Jack Elam

About Jack Elam

Who is it?: Actor, Soundtrack
Birth Day: November 13, 1920
Birth Place:  Miami, Arizona, United States
Died On: October 20, 2003(2003-10-20) (aged 82)\nAshland, Oregon, U.S.
Birth Sign: Sagittarius
Years active: 1944–1995
Spouse(s): Jean L Hodgert (1937–61; her death) 1 daughter, 1 son Margaret Jennison (1961–2003; his death) 1 daughter
Children: 3

Jack Elam Net Worth

Jack Elam was born on November 13, 1920 in  Miami, Arizona, United States, is Actor, Soundtrack. Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie job by trading his accounting services for a role. In short time he became one of the most memorable supporting players in Hollywood, thanks not only to his near-demented screen persona but also to an out-of-kilter left eye, sightless from a childhood fight. He appeared with great aplomb in Westerns and gangster films alike, and in later years played to wonderful effect in comedic roles.
Jack Elam is a member of Actor

💰Jack Elam Net worth: $12 Million

Some Jack Elam images

Biography/Timeline

1922

Elam was born in Miami in Gila County in south central Arizona, to Millard Elam and Alice Amelia Kirby. His mother died in 1922 when Jack was two years old. By 1930, he was living with his father, older sister Mildred, and their stepmother, Flossie Varney Elam.

1930

He grew up picking cotton and lost the sight in his left eye during a boyhood accident when he was stabbed with a pencil at a Boy Scout meeting. He was a student at both Miami High School in Gila County and Phoenix Union High School in Maricopa County, graduating from there in the late 1930s.

1937

Jack Elam was married twice, first to Jean Hodgert from 1937 to her death in 1961, and then to Margaret Jennison from 1961 until his own death. Elam died of congestive heart failure in Ashland, Oregon in 2003, just a month before his 83rd birthday. He was survived by his wife Margaret; their daughter, Jacqueline; and his daughter and son from his previous marriage, Jeri and Scott.

1949

In 1949, Elam made his debut in She Shoulda Said No!, an exploitation film in which a chorus girl's marijuana smoking ruins her career and drives her brother to suicide. He appeared mostly in westerns and gangster films playing villains.

1950

Elam made multiple guest-star appearances in many popular Western television series in the 1950s and 1960s, including Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Lawman, Bonanza, Cheyenne, Have Gun – Will Travel, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, The Rebel, F Troop, “Tales of Wells Fargo” and Rawhide. In 1961, he played a slightly crazed bus Passenger on The Twilight Zone episode "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

1963

In 1963, Elam got a rare chance to play the good guy, Deputy U.S. Marshal and reformed gunfighter J. D. Smith, in the ABC/Warner Brothers series, The Dakotas, a western that was telecast for only nineteen episodes. He played George Taggart, a gunslinger-turned-marshal in the NBC/WB western series, Temple Houston, with Jeffrey Hunter in the title role. Elam got this part after James Coburn declined the role. Unfortunately for him, that series ran for only twenty-six weeks.

1966

In 1966, Jack Elam co-starred with Clint Walker in the western The Night of the Grizzly. In 1968, Elam had a cameo in Sergio Leone's celebrated spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West. In that film he played one of a trio of gunslingers who were sent to kill Charles Bronson's character. Elam spent a good part of the scene trying to trap an annoying fly in his gun barrel. In 1967 Elam appeared in The Way West with Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas as the light hearted Preacher Weatherby taking part in a wagon train on the Oregon Trail. In 1969, he was given his first comedic role in Support Your Local Sheriff!, which was followed two years later by Support Your Local Gunfighter, both opposite James Garner. After his performances in those two films, Elam found his villainous parts dwindling and his comic roles increasing. (Both films were also directed by Burt Kennedy, who had seen Elam's potential as a Comedian and would direct him a total of 15 times in features and television.) In between those two films, he also played a comically cranky old coot opposite John Wayne in Howard Hawks's Rio Lobo (1970). In 1979 he was cast as the Frankenstein Monster in the CBS sitcom Struck by Lightning, but the show was cancelled after only three episodes. He then appeared in the role of "Hick Peterson" in a first-season episode of Home Improvement alongside Ernest Borgnine (Season 1, episode 20 "Birds Of A Feather Flock To Tim").

1981

Elam played "Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing," an eccentric Doctor in the 1981 movie The Cannonball Run. Three years later, he returned in the same role in the film's sequel The Cannonball Run II.

1985

In 1985, Elam played Charlie in The Aurora Encounter. During production, Elam developed what would become a lifelong relationship with an 11-year-old boy named Mickey Hays, who suffered from progeria. As shown in the documentary I Am Not a Freak viewers see how close Elam and Hays really were. Elam said, "You know I've met a lot of people, but I've never met anybody that got next to me like Mickey."

1986

In 1986, Elam also co-starred on the short-lived comedy series Easy Street as Alvin "Bully" Stevenson, the down-on-his-luck uncle of Loni Anderson's character, L. K. McGuire. In 1988, Elam co-starred with Willie Nelson in the movie Where The Hell's That Gold?

1994

In 1994, Elam was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.