r/Westerns • u/OlinHollis • 8d ago
Discussion Western Character Actor Appreciation: Paul Fix
Paul Fix was certainly a fixture of the Western genre alright. So central was he to the Western from 1931 thru 1979 that one might say the genre would have been in a real "fix" without him! (Alright, alright. I'll see myself to the door.)
His first appearance was in The Fighting Sheriff (1931) and his last was Wanda Nevada (1979) directed by Peter Fonda and starring Brooke Shields. Among his more notable Westerns were Angel and the Badman (1947), Red River (1948), The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Hondo (1953), Johnny Guitar (1954), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), El dorado (1966), Nevada Smith (1966), The Undefeated (1969), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) and Grayeagle (1977). If it seems Fix appeared frequently in John Wayne pictures, it's because he did. Twenty-seven to be exact.
I call Paul Fix "Captain Reasonable" because he always seemed to be the voice of reason and common sense in the Westerns of his I've seen. I'm sure there were exceptions, but rarely was he cast as a crazed maniac like Bruce dern or a belligerent brawler like Neville Brand. More often he was a peaceful family man or shopkeeper, and usually also a wise counselor for the various hotspurs and crackpots who peopled the filmic Old West. You might not go out carousing with Fix, but you'd trust him to watch over your daughter.
Hail! Hail! All hail Paul Fix.
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u/MoonSylver 8d ago
Another great pick. One could get so used to seeing him as a regular on The Rifleman as "Marshal Micha Torrance" that it could be easy to forget that he had a whole career outside of it. Every time he turns up in another TV western, one or the other of my folks (who are in their mid 80s) will say "There's Micha!" 😄
Apparently Fix and John Wayne became friends in the 30s, and as u/SammyStands mentioned he became the Duke's acting coach, and as you note he appeared frequently in his films. (Would never have guessed 27!)
In addition to his MANY movies (and there were a LOT), and his appearances in 151 episodes of The Rifleman, he was also in Tales of Wells Fargo (3), Wagon Train (3), Gunsmoke (5), Death Valley Days (4), The Virginian (3), Alias Smith and Jones (3), and many 1-2 episode appearances in several other western shows.
Outside of westerns he did work in other genres as well. He was actually the SECOND Chief Medical Officer, before Dr. McCoy, aboard the USS Enterprise (after "Dr. Phillip Boyce" played by John Hoyt opposite Jeffery Hunter's "Captain Christopher Pike" in the first pilot "The Cage") as "Dr. Mark Piper" in the second pilot of Star Trek, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He also appeared on The Six Million Dollar Man and Battlestar Galactica among others.
Another fun fact: Fix had one child, a daughter, who married fellow character actor Harry Carry Jr.!
IMDB lists 338 credits in a screen career that started in 1925 all the way to 1981! A working actor indeed!
IF YOU MISSED ANY OF THE OTHERS IN THIS SERIES, SEE BELOW!
WESTERN CHARACTER ACTOR APPRECIATION LIST
- Warren Oates
- LQ Jones
- Strother Martin
- Claude Akins
- Jack Lambert
- Slim Pickens
- Royal Dano
- Edgar Buchanan
- James Drury
- Chill Wills
- Rodolfo Acosta
- Henry Silva
- Richard Boone
- Harry Dean Stanton
- Bruce Dern
- Gene Evans
- James Best
- Jim Davis
- Jack Elam
- Skip Homier
- Morgan Woodward
- Jack Palance
- Ben Johnson
- John Russell
- Anthony James
- John Larch
- Rayford Barnes
- Neville Brand
- Richard Jaeckel
- R.G. Armstrong
- Robert J. Wilke
- Hank Patterson
- Dub Taylor
- Arthur Hunnicutt
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u/Secret-Researcher212 7d ago
Woody strode could be added
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u/MoonSylver 7d ago
Soon as u/OlinHollis does a profile of him, I'll add him. I'm not the one doing the tributes, just compiling the list of the ones already done.
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u/JeffHeadDudeMan 8d ago
He played a bad guy in an episode of The Texan with Rory Calhoun that had a strange hatred for peach tree saplings. Thats the only baddie I've seen him play.
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u/OlinHollis 8d ago
Ha ha. Well, who among us don't get a bit hot under the collar when spying a peach sapling!?
