Warren Mercer Oates (July 5, 1928 – April 3, 1982) was an American actor. Associated with the New Hollywood movement, he starred in numerous films of the 1970s that have achieved cult status. His early films included an uncredited role in Up Periscope (1959), with James Garner, Edmond O’Briien, Andra Martin, Alan Hale Jr., Edd Byrnes, and Saundra Edwards; and his first credited role in Yellowstone Kelly (1959), with Clint Walker, Byrnes, John Russell, Ray Danton, and Claude Akins. Both films were directed by Gordon Douglas.
Films in the early 1960s include Budd Boetticher’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), with Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White, Robert Lowery, and Dyan Cannon; Leslie Stevens’s Private Property! (1960), with Corey Allan and Kate Manx; Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962), with Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Mariette Hartley, Edgar Buchanan, James Drury, R.G. Armstrong, and L.Q. Jones; Burt Kennedy’s Mail Order Bride (1964), with Buddy Ebsen, Keir Dullea, and Lois Nettleton; an uncredited role in The Rounders (1965), with Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda, Sue Ane Langdon, Chill Wills, Edgar Buchanan, and Hope Holiday; and Major Dundee (1965), with Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, James Coburn, Michael Anderson Jr., Mario Adorf, Brock Peters, and Senta Berger.
Films in the mid to late 1960s include Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966), with Jack Nicholson, Millie Perkins, and Will Hutchins; Return of the Seven (1966), with Yul Brynner, Robert Fuller, Julián Mateos, Virgílio Teixeira, Akins, Elisa Montés, and Jordan Christopher; Welcome to Hard Times (1967), with Fonda, Janice Rule, Keenan Wynn, Janis Paige, John Anderson, Fay Spain, Edgar Buchanan, and Aldo Ray; Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, and Lee Grant; Gordon Flemyng’s The Split (1968), with Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Julie Harris, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Donald Sutherland, and Gene Hackman; Smith! (1969), with Ford, Nancy Olson, Dean Jagger, and Chief Dan George; Crooks and Coronets (1969), with Telly Savalas, Edith Evans Cesar Romero, and Harry H. Corbett; and The Wild Bunch (1969), with William Holden, Borgnine, Robert Ryan, O’Brien, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson, Emilio Fernández, Strother Martin, and Jones.
Films in the early 1970s include Barquero (1970), with Lee Van Cleef and Forest Tucker; Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s There Was a Crooked Man… (1970), with Kirk Douglas, Fonda, Hume Cronyn, Burgess Meredith, Arthur O’Connell, Martin Gabel, and Grant; Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), with James Taylor, Laurie Bird, and Dennis Wilson; The Hired Hand (1971), with Peter Fonda (who also directed) and Verna Bloom; Bud Yorkin’s The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), with Ryan O’Neal, Jacqueline Bisset, Charles Cioffi, Austin Pendleton, Ned Beatty, Michael Murphy and Jill Clayburgh; Don Taylor’s Tom Sawyer (1973), with Johnny Whitaker, Celeste Holm, Jeff East, and Jodie Foster; James Frawley’s Kid Blue (1973), with Dennis Hopper, Lee Purcell, Peter Boyle and Johnson; John Milius’s Dillinger (1973), with Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Richard Dreyfuss; and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973), Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, and Ramon Bieri.
More films in the early to mid 1970s include Philip Kaufman’s The White Dawn (1974), with Timothy Bottoms and Louis Gossett Jr.; Cockfighter (1974), with Richard B. Shull, Stanton, Ed Begley, Jr., Bird, Patricia Pearcy, and Perkins; Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), with Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernández, and Kris Kristofferson; an uncredited cameo in Frank Perry’s Rancho Deluxe (1975), with Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley, Clifton James, Stanton, Slim Pickens, and Charlene Dallas; Jack Starrett’s Race with the Devil (1975), with Fonda, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker; 92 in the Shade (1975), with Fonda, Margot Kidder, Stanton, Ashley, Meredith, and Joe Spinell; and Lee Frost’s Dixie Dynamite (1975), with Christopher George.
Films in the mid to late 1970s include Steve Carver’s Drum (1976), with Pam Grier, Ken Norton, Yaphet Kotto, John Colicos, Fiona Lewis, Paula Kelly, and Brenda Sykes; Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs (1977), with Sam Neill, Nevan Rowe, Ian Mune, and Ian Watkin; China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), with Fabio Testi and Jenny Agutter; William Friedkin’s The Brink’s Job (1978), with Peter Falk, Boyle, Allen Garfield, Gena Rowlands, and Paul Sorvino; and Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), with Dan Aykroyd, Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Toshirō Mifune, Robert Stack, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen, Eddie Deezen, Bobby Di Cicco, Dianne Kay, Pickens, Wendie Jo Sperber, Lionel Stander, and Mickey Rourke.
Films in the 1980s include Ivan Reitman’s Stripes (1981), with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, P.J. Soles, Sean Young, Candy, John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn, