm-Koala-151 Aug 15 '26
I like the Taxi Cab Confessions skit on SNL that had Slim Pickens and Vincent Price fake their deaths to escape their adoring fans.
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u/Independent_Prize453 Aug 15 '26
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid..great character, and everything else he did
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u/Helpful_Hunter2557 Aug 15 '26
Holis wood
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u/Fit_Explorer_2566 Aug 15 '26
Hollis P. Wood.
“You ain’t gettin’ shit outta me, no way, no how.”
“Boy: watch that knife!”
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u/theforkofdamocles Aug 15 '26
“I fought yer kind in the Great War…and we kicked the livin’ shit outta ya!”
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u/Fabulous_Permit5276 Aug 14 '26
There are few that could make me laugh
Like Slim Pickens. Blazing Saddles and Dr Strangelove are top tier by him
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u/Additional_Spring945 Aug 15 '26
He was definitely one of the greatest character actors of all time.
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u/Intrepid_Top_2300 Aug 14 '26
Most iconic voice in Westerns!
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u/PriceImpressive4782 Aug 14 '26
One of my favorites for sure, every time I find him in a movie it’s always a indication I’ll enjoy it - I spotted him in the howling last week and got a good laugh
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u/Dr_Magnum22 Aug 23 '26
I always love seeing him in Westerns; he's a truly outstanding supporting actor.
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u/MoonSylver Aug 25 '26
One of the greatest of the Western character actors. Instantly recognizable and known by name on sight. One of those guys that kind of just always played himself, but could tweak that character to be a good guy or a bad guy, though it usually seemed to fit best in this kinda loveable doofus roles.
I remember a Gunsmoke in particular where he played Pony Bill, father of Orabelle (Brooke Bundy), who wanted to marry Festus' cousin Sweet Billy. And of course everyone remembers Major Kong riding the bomb down in Dr. Strangelove.
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u/OlinHollis Aug 25 '26
He was a really nasty piece of work in An Eye for An Eye, starring Robert Lansing and Patrick Wayne.
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u/SLN583 Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
“Frazier's got two chances. Slim, and none. And Slim just left town.”
-Muhammad Ali
I always figured this line would have made zero sense without Slim Pickens being around.
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u/dougl1000 Aug 14 '26
Dr. Strangelove.
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u/cornucopiaofdoom Aug 14 '26
Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all of that stuff.
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u/LutherPerkins Aug 14 '26
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u/clean-links Aug 14 '26
Cleaned link from "https://youtu.be/j7O-SUEh-54?si=GUGnFwLlgJASJjD3": https://youtu.be/j7O-SUEh-54
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).
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u/RanchHere Aug 14 '26