Bo Hopkins,
‘Wild Bunch’ and ‘American Graffiti’ Actor, Dies at 84
Sam Peckinpah cast him in three
films, and he went from bad guys to good during the course of his career.
The
Hollywood Reporter
By
Chris Koseluk
May
28, 2022
Bo
Hopkins, the wily actor with the wild-eyed gaze who came to fame portraying
thieves and scoundrels in such films as The Wild Bunch, American
Graffiti, Midnight Express and White Lightning,
died Saturday morning. He was 84.
Hopkins
died at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys after suffering a heart attack
on May 9, his wife of 33 years, Sian, told The Hollywood Reporter.
With
his hair-trigger delivery, Hopkins was a favorite of Sam Peckinpah, who cast
him in three features — as Clarence “Crazy” Lee in The Wild
Bunch (1969), as a double-crossed bank robber in The
Getaway (1972) and as a weapons expert in The Killer
Elite (1975).
His
turn as Joe Young, the leader of The Pharaohs greaser gang in George Lucas’ American
Graffiti (1973), solidified him as a top-notch screen villain. The
highlight of his role included coaxing Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) to attach a hook and chain to
a police car so that when it gives chase, the back axle flies off.
“I
go to car shows because American Graffiti is the national anthem
of car shows,” Hopkins Said in a 2012 interview with Shock
Cinema magazine. “Graffiti got people out draggin’ and
going up, and down streets cruisin’. It got people into cars doing that kind of
stuff again. If I told you how many times people have come up to Candy [Clark],
Paul [Le Mat] and me at these shows and told us that we’ve changed their lives,
you wouldn’t believe it.”
As
his career evolved, the sandy-haired South Carolina native segued to the right
side of the law, and executive producer Quentin Tarantino tapped him to portray a good
guy in Dusk to Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999).
“Tarantino
told me that he loved my work and that he had this part,” he said. “Well, I got
the script and said, ‘Sure, I’ll do this. This is great.’ Well, they didn’t
tell me they were going to shoot in South Africa.”
In The
Wild Bunch, Hopkins’ character, a volatile young member of the gang,
terrorizes a group of hostages inside a bank before meeting a horrible end in a
hail of bullets. Just before his demise, he utters one of the film’s most
quotable lines — “Well, how’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?”
“They
took me to special effects and had wires runnin’ up my ass, up my legs. I was
squibbed up 26 times,” he recalled of his first big movie role. “I fuckin’
thought I was gonna go to the moon if them things ever went off. I’d never
worked with squibs. Sam asked me if I wanted a T-shirt. ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I
want to feel it.’ … Well, see, I didn’t know. I wanted to feel it, experience
it, just like we talked about at the Actors Studio. And like a damn fool, I didn’t
wear a T-shirt.”
In
a short but impactful performance in The Getaway (1972),
Hopkins’ Frank Jackson gets his private parts blown off by his partner Rudy (Al
Lettieri) during another bank robbery. Rudy, in turn, is shot by Doc (Steve McQueen), who takes off with the stolen loot.
Peckinpah
gave Hopkins a more substantial role in The Killer Elite as
a weapons expert recruited by James Caan to stop an assassination.
Hopkins
added to his criminal mystique as a moonshiner alongside Burt Reynolds in White Lightning (1973)
and as Tex, a mysterious man who seals Billy Hayes’ (Brad Davis) fate, in Midnight
Express (1978).
William
Mauldin Hopkins was born on Feb. 2, 1938, in Greenville, South Carolina. His
father worked at a local mill while his mother stayed home with the children.
At age 39, his dad had a heart attack and died on the porch of his home in
front of his wife and son.
Hopkins
was sent to live with his grandparents when his mom remarried the following
year, then learned when he was 12 that he was adopted at nine months old. He
eventually met his birth mother and got to know his half-siblings.
Quite
the handful growing up, Hopkins said he used to steal money from family members
to treat his friends to the movies. He was headed to reform school after a
botched robbery when he enlisted in the U.S. Army just before his 17th
birthday.
“I
don’t know how my mother and grandmother put up with me,” Hopkins remembered.
“Later, I went back home and took them to see The Wild Bunch and
my second movie, [1969’s] The Bridge at Remagen. And that’s when
everybody who said I was gonna end up in prison said they always knew Billy was
going to make something of himself.”
After
the service, which included nine months in Korea, Hopkins returned to
Greenville and landed a role in a production of The Teahouse of the
August Moon in a local theater, then received a scholarship to
Kentucky’s Pioneer Playhouse. “I think there were 180 people trying out for
summer stock,” he said. “I didn’t even know what summer stock was.”
Hopkins’
Pioneer Playhouse experience led to an opportunity to perform in a play in New
York, and he was in an off-Broadway production of Bus Stop when
the producers asked him to change his name. He took his character’s first name,
and Bo Hopkins was born.
After
just a few months in the city and another stint back home, Hopkins decided to
try his luck in Hollywood and received a scholarship to an acting school at the
Desilu-Cahuenga Studios and then a spot as an observer at the L.A. outpost of
the Actors Studio.
With
Diane Davis as his agent, Hopkins made his onscreen debut in 1966 on an episode
of The Phyllis Diller Show. “After the Phyllis Diller thing, I
did a Gunsmoke, then The Andy Griffith Show,
playing Goober’s helper,” he said. “George Lindsey always said he was the one
who started my career.”
Other
early TV appearances came on The Virginian, The Wild
Wild West, Judd for the Defense and The Rat Patrol.
Hopkins’
time at Desilu also led to his breakthrough role. Wild Bunch actor
William Holden heard about his performance in a stage production of Picnic and
recommended him to screenwriter Roy N. Sickner, who convinced Peckinpah to give
Hopkins a shot as Crazy Lee.
Two
of Hopkins’ favorite outlaw gigs came in 1975 when he played Turner, a
high-strung, would-be Mafioso who liked to dress like a cowboy, in the
independent neo-noir film The Nickel Ride and as gangster Pretty
Boy Floyd in the ABC telefilm The Kansas City Massacre.
As
a go-to guy for lawmen, he portrayed sheriffs in A Small Town in
Texas (1976), Sweet Sixteen (1983), Mutant (1984), Trapper
County War (1989), The Bounty Hunter (1989), The
Final Alliance (1990), Fertilize the Blaspheming
Bombshell (1992), Texas Payback (1995) and A
Crack in the Floor (2001).
Hopkins’
other features included The Moonshine War (1970), Monte
Walsh (1970), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), Posse (1975), Tentacles (1977), The
Fifth Floor (1978), Big Bad John (1990), Radioland
Murders (1994) and U Turn (1997).
HOPKINS,
Bo (William
Mauldin Hopkins)
Born:
2/2/1942,
Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.A.
Died:
5/28/2022,
Van Nuys, California, U.S.A.
Bo
Hopkins’ westerns – actor:
Gunsmoke
(TV) – 1967 (Harper Haggen)
The
Virginian (TV) – 1967 (Will)
The
Wild Wild West (TV) – 1967 (Zack Garrison)
The
Guns of Will Sonnett (TV) -1968 (Ben Merceen, Wes Redford)
The
Wild Bunch – 1969 (Clarence ‘Crazy’ Lee)
Bonanza
(TV) – 1969 (Stretch Logan)
Macho
Callahan – 1970 (Yancy)
Monte
Walsh – 1970 (Jumpin’ Joe Joslin)
Cat
Ballou (TV) – 1971 (Clay)
The
Culpepper Cattle Company – 1972 (Dixie Brick)
Nichols
(TV) – 1972 (Kansas)
The
Man Who Loved Cat Dancing – 1973 (Billy Bowen)
Posse
– 1975 (Wesley)
The
Invasion of Johnson County (TV) – 1976 (George Dunning)
The
Busters (TV) – 1978 (Chad Kimbrough)
The
Last Ride of the Dalton Gang – 1979 (Billy Doolin)
Rodeo
Girl (TV) – 1980 (Will Garrett)
Louis
L’Amour Down the Long Hills (TV) 1986 (Jud)
Houston:
The Legend of Texas (TV) – 1986 (Colonel Sidney Sherman)
Big
Bad John – 1990 (Lester)
The
Ballad of Little Jo – 1993 (Frank Badger)
The
Legend of Wolf Mountain – 1994 (Ranger Steven Haynes)
Cheyenne
Warrior (TV) – 1994 (Jack Andrews)
Wyatt
Earp: Return to Tombstone (TV) – 1994 (Rattlesnake Reynolds)
Riders
in the Storm – 1995 (Billy Van Owen)
Shaughnessy
(TV) – 1996 (Rip Bartlett)
The
Newton Brothers – 1998 (K. P. Aldrich)
South
of Heaven West, of Hell – 2000 (Doc Angus Dunfries)
Cowboy
Up – 2001 (Ray Drupp)
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