James Gammon, Grizzled Character Actor Extraordinaire, Passes at 70
Known to audiences for numerous westerns, the TV drama Nash Bridges and several Sam Shepard plays.
James Gammon, whose weather-beaten looks, gruff persona and gravelly voice were familiar to decades of viewers thanks to dozens of memorable supporting roles in feature films and television series, died July 16, 2010, at his home in Costa Mesa, California. He was 70.
According to news reports, the cause was cancer of the adrenal glands and the liver.
Gammon specialized in playing characters from the margins of society — denizens of barrooms, dusty ranches, rural backwaters and the like.
He began his career in the 1960s, appearing on Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Wild Wild West, The Virginian and other television westerns. He made his movie debut in 1967, as a member of the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman.
He garnered acclaim for his performance in the 1989 baseball comedy Major League as Lou Brown, manager of the Cleveland Indians. He reprised the role in Major League II in 1994.
His most visible television work came with the role of Don Johnson’s father on the police drama Nash Bridges.
On stage, Gammon enjoyed a close relationship with playwright Sam Shepard, whose writing was an ideal fit for Gammon’s talents. He did his first Shepard play, Curse of the Starving Class, in 1978 at New York’s Public Theater. When Gammon mounted the play at the Met Theater in Los Angeles, which he helped to found, Shepard saw him and the two became friends.
In the ensuing years, Gammon appeared in several other Shepard plays, including A Lie of the Mind, Buried Child (which appeared on Broadway and for which Gammon received a Tony nomination) and The Late Henry Moss.
James Richard Gammon was born in Newman, Illinois, on April 20, 1940. His father, Donald, was a musician; his mother, Doris, was a farm girl. When they divorced, young James lived with various relatives and as a teenager ended up in Orlando, Florida. He entered the entertainment business at an Orlando television station, where he became a director of locally produced fare. He also acted in community theater, and in his twenties he drove to Hollywood to find acting work.
He is survived by a brother, a sister, two daughters and two grandchildren.