Muhlenberg County Kentucky
Obituaries: O
Warren Oates, 1982
Actor Warren Oates dies; was native of Kentucky
Los Angeles - Warren Oates, who played a boozing, brawling bad guy in scores of television and film roles, has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 52.
Oates, whose most recent appearance was in The Border with Jack Nicholson, died Saturday afternoon after attempts to revive him failed, said Phillip Shwartzberg of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office.
Oates was at his Hollywood Hills home with his wife, Judith, when the attack occurred. His wife told authorities he had complained recently of chest pains and breathing difficulties.
Oates' first role was in the television series Have Gun, Will Travel. Other major appearances included a slovenly police officer who was a Peeping Tom in the 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night.
He was in The Wild Bunch in 1969, Two Lane Blacktop and The Hired Hand in 1971, Badlands in 1973 and The Border this year.
He often was cast as the villain, rather than the lead, but that didn't bother him, he once said.
“I'm not angry not being a leading man,” he told an interviewer. “Whatever they give me to do, I can do…
“When I came out here from New York, I played Westerns because that's what was going on. There were 40 series, and I went from one to the other…I started out playing the third bad guy on a horse and worked my way up to No. 1 bad guy,” he said.
Oates said his evil characters retained separate identities.
“Even when I did the heavies I stayed away from stereotypes,” he said in a 1980 interview.
Oates was a rodeo rider in the television series Stoney Burke, made in the early 1960s. In 1980, he appeared with Kristy McNichol and Eileen Brennan in the television movie My Old Man.
He made several television pilots, including True Grit and The African Queen, in which he starred with Mariette Hartley. Neither sold, but a movie pilot, And Baby Makes Six, won high ratings.
Oates was born in a poor coal mining area in Depoy, Ky. (Muhlenberg County) and moved with his family to Louisville whenn he was 13. Five years later, he joined the Marines to “stay out of jail” and served there as an airplane mechanic for two years.
He attended the University of Louisville, where he enrolled in a drama class.
“They put me in a play and it opened a new world for me,” he said. “After that, I didn't care about much else.”
Later he went to New York City to study acting and landed roles in The Kraft Theater, Studio One and the Philco Playhouse while staying financially afloat with jobs as a dishwasher, short-order cook and hat check boy at the “21” club. He moved to Hollywood in the 1950s.
Oates had some personal problems along the way. A bout with liquor continued until an episode of hepatitis ended his drinking.
He and his first wife, Terry Farmer, were divorced in 1969.
No services have been set.
- Source: Lexington Leader [Lexington, KY], 5 Apr 1982.
Updated April 5, 2024.