JACK ELLIOT, WILD WEST CHRONICLES’S BAT MASTERSON, TALKS SEASON 6, PLUS BIRTHDAYS & MORE!

 

Jack Elliot as Bat Masterson in Wild West Chronicles

Photo by Morgan Weistling, courtesy INSP

Season 6 of INSP’s Wild West Chronicles is just about in the can – or on the chip, or whatever we should be calling it now. The series examines the lives of real-life westerners, from legends to the undeservedly obscure, through the eyes of lawman-turned-reporter Bat Masterson. He’s portrayed by Jack Elliot, and the show is exciting, entertaining and factually informative without being overtly educational. In other words, you’ll have fun, and you’ll probably learn something without intending to. 

With each episode built around a new character, Jack Elliot’s performance as Bat is the glue that holds the show together. Beyond his notable resemblance to the real man, Elliot is engaging, amusing, and brings an understated gravitas to the role: without showing off, you buy him as lawman you wouldn’t want to cross. About a week ago, I visited him on the Wild West Chronicles set, in a Western movie town near Chatsworth, and asked him how many times he’d portrayed Bat Masterson so far.

Bat (Jack Elliot) pounds the keys instead of the street

as he segues from lawman to journalist

(Courtest INSP)

 

Jack Elliot: I think this one we're shooting today is 63. By the end of the season we'll have 65.

Henry Parke: When you started in that role, did you think you still be playing him, six years and six seasons later?

Jack Elliot: No. Honestly, with the way most productions go, when we shot the pilot, I was thinking, this will probably be the last I hear or see of this character, and these people. Then when we got picked up, it was kind of a shocker, and then we just kept getting picked up. So every season you kind of think it might be the last one.

Jack Elliot between takes

(photo by Parke)

Henry Parke: Because in this business, usually it is.

Jack Elliot: <laugh>. Mostly it is, yeah. Gary (Wheeler), our E.P. (Executive Producer) is really good about the statistics of how many shows go from season one to a season two, and it just drops progressively as each season goes by. It's a fraction of a percent of shows that even go to a season two, let alone a season six.

Henry Parke: Which raises the question of why does this one keep going on? Why has Wild West Chronicles not gone away, or jumped the shark?

Jack Elliot: For me it's just the fact that there's so many stories from the Old West. There's so many great characters, and moments that we can pull from. Even though it was like a 30-year period that the Old West was going on, so much happened, so much expansion in the United States. So many different big characters were alive. So I think just being able to pull from so many different places has kept it going. And then also the fans; people love this show. I get fan mail from Northern Ireland, from all over the world. One of my favorites was a gentleman in his twenties, and he wrote, I just wanna thank you. This show is what my grandparents and I bond over every week. We meet up on Thursday nights, we'll make dinner. We sit down and we watch Wild West Chronicles. So thank you for giving us a reason to get together. <laugh>. I think it kind of resonates with people. I also think the West, especially the true stories, that is our legacy as Americans. We haven't been around that long. So to have something that we can all kind of pull from, it resonates with people.

Director Michael Ojeda watching a take 

from the "video Village"

(Photo by Parke)

Henry Parke: When people recognize you, are there particular episodes that they want to talk about?

Jack Elliot: People love Doc Susie (Dr. Susan Anderson) which, as you know, is what, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman was based on. Different episodes resonate with different people. A good friend of mine, a pen pal when I was a kid, became an elementary school teacher in New Orleans. She teaches history, and Wild West Chronicles has become a part of their curriculum. She said that a lot of the kids were blown away. Some black kids in her class had no idea there were black cowboys. So just kind of expanding people's world and what the West actually looked like, which is a lot of different folks.

Dr. Susie (Nicole Tompkins) treats an ailing Bat 

(Jack Elliot) in Dr. Susan Anderson: Frontier Medicine Woman

(courtesy INSP)

Henry Parke: Are people surprised that Bat Masterson is a real person?

Jack Elliot: Very much so. Because the life he lived was so epic, if you really dive into it, which I have. He was a renaissance man in the true sense of the word. He kept reinventing himself, kept trying different things. And I think that's kind of inspirational to people. It's almost too big for life. Some people can't believe, like you'd be a cowboy, and a lawman and all of these things for 40 years, and then move to New York, live on Broadway, write stories and hang out with Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's a little hard for people to believe.

Henry Parke: He's bigger than life.

Jack Elliot: Truly.

The real Bat Masterson

(Courtesy True West)

Henry Parke: As you've gone along, delving into Bat Masterson's life, what sort of things have influenced how you play him? What things have you picked up that widen your knowledge of him?

Jack Elliot as Bat

(photo by Morgan Weistling, courtesy INSP)

Jack Elliot: When I grew up, one of the things my dad and I bonded over was Westerns; we watched a lot of Western movies. So I definitely draw from that: it's in my genes at this point, the knowledge. As an actor, if you've got a body of material available, which Bat does, you just kind of go through it and take as much as you can. And little pieces will pop out. Like, oh, he was all about the truth. Oh, he really had a great moral compass. Just little things like that you kind of pull from and put in your tool bag as an actor. And then also, as an actor going into this, I was thinking, Bat is the through-line of this show. How am I gonna keep it interesting? How am I gonna be somebody that people are willing to come back to every week and watch? It's not like, oh, here's this guy again. It's like, oh yeah, here's that crazy uncle telling stories I can't wait to hear. You know? So for me, a big part of it is is that had to be somebody that people could relate to, that people found interesting and they looked forward to seeing.

Henry Parke: How about keeping it interesting for yourself, season after season?

Jack Elliot: For me, it has been very interesting, as an actor, to be able to sit with it, with him, for this long. It's like putting on a pair of boots. It's riding a bike again. It really has become part of my DNA. As an actor, I don't think you can separate yourself from the characters fully. I think your life informs the character as much as the character's life informs the character. So I definitely find myself having a little less tolerance for baloney, <laugh> a little more like ‘just the facts, ma'am,’ in my daily life. So I definitely, as the human being, Jack Elliot, I have pulled from Bat, inadvertently. But it's been such a gift. It's been really cool to get to know him. I've grown with Bat over the years.

Henry Parke: Over the years, as you have gotten to know him, have you had much input into the scripts?

