LOS ANGELES -- An autopsy concluded Monday that veteran actor Warren Oates, who played a series of shiftless, sleazy characters in such movies as 'In the Heat of the Night' and 'The Wild Bunch,' died of a heart attack.
Oates was found unconscious Saturday by his wife, Judy, shortly after retiring for a nap. Paramedics pronounced the actor dead after trying unsuccessfully to revive him.
'It was a coronary death due to natural causes,' spokesman Bill Gold said.
The 90-minute autopsy was conducted by Dr. Ronald Kornblum, chief of forensic medicine, who is acting as chief medical examiner during Dr. Thomas Noguchi's 30-day suspension.
Noguchi was suspended by the Board of Supervisors pending further investigation of a series of charges, including allegations he 'sensationalized' celebrity deaths.
Oates appeared in more than 200 televison shows during his career and several dozens films, refining the image of a shiftless loser.
Among the early TV series where Oates honed his bad guy character was 'Have Gun -- Will Travel.' Shortly after that he played Jack Lord's no-account sidekick on 'Stoney Burke' and his career was launched.
'I just loved him,' Lord said from Hawaii. 'What a loss to our industry. He got started with 'Stoney Burke' and was the spice of the show, the down to earth touch we needed.'
Oates' most memorable role may have been the slovenly, Peeping Tom police officer in 'In the Heat of the Night,' which starred Rod Steiger.
'Warren was a man who understood the poetry of life instinctively,' Steiger said, 'and his desire to make it a reality gave him an affable intensity and a compassion that will always leave him remembered by those who knew him.'
His other movie credits included the title role of 'Dillinger' and the part of Jack Nicholson's patrol supervisor in the recently released film 'The Border.'
Oates was born during the Depression in the tiny coal mining town of Depoy, Ky., where he picked strawberries and wormed tobacco as a youth before joining the Marines at age 18 'to stay out of jail.'
Three years later, Oates signed up for a drama class at the University of Louisville.
Oates seldom received top billing but his mean looks and bad guy image on and off the screen earned him plenty of work.
'When I came out here from New York I played westerns because that's what was going on,' Oates told an interviewer. 'There were 40 series and I went from one to the other. I started out playing the third bad guy on a horse and worked my way up to No. 1 bad guy.'
Services were scheduled Tuesday at 4 p.m. at the Old North Church in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. A spokesman said burial and other funeral arrangments had not yet been completed.
