MODESTO, Calif. -- Slack-jawed cowboy actor Slim Pickens, who went from riding in rodeos to riding the bomb in 'Doctor Strangelove,' died Thursday after a long bout with pneumonia, his attorney said Friday. He was 64.
Norma Fink, his attorney and a longtime family friend, said Pickens died at 9:15 p.m. PST at Evergreen Hospital. She said Pickens never fully recovered from pnuemonia following brain surgery last year.
At his bedside were his wife, Margaret, and his two daughters, Maggie Lou and Daryle Ann.
Pickens had been a patient at the convalescent hospital about 70 miles east of San Francisco since Oct. 11. He was transferred to the facility from University of California, San Francisco, where the brain surgery was performed, an Evergreen spokesman said.
Although he appeared in dozens of Westerns, Pickens' most memorable role was probably that of the B-52 pilot who rode a hydrdogen bomb to Armageddon like a balky bronco in 'Dr. Strangelove,' yippeeing and whipping it with his cowboy hat onto a Russian target.
Pickens, a one-time rodeo clown with a distinctive Western whine, was one of the most popular of the comic movie cowboys and saddle opera sidekicks.
He appeared in too many 'B' westerns for Republic Studios to remember or count, he once said. In addition to 'Blazing Saddles' and 'Doctor Strangelove,' his movies included 'The Cowboys,' 'Major Dundee,' 'The Getaway,' 'The Great Locomotive Chase' and 'The Apple Dumpling Gang.'
He played Willie Nelson's sidekick and guitar player in the 1980 movie 'Honeysuckle Rose' and appeared in the television western comedies 'B.J. and the Bear' and 'The Outlaws.'
Pickens was elected last April to the Cowboy Hall in Fame in Oklahoma City, where the California flag was lowered to half-staff Friday after the announcement of the actor's death.
Pickens was a natural for the parts he played after spending 20 years among the nation's top rodeo cowboys as a rider and clown. He was proud that he was one of the few Western actors who could actually drive a six-horse stagecoach team.
He appeared in a straight dramatic role in 'One-Eyed Jacks' with Marlon Brando, saying afterward that he preferred comedy but years later took an offbeat part as a werewolf in 'The Howling.'
'How's that for versatility?' he once said in an interview.
He was born Louis Bert Lindley Jr., June 29, 1919, in Kingsberg, Calif. He got his first horse at age 4 and was riding bareback 10 years later on the rodeo circuit. He had to change his name when his father objected to his rodeo riding.
'My father was against rodeoing and told me he didn't want to see my name on the entry lists ever again,' Pickens once said in an interview. 'While I was fretting about what to call myself, some old boy sitting on a wagon spoke up and said, 'Why don't you call yourself Slim Pickens 'cause that's what yore prize money will be.'
Pickens agreed and later said, 'The name shore fit 'cause you didn't make a dime doin' rodeos them days.'
He quit school at 16 to turn professional, starting as an all-around rodeo hand, specializing in bronc busting, brahma bull riding, wild horse racing and any other act assigned to him. He was thrown, bitten, trampled, kicked and gored by bucking horses and rampaging bulls over the years.
'All that rodeo punishment just conditioned me for what I had to put up with later from movie and TV producers,' he said. 'Hell, I had one side of my body X-rayed after I got throwed one time and it showed I had 17 broken bones on that side alone.'
At one time or another he suffered a crushed chest, two skull fractures, two broken wrists, a broken elbow, a broken collar bone and broken left hand. His feet were broken five times, his back was broken twice and he had 'more broken ribs than I can remember,' he said.
Director William Kiegly discovered Pickens at a rodeo in Saugus, Calif. in 1950 and offered him a screen test. 'I did the test only because I was crippled up from a bull and thought I could make so money while I was healing up.'
Pickens said he was amazed to learn on his arrival in Hollywood that western actors and stuntmen were paid to fall off horses in front of the cameras, 'while I was paying rodeo entry fees to get my neck broke.
