ELAM, Jack

(1918–2003)

   Elam’s sagging face and slant-eye look made him perfect as one of the most famous bad guys of the 1950s and 1960s. He appears one way or another in many of the classics such as High Noon (1952), Vera Cruz (1954), and The Man from Laramie (1955). In later years he was such a familiar Western outlaw that he began playing roles that spoofed his character. His role as the dim-witted Jake in Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) is perhaps his most memorable, but his role in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) probably displays his best acting. In this serious Italian Western, Elam (Snaky) is a ruthless killer, yet as he naps against the station wall awaiting the train, a fly buzzes him, and nothing he does shoos the fly away. At last, gunfighterthat he is, Snaky pulls his gun and traps the fly in the barrel. Minutes later, he dies trying to get the drop on Harmonica (Charles Bronson) just off the train.