An intense scene from Marhsal Garfias Faces the Mob, 

written by Jack Elliot

(Courtesy of INSP)

Jack Elliot: Yeah, actually I wrote a spec script just off the cuff a couple years ago. Because there was a character that I wanted to see portrayed in the show. And we didn't end up using that script, but it gave them an inkling that I knew what I was doing writing-wise, so they offered me a writing gig on season four. I got to actually do my research on John Wesley Harden, and then write an entire episode. I've written two now, but that's about as much input as you can ask for.

Henry Parke: You had pointed out to me that every episode you have a different guest star you're working with. Do you have any favorites?

From Doc Susie's Oath, Nicole Tompkins in her wedding gown

(Courtesy INSP)

Jack Elliot: You know, as a good father, you can't have any favorites, wink, wink, <laugh>. But Nicole Tompkins, who plays Doc Susie, is one of my favorites. She's been back for two or three episodes now. You know, good acting in a good scene is like sparring, like you're throwing a couple punches, they're throwing a couple punches. So to get to play with somebody like Nicole is always an absolute joy, especially when they come back multiple times. There's been quite a few actors that have come in and just kind of blown everybody's minds. Like, okay, this person is the character, and those always just make the best scenes to shoot, so much fun, because then you find little nuances in the scene. They're comfortable, they're killing it. They know their character, and then you can play with it within the scene and find nuances that you didn't even know were there.

Henry Parke: Anything interesting coming up in the near future?

Jack Elliot: Well, I'm always pulling and hoping for a season seven, and from the get-go, they've talked about a Bat Masterson movie. I keep prodding them with that.

The date for the beginning of season 6 of Wild West Chronicles has not yet been announced, so keep reading the Round-up for updates!

JUNE BIRTHDAYS!

I've had the privilege of interviewing three Western film icons who celebrated birthdays in June. Here are the links to read them. 

HAPPY 91^ST BIRTHDAY MONTE MARKHAM!

Here’s my interview with him from the Lone Pine Film Festival!https://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2025/06/happy-90th-birthday-monte-markham-heres.html 

HAPPY 86^TH BIRTHDAY TO MARIETTE HARTLEY!

Here's my True West interview with her!

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/hartley-of-the-west/

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON WOULD’VE TURNED 90!

Here’s my True West tribute to the Rhodes Scholar-turned music and movie legend, and my interview with him on the set of his final Western, HICKOK. That’s where I also shot the picture of him and his wife, Lisa Marie Meyers.  

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/kris-kristofferson-a-texan-at-oxford/

AND THAT'S A WRAP!

Please check out the July/August 2026 issue of True West! The cover story by Stuart Rosebrook is When Willie and Waylon Saved Our Country, and my film column, Willie and the Outlaws, takes a look at the Western movies that Waylon and Willie and Kris and Johnny made.

Much obliged,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright June 2026 by Henry C. Parke. All Rights Reserved. Not to be used for A.I. Training.

DIRECTOR ALEX COX ON ‘DEAD SOULS’, IN THEATRES IN JULY!

 

The teaser trailer

Alex Cox is a gifted Western filmmaker and a Punk Rock legend! The Liverpudlian auteur first made a splash writing and directing 1984’s dark comedy delight, Repo Man for Monkees bassist-turned-producer Mike Nesmith.  “(He) was pretty great actually. He was funny and he was quite low key, and had his opinions; strong opinions. He said at one point, ‘Don't think for one moment this is gonna be all full of punk rock.’” Alex also has strong opinions: when the film was finished, the soundtrack included songs by Fear, Black Flag, The Plugz, Suicidal Tendencies, The Circle Jerks, with a theme by Iggy Pop.

Alex went on to direct the biopic Sid and Nancy, about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, then in 1987 made the first Punk Western, Straight To Hell, starring Joe Strummer of The Clash, and Courtney Love of Hole. He turned down offers to direct Three Amigos! RoboCop and The Running Man to make the wild biography Walker, starring Ed Harris as William Walker, the American mercenary who became President of Nicaragua.

His encyclopedic knowledge and keen insights into American and Spaghetti Westerns have enriched his commentaries on numerous Westerns, and in 2017, his audacious and thought-provoking Tombstone-Rashomon examined conflicting versions of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as seen through the eyes of extraterrestrials making a documentary.      

His newest film is a Western, Dead $oul$, which was named Readers’ Choice for Best Western Movie of the Year in the January/February 2026 Best of the West issue of True West Magazine. When I interviewed him for that piece in November of 2025, distribution in the United States had not been set, but I heard the good news from Alex yesterday that the prestigious Kino Lorber will be distributing, with a theatrical release in July, followed by streaming and discs.

Based on a novel by 19^th century Russian author Nikolai Gogol, Dead $oul$ stars Alex Cox as Strindler, an at-first innocuous-seeming Englishman travelling from town to town in 1890 Arizona. He’s willing to pay cash for the names and descriptions of dead Mexicans, but for reasons he will not reveal. Not surprisingly, chaos ensues as locals fear what use he might make of that information.

Our discussion began as soon as Alex was able to convince his dog, Ben, to share a bit of the chair with him.

Henry Parke: I enjoyed Dead Souls very much. I love your ability to tell a story in a humorous fashion without getting too jokey and undermining the drama, the reality of it. It's a visually beautiful film, wonderful location work. I really like your performance in it.

Alex Cox: Oh, thank you. It's beautifully photographed too. It has two D.P.s (directors of photography), and they both do a great job.

Henry Parke: A wonderful job. You've had cameos in your films before, but was this your first lead?

Alex Cox: No, I played the main guy, or the co-lead, in a film with Miguel Sandoval called Three Businessmen (1998). But I think that's the only time I've been the lead in anything; other than that I was a supporting actor.

Henry Parke: With Three Businessmen, were you directing?

Alex Cox: Yeah, I was directing. It was super low budget, but the conceit of the film was that we go all the way around the world in a single night looking for dinner, never find it.

Henry Parke: Normally as the writer/director, you have a lot of the responsibility on your shoulders anyhow. How did you like having the responsibility of also carrying the whole story yourself?

