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Slim Pickens
Age: 64 (passed away Dec. 8th, 1983)
Height: 6' 3"
Birth Place: Kingsburg, California, USA
Born: Jun. 29th, 1919
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Slim Pickens' Main TV Roles
NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at
IMDB
BIOGRAPHY: Slim Pickens (I) spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Major "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. He spent the next two decades touring the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. At the age of 31 he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950), and quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and three children, Daryle Ann, Thom, and Margaret Lou. His brother has acted under the name Easy Pickens.
TRIVIA:
- When he showed up on the set of _Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)_ (qv) fully dressed as a cowboy and speaking in a thick Southern accent, the British crew thought he was "Method" acting, not knowing that this was how he always dressed and acted.
- Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1982.
- Before becoming an actor, Slim was riding on the rodeo circuit. Someone told him that he should take up another line of work because all he would ever get in the rodeo was "Slim Pickin's."
- Brother of 'Easy Pickens' (qv).
- Although he was known for his heavy Southern drawl, leading many to believe he was from Texas or Oklahoma, he was actually born not far from Fresno, California, and raised in California's San Joaquin Valley.
- Dedicatee of Howard Waldrop's story "Night of the Cooters," whose protagonist is Sheriff Bert Lindley.
- Ever remembered as the Air Force major from _Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)_ (qv), it is therefore ironic that Pickens' nephew, Jim "Slim" Pickens, became a career officer in the US Navy.
- 'Peter Sellers' (qv) was originally going to ride the atom bomb in "Dr. Strangelove". Slim got a phone call late one evening from 'Stanley Kubrick' (qv) - "Peter has fallen and broken his hip, I need you for a days shoot - I need you bad and I need you now, how soon can you get on a plane and make it to London?". Slim obliged and in his haste forgot that he didn't have a passport.
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