Clu Gulager

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Clu Gulager (2015)

William Martin "Clu" Gulager (born November 16, 1928 in Holdenville , Oklahoma ) is an American actor .

Life

Gulager is the son of rodeo entertainer John Gulager, who was a cousin of Will Rogers , and grew up on his uncle's farm in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Cherokee Indians were also among his ancestors . His nickname he received from among the Cherokee Tlu-Tlu or Clu Clu called swifts that nested in his parents' house.

He served in the US Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton from 1946 to 1948 and then became an actor. He studied with Paul Baker at Baylor University and in Paris with Étienne Decroux , the teacher of Marcel Marceau . On his return he went back to Baylor University, where he met his future wife, moved to New York in 1955 and then got a contract as an actor with Universal . He played supporting roles in numerous series in the late 1950s such as The Lawless Years , The Untouchables , The Alfred Hitchcock Show and in the western series Have Gun Will Travel with Richard Boone . But he became known in through his roles in Western TV series. Between 1960 and 1962 he played Billy the Kid in the NBC western series "The Tall Man", then from 1964 to 1968 "Emmett Ryker" in The People of Shiloh Ranch ("The Virginian"), also for the NBC channel.

From the 1960s on, Gulager was also regularly seen in movies, where he often played the role of the "tough man". In 1964 he played a young killer in Don Siegel's The Death of a Killers ("The Killers"). He later played in horror films such as the comedy Damn, The Zombies Are Coming or The Hidden - The unspeakable evil . In the film drama The Last Performance (1971) by Peter Bogdanovich , he played a foreman who had an affair with his boss's wife and then later with his boss's daughter. He had other appearances in the thriller McQ Strikes by John Sturges (1974, with John Wayne ) and in the comedy Upside Down in the Night of 1985 by John Landis , in which he played a corrupt police officer, and as a leading actor in the zombie comedy Damn the Zombies Are Coming (1985). Gulager ran his own drama school until the 2000s, which he ran with his wife, who had since passed away. To this day, he still directs theater projects in Los Angeles. More recently, he has appeared in such films as Piranha 2 (2012), Tangerine LA (2015) and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). He also starred in his son John's films several times, including the 2005 horror film Feast .

Gulager was married to the actress Miriam Bird Nethery (1929-2003), with whom he has two sons who are both actors: John Gulager (* 1958), who is also a director, and Tom Gulager (* 1965).

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ after Robert J. Conley Cherokee Encyclopedia , University of New Mexico Press 2007, p. 110 in Muskogee
  2. ↑ According to IMDB, he also appeared in Vaudeville and on Broadway, where he worked with George M. Cohan .
  3. ↑ called Martin in English
  4. ^ According to a fansite , he also played in an experimental theater project under the direction of Jean-Louis Barrault
personal data
SURNAME Gulager, Clu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gulager, William Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Holdenville , Oklahoma