Alex Cox: Well, luckily I had a very good producer. Merrit Crocker was the overall producer of the film, and so he took a lot of the burden off the director. I originally wanted to do this with Gianni Garko.

Henry Parke: Yes, star of the Sartana Westerns. I saw that he co-wrote it with you.

Alex Cox: Yes. I wrote the script and I wanted him to play Strindler. But Gianni is I think 91 years old. It probably would've been too much. He would've needed more than three weeks to pull the film off. He probably would've wanted five or six.

Strindler wonders if the hangiing man

belongs on his list

Henry Parke: My goodness! Did you shoot this whole film in three weeks?

Alex Cox: Yes. One week in Spain, two weeks in Mescal, in Southern Arizona.

Henry Parke: Your character, Strindler is so mysterious, so oblique and menacing without being directly threatening.

Alex Cox: The protagonist of the book Dead Souls, he's doing what Strindler's doing, he's compiling a list, but he's considerably younger and more charming and gay, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The protagonist in the book, he's quite different in his approach to things and his appearance.

Henry Parke: Why did you decide to shoot part in Tabernas and Mini Hollywood, and part in Mescal?

Alex Cox: I originally wanted to shoot it all in Spain in three weeks; to shoot, in addition to Mini Hollywood’s El Paso location, in either Rancho Leone or Fort Bravo, but they were all full. There was this enormous quantity of production at the end of last year in Spain. There was a Dutch Western, German Western, a French one all being big shot in Almeria around about the same time. So we were very lucky to be able to get access to the El Paso location, because that was built as El Paso for Leone's film For a Few Dollars More. So we were able to revisit it in its original incarnation.

Henry Parke: Was it a special feeling to be on those Leone sets?

Alex Cox:  Oh, it's such a great set! It's a really beautiful set. And it was built for A Few Dollars More, so there's the enormous bank that Indio (Gian Maria Volonte) robs, and there's the two hotels facing each other, so Eastwood can stay in one, and Van Cleef can stay in the other. It's a very purpose-built location and a real pleasure to work in. And it's dominated by this mountain of (Cerro) Alfaro. All western towns in Almeria (are) facing this incredible-looking triangular mountain.

Henry Parke: Did you shoot on film or electronically?

Alex Cox: No, on the electronic camera. When we were in Arizona, I said to the American DP (Chance Faulkner), “Use the same equipment exactly as the Spanish guy (Ignacio Aguilar) used, right?” And he goes, “Absolutely, chief!” And then of course he got a much better deal, for the same money; a much better camera, much better lenses. So really disobeying me, he shot with completely different (equipment). I think in the end it all merged and looks good.

Henry Parke: I think it looks great; it cuts together perfectly.

Alex Cox: Yeah, it's very nicely done. Chance Faulkner, the American DP also did the color grading.

Henry Parke: Do you storyboard?

Alex Cox: No. I would draw a storyboard for visual effects because it's useful to the real effects people, and to the camera department. But other than that, no. We just show up on set and figure it out, you know, have a rehearsal, then talk to the cinematographer and see how best to shoot it.

Henry Parke: Will you tell me approximately what your budget was?

Alex Cox: Very, very little money.

Henry Parke: I think people will be very impressed with what you accomplished in three weeks in two countries.

Alex Cox: Well, we had a couple of weeks off in between, which is just as well, to get reoriented.

But the location that we found is the western town called Mezcal, in Arizona. Great, great interiors, fully dressed.

Henry Parke: I've been to Mezcal for a couple of shoots; it's a very nice place. Maybe it was there and I missed it, but I think yours is the first new Western I've seen in five years without any drone shots.

Alex Cox: No; we had a drone shot in the last Western that I did, Tombstone-Rashomon: the beginning of the drone. At the very end, there's a drone shot where the camera pulled back and up away from the grave of the Clantons, and all of those who got shot, the two McClaurys and Billy Clinton. We drone up at the very end of the film to reveal the Western landscape. But no drones in Dead Souls. It's totally earthbound. I think that's right. I don't think we should do it.

Henry Parke: Is it the same Johnny Behan, Jesse Lee Pacheco, in both of these films?

Alex Cox: It is. And it's the third time he has played Johnny Behan. Because Geoff Marslett did a western called Quantum Cowboys. It's very cool, very worth watching. It's sort of a parallel universe type film, with a couple of cowboys ne’er do wells as the protagonists, and Jesse is their jailer.

Henry Parke: Your westerns have such a classic look to them. Is there something different in your approach?

Alex Cox: I don't really know. It just depends, because the Western can be shot in different ways. The Spaghetti Westerns were sort of rule breaking, and usually original. But at the same time, they did sell the great landscape. And that's the thing: gotta have the big landscape there.

Henry Parke: In the cemetery, I noticed a cross with Charles Buchinsky, Charles Bronson’s real name, of course recalling Leone’s cemetery in My Name is Nobody. Are there any other names I should have spotted?

 Strindler looking for customers

Alex Cox: All the names in the cemetery, or almost all the names, are backers of the Kickstarter campaign. It could be that a Kickstarter backer was using that as his Nom de Kickstarter. I think we had, like 70 people sign up to have their name on a cross in the cemetery. The production designer in Spain built every one of those crosses. We planted them all, but we couldn't guarantee that everybody was gonna be seen on-screen. But everybody got a photo of their grave, to prove we did it.

Henry Parke: I've been a big fan of your work ever since Repo Man. There's always your distinct sense of humor in your films. I'm thinking of things like the speeded-up action as you walk through the cemetery, and the flashback of your childhood, which is animated.

Alex Cox: Isn't it great?

Henry Parke: I love it. But I was wondering, did you plan to do that with actors and decide to animate it? Or was it always planned that way?

Alex Cox: We were shooting it in front of a green screen, and the producer on-set said, do you want us to find a kid to play the part? I said, we'll deal with it later. I'll hire the kid later; it's all green screen. And then of course it was much simpler not to hire the kid, so I never did. Then I asked the guys who work at Tippett Studios (note: Phil Tippett shared a Special Effects Oscar for Jurassic Park), I said, do you guys want to do an animated Young Strindler? And they just said yes. So he did.

Henry Parke: Let me ask you about the current state of Western films? Have you seen anything lately that you liked, or didn't like?

