Slim Pickens (June 29, 1919 – December 8, 1983) was an American cowboy and actor who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy persona.
Pickens was born Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. in Kingsburg, California to Louis B. Lindley, Sr. He was an excellent rider from age four and quit school to join the rodeo at age twelve. He was told that working in the rodeo would be "slim pickings" (very little money), giving him his name, but he did very well, eventually rising to become a well known rodeo clown — one of the most dangerous jobs in show business.
After twenty years on the rodeo circuit, his distinctive voice and drawl, his wide eyes and moon face, and his strong physical presence and grace gained him a role in the western Rocky Mountain (1950), starring Errol Flynn. He subsequently appeared in many westerns, playing both villains and comic sidekicks to the likes of Rex Allen.
His most noted role was as B-52 pilot Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove, which ended with Pickens...
Created by dipity on Feb 7, 2008
Last updated: 11/18/09 at 04:31 AM
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Slim Pickens died in Modesto, California, Stanislaus County
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is a 1979 sequel to the 1972 film, The Poseidon Adventure. Continuing from the original movie's conclusion (with the Poseidon still afloat) with the six survivors of Reverend Frank Scott's team rescued, a tugboat captain, Mike Turner, discovers the behemoth wreck of the settling ocean liner.Accompanied by his privately ill second mate Wilbur (Karl Malden), and a passenger Celeste Whitman (Sally Field), they head out to claim salvage rights for the catastrophe, as the tugboat (Jenny) lost her cargo in the storm that capsized the ocean liner. (Though the SS Poseidon was actually capsized by a tsunami in the first film.) They are soon followed by terrorists in disguise, Dr. Stefan Svevo and his crew, who claim to be doctors who received the Poseidon's S.O.S., but are really after gold and a lost plutonium shipment. Reentering the flooding time bomb, their lusts cause them to find themselves trapped within the doomed liner.Along their journey of finding a new...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078856
The Swarm is a 1978 disaster film about a killer bee invasion of Texas. It was adapted from a novel of the same name by Arthur Herzog.
The director was Irwin Allen, and the cast included Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, and Henry Fonda.
Many filmgoers and critics consider this film one of the worst "disaster films" ever made, along with Allen's subsequent films Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out (1980). It was one of two disaster films directed solely by the "master of disaster", Irwin Allen (the other being 1979's Beyond the Poseidon Adventure), who had experience directing several movies and many episodes of his TV shows. The film was a notorious box office bomb upon its release in 1978, barely making it two weeks in theaters.
The film was released initially at 116 minutes. When released on laserdisc in the 1980s, it was...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350
Hawmps! is a 1976 American film about a United States Cavalry experiment to introduce camels into the service in the western United States, specifically Wyoming. It was written by William Bickley, Joe Camp, and Michael Warren, directed by Joe Camp, and produced by Benji Films.
...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074614
White Line Fever is a popular American B grade movie about truck drivers released in 1975. Jan-Michael Vincent plays the hero who returns from Vietnam and takes over his father's trucking business in Tucson, Arizona. He soon discovers that the shippers are corrupt and want him to smuggle illegal loads of cigarettes and slot machines. When he refuses to load such commodities they load his trailer with manure out of spite. He then punches the loaders and they fall face down in the muck.
The movie shows the struggles of the American trucker. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan, this movie shows truckers as knights of the highways struggling against big business and politics. He must haul illegal loads or he does not work at all. The movie depicts the issue of driver fatigue, overworked tired drivers trying to stay awake driving all night. The climax of the movie is when the hero crashes his truck into the giant sign of the corporation who caused him to suffer as an independent trucker. The...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073896
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. An album of songs from the film composed and performed by Bob Dylan, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, was released the same year.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was originally intended to be directed by Monte Hellman, who had just directed an acclaimed film called Two-Lane Blacktop. The screenplay was written by Rudy Wurlitzer, and was universally considered to be highly literate and poetic.[citation needed] Sam Peckinpah became involved through the actor James Coburn, who wanted to play the legendary Sheriff.
Peckinpah believed that this was his chance to make a definitive final statement on the Western genre, and complete the revision of the Western he had begun with Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch. He rewrote the script with Wurlitzer in order to create a more cyclical narrative, and added a prologue and epilogue depicting Garrett's own...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070518
The Cowboys is a 1972 western motion picture starring John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, Slim Pickens, A Martinez and Bruce Dern. Robert Carradine makes his film debut. The film was directed by Mark Rydell.When his hired men abandon him for the lure of a gold rush, Cattle Rancher Wil Andersen (John Wayne) is forced to take collection of young school boys on a cattle drive in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. Under Andersen's tutelage the boys learn to do a man's job, however, neither Andersen nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves led by Long Hair Asa Watts (Bruce Dern) are in hot pursuit.The film is known for depicting Wayne being cold-bloodedly shot in the back by Dern's character. This resulted in co-star Dern earning a bad reputation in Hollywood that made it difficult for him to get roles. During filming of this scene, Wayne warned Dern, "They'll hate you for this."Another well known scene was that of a minor using profanity. One of the...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068421
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (aka Dr. Strangelove) (1964) is a black comedy film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Loosely based upon Peter George's Cold War thriller novel Red Alert (aka Two Hours to Doom) by screenwriter Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove satirizes the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.The story concerns a U.S. Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.In 1989 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, it was listed as #26 on the AFI's "100 Years, 100 Movies" and #3 on its "100 Years, 100 Laughs."Dr. Strangelove is also #21 on the IMDb list of the Top 250 Films.Brigadier...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012
One-Eyed Jacks, a western movie released in 1961, is the only film directed by Marlon Brando, who replaced the original director, Stanley Kubrick.
It also starred Brando as the lead character, Rio. Other notable actors in the work include Karl Malden as Dad Longworth, Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado.
Rod Serling, already famed as the creator of the Twilight Zone series, wrote an adaptation of the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider (1956) - which was itself simply a novelization of the career of Billy the Kid relocated to Monterey, CA - at the request of producer Frank Rosenberg. The treatment was rejected and Rosenberg next hired Sam Peckinpah, who finished his first script on 11 November 1957. Marlon Brando's Pennebaker Productions had paid $40,000 for the rights to Authentic Death and then signed a contract with Stanley Kubrick to direct for Paramount Pictures. Peckinpah handed in a revised screenplay on 6 May 1959, and all was set.
It didn't stay all set...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055257
Slim Pickens was born in Kingsburg, California, Fresno County
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