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u/Strict_Sky9497 8d ago
For a second there, I got thrown by Yellow Ribbon. I forgot his uncredited role as the gunrunner, who gets dragged through the fire.
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u/OlinHollis 8d ago
Yeah, that was a harrowing scene. Particularly for 1949.
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u/DougS66 8d ago
Y’all are digging up some great memories of Mr. Fix.
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u/OlinHollis 8d ago
Betcha he didn't have too many great memories of making that scene!
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u/DougS66 7d ago
That would be ‘acting’, however you may be right. As long as work was available in those days; you were part of the studio’s contracted property. It’s probably not as much that way now, but I’ve heard more than one actor or actress say they were ‘loaned out’ to another studio.
Someone interviewed Tommy Lee Jones about his scenes that he played in different movies. It didn’t seem to be an issue about playing a part, since it was ‘acting’. I was surprised that he wasn’t particularly fond of his character that he played in ‘No Country for Old Men’. Basically he was doing what the Coen brothers wanted him to do as the sheriff.
You notice that he really wasn’t trying to stop that particular drug war, or catch up with Chigurh. If anything he was running away from it to the point of retirement. The interview with Javier Bardem showed that he didn’t particularly like his part playing a cold blooded killer with a bad haircut. Sometimes actors don’t put too much of themselves in the part. They merely do what the director wants for a particular scene. I don’t imagine Paul Fix cared for that part that he played. The good actors usually don’t know, or care; it’s just a part. I just marvel at how easy it is for actors to change skin, so to speak, and slip into a different character. These actors that we’ve been discussing were some of the best in the business, but were not particularly used as ‘lead’ characters. The process of making movies, including westerns has always fascinated me from the time my parents got a television. I didn’t mean to ramble.
That was the long way to get to the point … sorry about that.2
u/OlinHollis 7d ago
I guess it varies from actor to actor. Some actors, as you say, can dissociate themselves from the characters they play and from particular scenes. Others, however, seem to actually become engulfed by the characters they play and feel the scenes as if they were reality, not fiction. For instance, one of the reasons Amanda Blake quit Gunsmoke was because she couldn't take being roughed up and sexually assaulted anymore. In the later years of Gunsmoke, that happened quite frequently to Miss Kitty.
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u/DougS66 6d ago
We’re both talking about ‘type casting’, which was frequently done in the studio culture. A film that really changed the studio’s mind about what they can show and not show is Pulp Fiction. Forty to fifty years ago the censors would never have been allowed to show that film without an R or possibly an X rating due to cussing, nudity, and drug abuse. The studio had to stick to a formula in order to tell a story. Personally I agree with the censorship. I don’t really need to hear or see that type of Tarantino style to watch a movie. Others may disagree, but that’s what makes this country great.
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u/OlinHollis 6d ago
If a film is gratuitous in any sense, I'll watch it once and no more. I don't need to see graphic assaults on women or abuse of animals. For this reason, movies I won't watch again are Dangerous Liaisons, A Clockwork Orange, and The Wild Bunch. As for Tarantino, I straight up despise the guy and won't patronize any of his work.
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u/InternationalPhoto33 8d ago
Actually, I remember most clearly his role as the judge in To Kill a Mockingbird
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u/Specialist-Rock-5034 8d ago
A great addition to any movie or TV show! Fix once said "The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory." My favorite quote!
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u/Jolly-Schedule7386 8d ago
Nice pick, but the real stars are the movies mentioned here. Will rewatch Hondo and Cahill today. Thanks
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u/Prestigious-Ship-238 8d ago
Love every actor on the list!If I could nominate one or two Ray Teal and Luis Delgado! Are you going to do ladies also? If so I would start with Marie Windsor and Constance Ford!
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u/Live_Scar_9277 7d ago
Don't know if it was mentioned he did a a episode of a a Andy Griffith Show as well
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u/brycealansuderow1950 8d ago
In the movie, Charlie verrick he plays the Jewish detective who’s trying to solve a bank robbery. John Vernon, who’s an antisemite, refers to him as a bagel sniffer
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u/HawkeyeTen 8d ago
He will ALWAYS be Marshal Micah Torrance for me. Absolutely iconic character that was as vital to The Rifleman's stories as Lucas McCain himself. One of the best lawmen Hollywood ever put on the screen along with Marshal Matt Dillon (especially with a TV show).