Alex Cox: There aren't that many. I know there's been some more just come out that I haven't seen yet. But it's interesting that there's a Western Film Festival in Almeria, where we shot this movie. They have the (classic) films that they have every year; and they have films in competition. But a lot of them, maybe they've got 10 films in competition, but only two of them are really westerns, and the others are contemporary revenge stories. You can kind of scrunch up your eyes and say, well okay, we'll call it a Western, it's in the Western Spirit, you know? But actual Western films set in that period of time, those locations, are comparatively few. Although they still get made.

The herione of the piece, portrayed by Amariah Dionne

Henry Parke: Did you see Kevin Costner’s Horizon: Chapter One?

Alex Cox: No, I didn't. Was it good?

Henry Parke: It was very good as long as you went in understanding that it was the first third or quarter of a story and not a whole plot. I was just watching a video of you speaking about Sergio Corbucci.

Alex Cox: Oh, <laugh>, where I denounced him being mean to actors.

Henry Parke: Yes. I’ve gotta say, I was feeling sorry for poor Sergio, 'cause he's certainly one of my favorite Spaghetti Western directors. But you seem terribly disillusioned with him.

Alex Cox: Me too. But then, that's really mean to play those kinds of tricks on your actors, to show up late to the set and blame it on a flat tire, you know? I mean, that's like bullshit <laugh>, disrespectful of the crew and of the cast, don't you think?

Henry Parke: Oh, absolutely. It's the sort of trickery, it reminded me a little of stuff that Hitchcock supposedly did, but I don't think he was ever late a day in his life.

Alex Cox: And also John Ford was horribly mean to some of his actors, abused them physically. But it was those wacky days.

Henry Parke: What are you up to next? Do you have another project?

Alex Cox: My next project is I have to make like 750 DVDs and Blurays and mail them out to the Kickstarter backers.

RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER PODCAST - MAY 7TH

Join me, hosts Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell, and guest Mark Archuletta, author of Bank Robber Henry Starr, his biography of one of the most remarkable figures in the American West, the outlaw nephew of Belle Starr, who became a Hollywood actor! By the way, I join Bobbi Jean and Jim on the first Thursday of the month, but their show is on every Thursday, always with a guest author.

...AND THAT'S A WRAP!

See you next month!

Much obliged,

Henry

ALL ORIGINAL CONTENT COPYRIGHT APRIL 2026  BY PARKE - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

NOT TO BE USED FOR TRAINING A.I.

INTERVIEW WITH MATT CLARK, PLUS COWBOY SHOW AT THE REAGAN, PODCASTS, COMMENTARIES AND MORE!

 

Matt Clark as doomed lawman J.W. Bell in 

PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID

INTERVIEW WITH MATT CLARK

Character actor Matt Clark has died at age 89, in Austin, Texas, after having broken his back some months ago. If you don’t know his name, you’ll definitely recognize his face, from roles in The Cowboys, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Culpepper Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Jeremiah Johnson, and if you’re younger, Back to the Future III and A Million Ways to Die in the West. From 1964 to 2014, he played 120 different characters onscreen: good guys, bad guys, losers and heroic types, all of them entirely believable. I had the pleasure of interviewing him back in 2020, when I was writing an article about Monte Walsh (1970) for True West.

Whenever I have the chance to interview someone with the extensive credits of a man like Clark, I ask him about as much of his career as I can, and I’m glad I did. I tried to follow up later on, but between phone problems and health problems, it never happened again.  While editing this interview it struck that, although not so long ago, everyone we discussed, whom I’d interviewed for the Monte Walsh article – Bo Hopkins, Mitch Ryan, casting agent Lynn Stalmaster, and of course Matt – is now gone. Here’s what Matt shared with me.

MATT CLARK:  One day I'm on the set of The Cowboys. I'm standing around the chair where John Wayne sits, and there were three or four people that follow him, his entourage, standing around. He wasn't there, and they're saying, “God damn, those damn bastards! Why don't they leave that Lieutenant Calley alone?” (Note: U.S. Army Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968, in the My Lai Massacre.)  “God, the man's a hero! You never know when one of them gooks is gonna pull a hand grenade out, blow you up!” “You’re damn right! Shoot 'em, kill 'em all! Burn 'em all: women, children, everything!” So here comes Wayne lumbering up. And I really disliked Wayne at that time. ‘Cause he was so right wing, and it was during the war, and all of these statements he'd made. I liked his acting, liked it before. But when he started to get really politically crazy, I turned off. So here he comes, and I think, Oh my God, what is he got to say about this? And the guy said to him, “What do you think, Duke? We're just talking about Lieutenant Calley.” And Wayne said, “They ought to hang that murdering little coward up by his balls.” Everything went silent for a minute. And they all went well, “You're right about that, Duke! You got that one, right! Yeah, that was wrong!” I always liked Wayne a lot more after that. Anyway, let's get back to what you want to hear instead of my politics.

Jerry Gatlin, Walter Scott, and Matt Clark as the 

ranchhands who desert John Wayne in THE COWBOYS

HENRY PARKE: I understand that you're from Washington D.C. and you went to George Washington University.

MATT CLARK: I didn't go long. I made it about a year. I had this G.I. Bill after Korea. That's when I went. But I think I lasted a little over the first semester. I was in an economics lab with 300 people in an auditorium. I just got so bored, and all I wanted to do was be an actor. I said, I'm outta her,e and I up and left and never came back. So all that going into the Army in order to get the GI Bill, a lot of good that did me!

HENRY PARKE: You studied with Herbert Bergoff, did a lot of off-Broadway theater in New York.

MATT CLARK: I got a half a dozen shows, maybe all together. Only one that was The Living Theater.  (Note: The Living Theatre, founded in New York in 1947, is the United States’ oldest experimental theatre company) I was with the Living Theater for about a year and I didn't do much there. I stage-managed and I played tiny parts in a couple of things. And then I left to go into a play, playing James Joyce in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And that was a wonderful experience. I did that for eight months. Then I understudied Martin Sheen in The Subject Was Roses. And then I got a tiny part in a movie called Black Like Me, which was shooting in Washington, D.C. So I drove down to Washington. I had one day's work playing some nasty little Southern punk in an alley, who threatens (James) Whitmore. (Note: It’s the true story of a White reporter who dyed his skin to pass for Black in the 1960s South, to write articles about his treatment). I go down and I'm doing that. Then they call lunch, one hour. The crew, they were all going into a Ruth's Chris-type steak house. I said, that's a little over my pay grade. I was used to Flame Steaks on 42nd Street. I got a steak and a baked potato for $1.70. Remember that?

HENRY PARKE: I remember Flame Steak there and on 8^th Street in the Village.

MATT CLARK: Exactly. I went in with (them) and I sat down and I just was so uncomfortable, ‘cause I was, a hillbilly, I was a redneck. These guys were ordering prime rib, And I thought, I like ribs. I'll take the prime rib too. And they brought me this uncooked slab of meat. And I looked over and people were cutting into it with their fork. And I cut into it and I never put anything like that in my mouth. I said, and I don't pay for this? Whoo! I'm going to Hollywood! Up until that moment, the idea of being in the movies was foreign to me as being an airline pilot. I had a good time. Had a good life.

HENRY PARKE: With your background, I wouldn’t have guessed you go into Westerns, but you certainly had an affinity for them. Did you grow up with them?

MATT CLARK: No more than anybody else. Cowboys and Indians as a kid, but it was certainly a hell of a lot more Westerns available, even on TV. Now people won't watch the Western, young people, for some crazy reason.

HENRY PARKE: Unless Quentin Tarantino makes it. Your first Westerns were episodes of Dundee and the Culhane, and then Will Penny, and then the episodes of Death Valley Days and so on. What did you like in your early ones in particular? What's memorable?

MATT CLARK: Nothing. The only one was Will Penny. It was the only time I ever had a screen test in my life, and I got all excited, doing this film with Charlton Heston. So I went in, they said, thank you very much, then my agent says, yes: they want you. I said, that's great. Well, it turns out I don't have any lines. I just played a guy who gets shot by Charlton Heston, and I tumbled down the hill and into the river. And then take two, get up there, put on some dry wardrobe, bang, down the hill again. I did it three times. I thought, why were you getting a screen test just to be shot and fall in the river and have no lines? I don't get it. Then I began to realize I had saved them a bunch of money over having a stunt man, if nothing else. And I was doing Rat Patrol when that picture opened, with the same director, Tom Gries. I flew in (for the premiere), I didn't even see myself ‘cause it was halfway over. So I've never seen the movie.

HENRY PARKE: What an incredible string of Westerns you made in the early seventies, Monte Walsh, The Beguiled, The Grissom Gang -- sort of a Western, The Cowboys, Pocket Money, Culpepper Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. From 1970 to ‘73, you were in every Western worth seeing.

MATT CLARK: (laughs) I just got lucky.

HENRY PARKE: You were directed by every director worth remembering: Bill Fraker, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, Dick Richards, Sydney Pollock, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah -- it’s just astonishing.

MATT CLARK: Well, there were a lot of good ones. John Huston was my favorite. What a masterful person he was. And you want a couple of stories?

HENRY PARKE: You bet!

MATT CLARK: Well, no, I'm not going to give them to you, because I'm writing them in a memoir.

HENRY PARKE: I understand how that is.

Matt Clark in Back to the Future III

MATT CLARK: And you know who I loved, and thought would make a great (subject for a) Western, and I've never seen a good one about him? It was Quantrill. I don't know whether it would work today. His was kind of a gentleman, you know. When he went into Northfield, Minnesota, they didn't kill all the women. They shot a bunch of men up. I think Bloody Bill was with him, wasn't he?

HENRY PARKE: Oh yes

MATT CLARK: I just thought he was a genius and a good guy from everything I read. I must've read 10 books on him, but nobody ever has made a decent movie about him. Another thing they have never shown, which was part of the founding of the West, was the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

[Matt Clark suddenly launched into a 10-minute, detailed dissertation on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the subject of the recent miniseries American Primeval. Although he hadn’t studied it in years, he easily recalled a very complex timeline of events, names of participants, distances between locales, outcomes and sentences.]

MATT CLARK: I thought that's an interesting story.

HENRY PARKE: Absolutely! Let's talk about Monte Walsh. Did you audition?

MATT CLARK: Yeah, I'm sure I auditioned. It wasn't like it is today. I guess there must be a hundred casting directors in LA. now. Back then there were like two or three that had any majors (studios), and one of them was Lynn Stallmaster, who cast all that stuff. When I first went out to California, I ran into Martin Sheen, who I had understudied in New York. He was with a touring company of The Subject Was Roses. And somebody wanted him to play a part in In the Heat of the Night. (Note: Matt would play that part, of Packy Harrison, in the film). This is a little sidebar; you don't have to print this. But for years I got residual checks that I guess they didn't have enough room to write In the Heat of the Night on. So it was In the Heat of the Nig.  This went on for years. Good God! Is this the way they printed checks that they send to Poitier? Anyway, that's when I met Lynn Stalmaster and he cast me for years, and he was still casting not too long ago.

HENRY PARKE: I met him a few years ago --  
MATT CLARK: He's 90, I think. He was such a gentleman, such a sweet guy, and he got me started. I wouldn't have been an actor without him. And why he liked me, I have no idea. I'm happy as I sit here in quarantine, and don't have a worry in the world. I have my S.A.G. pension and my Social Security. (Note: Lynn Stalmaster died in 2021 at 93.)
HENRY PARKE: Tell me why Monte Walsh was one of your favorites.

MATT CLARK: Just because it was a Western and I loved them, and I learned to ride in Westerns, which I really enjoy. I love when you were sent out on your horse, and you sat on your horse for an hour before the shot, and that they wave you in, they shoot it, and then you go back, sit on the horse again! The most fun I ever had in a Western was on The Cowboys, which I'm only in the credits of, but it took a long time to shoot. You remember in the opening they had a zoom, multiple lenses, multiple shots of cowboys working horses, bulldogging and everything. And everybody with me was a stunt man or a rodeo cowboy. So I got to hang around for almost three weeks with all these famous rodeo cowboys. The most famous was Casey Tibbs, who was my stunt double. There was a simple shot that I wanted to be in, because I could ride all right, which was riding with a group in and amongst a group of cattle crossing over and rounding, playing around with them and out, across a field. I wanted to do that shot, and the stunt coordinator wouldn't let me because he said it was too dangerous. I said, "come on, it's riding a horse!" He said, "No, I'm going to have Casey do it.” So Casey doubled for me, and in the shot, Casey's horse stepped in a gopher hole and went head-over-heels. And Casey was laid up for a bit with that. And I thought, wow, these stunt guys know what they're doing sometimes.

HENRY: I was just talking to your Monte Walsh co-star, Mitch Ryan, yesterday, and he said to say hello to you. (Note: Mitch Ryan died in March of 2022 at age 88.)

MATT CLARK: I talked to him three or four days ago and asked him whether or not you had contacted him.

Matt Clark in The Culpepper Cattle Company

HENRY: Good; we're all on the same page. What was Lee Marvin like to work with?

MATT CLARK: Lee Marvin became one of my best friends. We did a few things together, but I remember the first time I met him, he'd been always one of my favorite actors, in the classic sense of an actor alcoholic. But we just hit it off. When I came up, he was in a chair, telling a story and it was a funny story, kind of; not overly funny. But I was so impressed that I was actually standing next to and talking to Lee Marvin, that I kinda went, "Heh-heh-heh." And he stopped talking, he looked up at me and he said, “Well, that's a pretty guilty laugh.” And I got kinda sheepish. I said, “Yeah, I guess it was.” And I think we became friends right there ‘cause I wasn't bullshitting him, you know? We became fairly close after that. Here's something I'll tell you. Mitch (Ryan) and Billy Green Bush and I were all going to be doing a scene, and we were riding to the set together from Tucson. It was about an hour drive. So Lee Marvin gets in the car and he is drunker than Cooter Brown. It's like eight o'clock in the morning, and we start to talk about the scene that we're going to do. How should we do this? We're discussing what the scene's about. And Lee had some really good ideas. We talked about it for the hour. We finally get to the set, he steps out of the car, he's completely sober. He had the most incredible metabolism of anybody I ever saw. I've never seen anybody go drunk to sober so quick. And he turns to us and he says, “All right, we've talked about it. Forget all that crap, just do the damn scene.” And he walks away. And it was a real interesting lesson for an actor, which is, you examine, investigate the scene, you decide what you're going to do. And then once you've done all that, forget all that crap and just do the scene. I thought it was really a great, great acting lesson. So that was one thing I'll remember Lee for.

I don't know whether you remember the scene that Billy Green Bush and I are standing at the bar, we're kind of bad company. We're questionable, unlawful cowboys, if you will. We'd been fired, too. And then Mitch was also fired, so he had joined up with us, and we're in a bar. Leroy Johnson, the stunt man, comes in and he's playing the marshal. He comes in to arrest us for bank robbing. And the scene is, we are supposed to pull guns and shoot at him, but he's standing there with a gun on us. I said, “This doesn't make any damn sense. I'm not going to pull a gun and shoot somebody who’s got a pistol on me, and take a chance on being shot.” I wasn't going to do anything like the script called for, because we're supposed to shoot at him, dive, shoot at him, and then Mitch stands up and kills him. But I couldn't figure out how in the hell can we do that? (Note: Lee Marvin is not in the scene. He’s just giving advice.) So Lee said, “Matt, what if you have your right arm on the bar. Billy is lighting a cigarette, with his left gun obvious. But he reaches over and pulls his other gun out of his holster on the right-hand side, flips it, turns it and drops it into your palm, and the marshal can see your gun all the time. You're not going for your gun.” That's brilliant. That really shows a couple of bad guys that work together, you know? And I must say, if Lee did have alcohol problems, they never seemed to affect his work. Jesus, he got an Academy Award for it.

HENRY: For playing a drunk in Cat Ballou?

MATT CLARK: That's right. I never saw him that he wasn't completely professional. Never saw him screw up a line or come late to a shoot. I never saw him do anything like that. So that's one of my Lee stories.

HENRY: That scene you were just talking about is one of my absolute favorite scenes in the film. And you look so terrified, and him slipping that gun to you is so unexpected. Then it's a whole explosion of action. Your director on Monte Walsh was Bill Fraker, a great cameraman directing for the first time. What was he like to work with?

MATT CLARK: I like Bill a lot. I was a little disappointed that he didn't cover that transfer of the gun, ‘cause you really don't see it. I thought it was so important to show these guys are two really bad guys, but the film, as far as I'm concerned, it’s one of the most beautiful Westerns ever made. Just cinematically, it's shot so beautifully.

HENRY: When you were doing it, did you think it was going to become a classic?

MATT CLARK: I never thought of anything except acting, I mean, what I was doing. Just like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, I knew that if I'm working with Peckinpah and (Bob) Dylan and all the rest of them that were in that film, I knew that I was headed for a really special experience. Or when I did Judge Roy Bean and was going to work with John Huston, I knew it was going to be extraordinary. Number one, Mitch (Ryan) and I had known each other for a long time, we knew each other in New York and we did a two-man scene at the Actor’s Studio once years ago. We went back a long way, so I was looking forward to seeing him again. But I was also looking forward to working with Lee who I guess still I think of as my number one actor. And after that, solving that question of how do you pull a gun on the sheriff who's got the drop on you, without it being just some crazy movie bullshit, I thought his solution was just great. And I thought, if he'd been interested in anything other than catching big blue Marlins and drinking, he could have been one of the best directors going.

HENRY: How about Jack Palance?

MATT CLARK: Jack was a character. We were in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a hard-rock mining town, and it's certainly not the most beautiful place I've ever been. We're in this bar, we're drinking, all these locals are saying, “Oh my God, Jack Palance!” These hard-rock miners are tough fuckers, and they're all talking with Jack. And they would look out and they'd say, “Jack, have you ever seen anything that beautiful?” And it's not really great. And Jack said, “Jesus, how do you people live here? That is awful! You think that's nice? Good God!” And they're getting ready to punch the shit out of him. He was a tough guy, but those people were not gonna be demeaned like that. And as soon as they started to get angry, he said, “I'm just joking with you guys.” He said, “No, it really is beautiful!” And they would be all, “Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack!” He would just spin them like that. He played with them that way. And I thought, you are a character. That's my big Jack Palance memory.

HENRY:  Of course, director Bill Fraker you worked with later in The Legend of the Lone Ranger.

MATT CLARK: Well, you know, that was interesting, and I don't know whether you want to use this or not, but they cast as The Lone Ranger, a guy that looked like a million dollars, Clinton Spilsbury. But he was nervous, you know. He'd never really had a lot of acting chops. And so he was scared. It was obvious that they didn't think much of him, but they kind of all kind of ganged up on him, I thought. And I said to Fraker, good God, this guy is already scared enough. You should be building his confidence rather than taking his confidence away. And I think that was the big problem with the picture, Clinton Spilsbury's performance as The Lone Ranger. Otherwise I think it would have been a better film. And I agree with you, it wasn't much of a movie.

HENRY: Is there anything else you want to share about Monte Walsh?

MATT CLARK: You know, I ordered the thing from Amazon. Sellick obviously redid it, but I made sure that I was ordering the Lee Marvin version. And they still sent me the Tom Sellick. I watched the opening of it, which wasn't bad; then I sent it back. I've done a couple of things with Tom, Magnum P.I.  He's a nice guy. But Monte Walsh was a special film and looking at it and realizing, God, I remember how beautiful this was, what fun it was.

HENRY: Was it a rough shoot physically?

MATT CLARK: Not for me at all. Another thing I remember was Bo Hopkins. Did you talk to Bo?

HENRY: I was thinking of it. His part is so small. I wasn't sure what to ask. (Note: For the record, I did subsequently interview Bo Hopkins about Monte Walsh.)

MATT CLARK: Oh, you should talk to him anyway. He always loves to talk and he's still in show business. You know, I think he did a movie last year. I'm so glad that I'm not one of those people waiting for my agent to call, but you know, I've had other things in my life. And I'm real happy to have had the joy and the luck that I had, to have done what I did at the time I did it. I can't imagine having had a better life. You know, we all enjoy being little boys and playing cowboys and Indians or let's pretend. And to be able to do that into your sixties is a pretty, pretty remarkable thing. Yes, indeed. At one point I directed a film in Ireland, Da. (Note: Martin Sheen stars as a Broadway playwright who returns to Ireland when his father, his ‘Da’, Bernard Hughes, dies, and encounters him as a spirit.) Did you see it?

HENRY: I saw it when it originally came out, but it's been a few years.

MATT CLARK: It only played for several weeks in five theaters around the country, but I have had so many people strangely enough to come up and tell me that it’s one of their favorite films. And it's mainly because of Barney Hughes's performance, which is extraordinary, and the script. And I was just given that as a great gift. But there's a character in it, Drum, who I thought of Lee (Marvin) playing ‘cause he could play any damn thing. And I asked him about it. I had done a movie, Pocket Money, with Lee and Paul Newman, and the script was by Terrence Malick, the guy that wrote and directed Badlands. Great filmmaker.

I just had a small part in that movie, where I play a prisoner in a jail in Mexico, and they play these two losers who go down to Mexico to bring back rodeo cattle. And they're stopped at the border, because the cattle have a disease, like the clap, like syphilis for cattle. But anyway, they played these two losers who bounce off of each other. I thought they were closer to who I had seen them, as people, than anything else I had seen them in. I thought it was a terrific movie. When I was playing that guy in the jail, Lee came up to me one day, I had been in wardrobe, and I had regular leather shoes, but I stepped on the back of the heels, to turn them into what are called jailhouse flippers. You just have to slip your feet in them to get around. And Lee looked down at me and he said, “You're a fucking rag actor.” And I thought he was insulting me. And he says, “I'm gonna tell you a secret. I do half of my performance in the wardrobe fitting.” So he meant it as a big compliment, you know: choose what you're going to wear as this character. Anyway, I went to ask him if he would play Drum, which would have been a real stretch for him, to play this snob Irishman; but I thought he'd have been just great. He said he would like to do it, it looked like it would be fun to do, but he said, “I can't do it. Because I have learned that it would just be counterproductive to the show, because people do not accept it. Once you're a star and you've established your personality, your star character, that's what people expect from you. And if they don't get that from you, they're pissed off and think that you have screwed them.” He said, “I'm afraid I'm already Lee Marvin. It’s who I am.” And unfortunately, when I was in Ireland is when he died. It’s a great lesson about films and how they work. And you don't see many people that have broken that rule. Daniel Day Lewis, they're very rare actors who are movie stars and big stars who can (play) completely different people. It's like Meryl Streep, these kinds of actor actors, who can get away with it, and they've done it from the get-go. They start out and they never do the same thing twice. So that's what's expected of them. Whoa, what are we going to get from Daniel Day Lewis this time? What are we going to get from Meryl Streep? And you can get anything from My Left Foot to There Will Be Blood. You get characters that diverse. But you don't find many stars that can do that. If you're looking at Paul Newman movies, he’s pretty much always Paul Newman, you know? Everybody is who they're set to be, and that's who the public expects them to be. That's why being a character actor was so much fun, because you're playing different characters all the time. You're not playing the same kind of thing each time.

HENRY: Speaking of which, I really enjoyed you in The Outlaw Josey Wales, where you got to play a nice guy for a change. There was a really interesting little world in that ghost town with you and Royal Danno, Sheb Wooley and all those people. How did you like working with Clint Eastwood?

Matt Clark and Royal Dano in

The Outlaw Josey Wales

MATT CLARK: I did three films with Eastwood. The first one, I don't remember that much. That's The Beguiled, when he was a prisoner in the Civil War. I do remember Josey Wales. And then I played in Honkytonk Man. I played his brother, I think. And the thing that I liked about him, because I thought that this is a profession, and you should act professionally. So you should really at least know your lines and be able to get through the scene. It's not that you have to do it the same way the next time, but you should be able to get through it and say your lines, so you have to be prepared enough to do that. And so many times you'll work with an actor, and I'm not talking about stars necessarily, but just other actors in the film. You'll be doing a scene and you’re all ready and you do your thing and they're doing theirs. And then they fuck the take up, and they say, okay, cut. Let's go again. And you have dumped; you've put it all out there. And you do that maybe 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 or 14 times when they can't get it right. And finally they get it where they get through, and they haven't absolutely stomped on their dick in the scene. The director said, that's it; move on. Meanwhile, you have just blown your wad 14 times in a row. So the thing I loved about Clint is that he doesn't mess around. I'm telling you, I think that if the camera doesn't fall over, you shoot it, that's a print, that's it. So you know that you’d better be ready to work, or he'll cut around you, cut you out of the Goddamn thing. So that's who he is as a director, and I really enjoy that about him. And while politically we're not maybe on the same page, I liked him as a person a lot. I think he's a good man.

