A Trifecta of Westerns

For character actor Strother Martin, 1969— the year he turned 50– was a banner year when it came to Westerns. He was in three big ones.

He was a harried businessman, gulled by a 14-year-old girl in the John Wayne Oscar winning vehicle True Grit (Martin was in six movies with The Duke). Martin played a degenerate, low-life bounty hunter in Sam Peckinpah’s classic The Wild Bunch. And to wrap things up, he was an eccentric—er, “colorful”—South American mine operator who hired Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

That’s a trifecta!