29 Facts About Slim Pickens

Slim Pickens played comic roles in Dr Strangelove, Blazing Saddles, 1941, and his villainous turn in One-Eyed Jacks with Marlon Brando.

Slim Pickens joined the rodeo, billed as Slim Pickens, and eventually became a well-known rodeo clown.

Slim Pickens appeared in many more Westerns, playing both villains and comic sidekicks to actors such as Rex Allen.

Slim Pickens did not need a stand-in for horseback scenes, and he was able to gallop his own Appaloosa horses across the desert, or drive a stagecoach pulled by a six-horse team.

Slim Pickens had a small but memorable role in Steven Spielberg's 1941 in scenes with Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee; during one scene, he enumerates the objects on his person, similarly to the way he does in the "Survival Kit Contents Check" scene in Dr Strangelove.

In 1978, Slim Pickens lent his voice to theme park Silver Dollar City as a character named Rube Dugan, for a ride called "Rube Dugan's Diving Bell".

Slim Pickens played werewolf sheriff Sam Newfield in The Howling.

In 1975, Slim Pickens was in another Western, playing the evil, limping bank robber in Walt Disney's The Apple Dumpling Gang; that same year, the exploitation cult classic Poor Pretty Eddie was released, with Slim Pickens portraying twisted Sheriff Orville.

Slim Pickens was chosen because his accent and comic sense were perfect for the role of Kong, a cartoonishly patriotic and gung-ho B-52 commander.

Slim Pickens was not given the script for the entire film, but only those portions in which he played a part.

Slim Pickens credited Dr Strangelove as a turning point in his career.

Slim Pickens said, though, that working with Stanley Kubrick proved too difficult due to Kubrick's perfectionist style of directing with multiple takes for nearly every shot, especially with the climactic H-bomb riding scene, which was done in just over 100 takes.

Slim Pickens lent his voice to the 1975 studio recording of Bobby Bridger's collection of Western ballads A Ballad of the West, in which he narrated part 1, "Seekers of the Fleece", the story of Jim Bridger and the mountain man fur-trade era.

Slim Pickens recorded a one-off single, "Christmas in November", on the Midsong label in 1980.

Slim Pickens appeared in numerous television guest shots, including a 1954 Stories of the Century episode in which he played the Sundance Kid to Joe Sawyer's Butch Cassidy, as well as four episodes of the syndicated Western series Annie Oakley, a 1956 episode of The Lone Ranger, and three episodes of NBC's Wide Country, a rodeo series starring Earl Holliman and Andrew Prine.

Slim Pickens appeared in episodes of Mannix, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Lone Ranger, Frontier Doctor, Gunsmoke, Route 66, The Tall Man, Maverick, The Westerner, Riverboat, The Fugitive, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, The Legend of Jesse James, Alias Smith and Jones, Daniel Boone, The Virginian, Night Gallery, That Girl, Baretta, Vega$, How the West Was Won, Cimarron Strip, and Kung Fu.

Slim Pickens played Wild Jack Monroe, the owner of station WJM, in CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and guest-starred as Zeke in the 1963 episode "Higgins and the Hillbilly" of the ABC sitcom Our Man Higgins, which starred Stanley Holloway as a British butler for a suburban American family.

Slim Pickens portrayed Grandpa Shoenfield in a two-part 1980 episode of ABC's The Love Boat.

Slim Pickens emceed NBC's short-lived country music variety series The Nashville Palace in 1981.

In 2005, Slim Pickens was posthumously inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs for his work as a rodeo clown.

In 2006, Slim Pickens was inducted into the Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame.

In 2020, Slim Pickens was inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in Washington.

Slim Pickens died in a hospital in Modesto on December 8,1983, after surgery for a brain tumor.

Slim Pickens was survived by his wife and children, Thomas Michael Lindley and Margaret Louise Wittman, as well as his stepdaughter he chose to raise as his own, Daryle Ann Giardino.

Slim Pickens's funeral was held at Presbyterian Church of the Forty Niners in Columbia, California, where he was a member.

Slim Pickens's ashes were scattered over his favorite trail areas.

Slim Pickens's brother Samuel was an actor with the stage name Easy Pickens.

Slim Pickens was a longtime supporter of the National Rifle Association of America, appearing in promotional shots.

Slim Pickens was an avid outdoorsman, appearing in several episodes of The American Sportsman.