Warren Oates: A Wild Life

by: Susan A. Campo

Published by: University Press of Kentucky

Reviewed by Paul Markowitz

Everyone knows and loves movie stars. Behind these stars are thousands of quality actors whose faces are familiar but whose names escape us. And then there are a mere handful of great character actors who never have had a leading role in a film, but are known by all due to the quality of their acting and the power of their personality. In the ”˜60s and ”˜70s, that person was Warren Oates.

Oates came from rural Kentucky, and caught the acting bug at the University of Louisville where he was a less-than-enthusiastic student. Moving to New York immediately upon graduation, and after spending several years as a starving actor, he became a mainstay on television playing primarily in westerns that were then all the rage.

Oates, always a rebel with a tempestuous personal life, developed a creative partnership but a destructive friendship with the iconic director, Sam Peckinpah. Oates had a leading role in several of Peckinpah’s films including “Major Dundee, Ride the High Country, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” and the cult classic, “The Wild Bunch.”

In this thoroughly readable biography, Campo gives us a vivid portrait of a talented actor with a raucous and self-destructive lifestyle that shortened his career and hindered his further success. Although he is best remembered for his work with Peckinpah, he acted in many different genres and for many different directors. Due to his unique ability to combine rebelliousness with humanity in his work, he was chosen to act in films by such disparate auteurs as Norman Jewison, Peter Fonda, Terence Malick, John Milius, and Steven Spielberg.

Despite his personal failings, and his ultimate inability to break into the league of leading men, Oates leaves a filmography of depth, breadth, and quality that few have surpassed.

Armchair Interviews says: Great read for movie buffs.