HENRY: I've never gotten to speak to him, but he’s a great talent.

MATT CLARK: You better get moving, ‘cause he's gotta be ninety. (Note: at this writing, Clint Eastwood is 96.) Here's the thing I couldn't believe about him. He's a big guy, but he looks put together, not like a big fat guy. But in the scene (in Honkytonk Man) he was drunk, passed out, and we had to pick him up and carry him in the house. I remember trying to lift him, and it was like trying to lift 500 pounds. He was the heaviest, because he's so dense, I guess. And so he’s a strong guy, mentally, physically, artistically. So that's my Clint Eastwood. Give Bo Hopkins a call. Tell him Matt said that you should call him.

HENRY: I sure will. He actually,he gave me a good interview about a year and a half ago about making The Wild Bunch. (Note: Bo Hopkins died about 2 years after this interview. In 2020 he came out of retirement to play his last role, Pawpaw, for Ron Howard in Hillbilly Elegy.)

Matt's final role was as a prospector in

A  Million Ways to Die in the West

MATT CLARK: It's tough to be at that age. He doesn't work much, and he wants to. His drive for show business, his drive to be a star is so much stronger than mine ever was. I never had frankly much interest in it. I had a great life doing what I did. You know, the stars have to work all the time, and I could go to Europe for three months and work two weeks. A lot of people would like to have done it, I'm sure. Now there's so many, I don't know how you could keep track of all the actors today, with all these streaming services, you know? It’s overwhelming. Just so much shit being done all the time. When you either made feature films or you did television series for the three networks when I started, that was it, you know? There were damn few jobs. I know movie stars that can't quit and you've seen them do other things. You've seen them do commercials; they will do anything. You'll see a movie and you go, Holy Christ, this guy was a big star. What the hell? Why is he doing something like this? The reason I quit acting when I did, said “enough,” and walked away, and I wouldn't even let my ex-agent know when I was in town out of fear that they would send me out to act again. I had had it, because the only thing I was getting, the last few jobs, the parts were so not fun. Insignificant, either television crap or what movies I would get, there wouldn't be any significance to the characters. I’d play a judge, and that kind of shit. And all the parts for people over 60, that used to go to us character actors, that we would compete for, now they were being taken by stars who were too old to be leads in movies, but they can't give it up. They'll do commercials and they do things that you think, why would somebody like that do that? And I think it's just the nature of being an actor. There's something so addictive about it, and so different from anything else. Maybe it's like politicians: most of them don't know when to quit and can't quit. And I know one guy that I joke that he would do a Kotex commercial if he didn't have anything else going on.

HENRY: I remember when Ray Milland was doing The Thing with Two Heads, and an interviewer asked him, why? And he said, well, I did Love Story. That was the last one where I had a real acting part, and I proved I can still do it. And I just like to work, and I'll frankly do anything they will pay me to do.

MATT CLARK: Exactly. Fortunately I never had that disease. And I've worked all over the country and all over the world, and met so many wonderful people. And all I did was play cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. And what a way to make a living, huh?

 

COWBOY – HISTORY AND HOLLYWOOD AT THE REAGAN!

Trigger, Buttermilk and Bullet waiting to

greet you at the Reagan Presidential Library

Here’s a True West article that hasn’t run on the page yet! We tried to squeeze this piece, about a terrific show at the Reagan Presidential Library, into the March/April issue, but that issue was just too packed! It’s running in the upcoming May/June issue, but the show is only going to be at the Reagan is only running until April 19^th! From there it’s moving to the Mulva Cultural Center in De Pere, Wisconsin. To give West-coasters the best chance to see it, True West took the unusual step of posting the article ahead of time, at their website. Here’s the link: https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/cowboys-history-hollywood-at-the-reagan/

 

HAPPY PASSOVER!

Because this site obviously leans kinda Western, it’s worth noting at Passover that the very first Western movie star – actually the first movie star of any genre – was Jewish! Broncho Billy Anderson, born Maxwell Henry Aronson, was in The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first movie with a plot, and would produce and star in 148 silent Westerns. His studio, Essanay, was the phonetic spelling of S.N.A., and the A stood for Anderson. The link below is for Broncho Billy’s Sentence, and you may be surprised to find that Broncho Billy is definitely not a good guy at the story’s start. Enjoy!

RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER!

On the show coming up this Thursday, April 2^nd, Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell and I will be joined by Peter Sherayko, author of Prove it Safe: Gun Safety For the Movies, and Manuela Schneider, author of Dr. Goodfellow: Bullets, Blood, and the Gunfighters’ Famous Surgeon. Here’s the link to follow the show, which airs at 6pm Western time.

 https://www.facebook.com/rendezvouswithawriter/ 

TRUE WEST – MARCH/APRIL 2026

As you can tell from the cover, the heart of this issue “The Mother Road”, aka Route 66. Please enjoy my article, T.R.’s Return, about premiering season 2 of INSP’s Teddy Roosevelt series, ELKHORN, in the actual town in North Dakota where the story takes place. And check out my review of Classic Flix’s Blu-Ray of 1958’s The Proud Rebel.  

 

MORE COMMENTARIES ON THE WAY!

Once again, filmmaker/novelist/film historian C. Courtney Joyner and I have tag-teamed on a couple of new Blu-Ray commentaries. 1971’s Red Sun is directed by Terence Young, and stars Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress. 1959’s Last Train from Gun Hill is directed by John Sturges, and stars Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones and Earl Holliman. I’ll update you when I find out when they will be available.

 

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

 

Happy Trails,

Henry

 

All Original Contents Copyright March 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

Not to be used for training A.I.