Jack Elam, the wily character actor with the signature off-kilter eye; and whose five decade career saw him play everything from a villainous henchman to comic sidekick, died on October 20 his home in Ashland, Oregon of congestive heart failure. He was 84.

Elam was born on November 13, 1916 in Miami, Arizona, a tiny mining community 100 miles east of Phoenix. His mother died when he was still an infant and he lived with various families until he was reunited with his father at age nine in Northern California. As a child he worked in the cotton fields and joined the Boy Scouts. Sadly, when he was just 11, he was stabbed with a pencil in his left eye during a fight with a fellow scout at a troop meeting that caused the blindness in his left eye.

Elam eventually attended Santa Monica Junior College and took some courses in accounting, which helped him get a job as a bookkeeper with the Bank of America branch in Los Angeles. After two years in the Navy during World War II, be became an auditor for Samuel Goldwyn Studios and worked as an Office Controller for cowboy star William Boyd at Hopalong Cassidy Productions. In 1948, he was forced to resign from his position because of his failing eyesight and Elam decided to try his luck as an actor. He made his debut as a killer (what else?) in Trailin' West (1949), and took a few more bit parts in the minor film noirs Quicksand (1950) and One Way Street (1950).

He helped arrange financing with the producer for the film The Sundowners (1950) on the promise of a larger, more villainous role. His performance as a devious, jealous husband in that film, caught the attention of Henry Hathaway, who cast him as a remorseless killer in the hostage western Rawhide (1951); starring alongside such top stars as Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward, Elam held his own. Very quickly, Elam became a highly prized character player, making a memorable thug in either crime dramas: The Ring (1952), Kansas City Confidential (1952), Kiss Me Deadly (1955); or Westerns: High Noon, Rancho Notorious (both 1952), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

Elam's career took a surprising turn in the late '60s when he began to parody the Western heavy and showed a real flair for comic timing in a series of popular films: His imposing visage in the opening shot of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); the role as Deputy Jake in Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) opposite James Garner; Rio Lobo (1970) with John Wayne, and supporting Frank Sinatra in the broad cowpoke comedy Dirty Dingus McGee (1970).

By the '70s, Elam's standing as a fine comedic talent was well in place, and he settled into lovable curmudgeon characterizations in several low-brow comedies like Hawmps! (1976), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), and a hilariously over-the-top performance as drunken doctor in The Cannonball Run (1981). He played his last significant role in the Hulk Hogan kiddie comedy Suburban Commando (1991). In 1994, Elam was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He is survived by his wife Jenny; children, Jeri, Scott and Jacqueline; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole