Louis Burton Lindley Jr wanted to be a rodeo rider but was told there’d be “slim pickens”. He rode anyway, and rode to Hollywood.
Pickens made it as a character actor, partly because he played himself. When he arrived on the set of “Dr Strangelove”, everyone thought he had arrived in costume.
The role of Major T J “King” Kong was to have been Peter Sellers’ fourth in the movie but he had sprained an ankle. John Wayne turned it down, as did Dan “Hoss Cartwright” Blocker. Given Wayne’s politics it is interesting to note Blocker’s agent’s reply to the offer:
Thanks a lot, but the material is too pinko for Dan. Or anyone else we know for that matter.
The tale is more complex. Blocker himself was a Hollywood liberal Democrat who opposed Ronald Reagan’s run for California governor, saying in one interview:
I earn my living in front of a camera, pretending to be somebody I’m not. But one of my colleagues is having trouble separating fantasy from reality. . . .
And so Pickens was the centre of an iconic image of the Cold War.
Pickens always acknowledged the break from Kubrick but couldn’t handle the perfectionism; the above finale took over 100 shoots. Pickens was offered but didn’t take up a role in “The Shining”.
Pickens had the rare treat of getting a second shot in the pantheon, playing Taggart in “Blazing Saddles”.
Pickens was born on 29 June 1919. He worked with his younger brother in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”. The brother’s stage name was Easy Pickens.