Strother Martin was nicknamed "T-Bone Martin" because of his diving expertise.
23 Facts About Strother Martin
2.
Strother Martin served as a swimming instructor in the United States Navy during World War II and was a member of the diving team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
3.
Strother Martin entered the adult National Springboard Diving competition in hopes of gaining a berth on the US Olympic team, but finished third in the competition.
4.
Strother Martin earned bit roles in a number of pictures and soon gained frequent character roles in films and television through the 1950s, having appeared in such programs as the Western anthology series Frontier on NBC and the syndicated American Civil War drama Gray Ghost.
5.
Strother Martin was cast in 1955 as Landry Kersh in the episode "Shadow of God" on the ABC religion anthology series Crossroads.
6.
Strother Martin portrays a man with learning difficulties in "Cooter", an episode written by Sam Peckinpah in 1958 for the third season of the long-running Western series Gunsmoke.
7.
Strother Martin appeared in the first Brian Keith series, Crusader, a Cold War drama on CBS.
8.
Strother Martin guest-starred, as a circus tightrope walker Dooley Delaware, in the 1957 episode "High Wire" in CBS' Have Gun - Will Travel.
9.
Strother Martin portrayed a henpecked soldier in a 1958 episode of the syndicated Western series, Boots and Saddles and starred in a Trackdown episode "A Stone for Benny French".
10.
In 1959, Strother Martin played Polk, with Denver Pyle as Houston, in the episode "No Place to Stop" of the CBS Western series, The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun as Bill Longley.
11.
In 1960, Strother Martin guest-starred in James Whitmore's ABC crime drama, The Law and Mr Jones.
12.
In 1961, Strother Martin portrayed Pete Gibson in the episode "The Case of the Brazen Bequest" on Perry Mason.
13.
In 1966, Strother Martin appeared twice as "Cousin Fletch" in the short-lived ABC comedy Western The Rounders, with Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne, and Chill Wills.
14.
In 1967, Strother Martin played Arizona miner Ed Schieffelin in the episode "Silver Tombstone" of the syndicated television series Death Valley Days.
15.
Strother Martin played villainous roles in many of the best-known Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Horse Soldiers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
16.
Strother Martin appeared in all three of the classic Westerns released in 1969: Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Henry Hathaway's True Grit.
17.
Strother Martin later appeared in another George Roy Hill film, Slap Shot, again with Paul Newman, as the cheap general manager of the Charlestown Chiefs hockey club.
18.
Strother Martin appeared six times each with John Wayne and Paul Newman.
19.
Strother Martin can be seen in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke as Arnold Stoner, the father of Tommy Chong's character Anthony.
20.
Strother Martin made many guest appearances on Gunsmoke including the two-part episode "Island in the Desert", in which he portrayed a crazy desert hermit named Ben Snow.
21.
In one of the skits, Strother Martin played the strict owner of a French language camp for children, based on his role as the prison captain from Cool Hand Luke.
22.
Strother Martin was married to Helen Meisels-Strother Martin from 1967 until his death; they had no children.
23.
Strother Martin died at age 61 of a heart attack on August 1,1980, at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California.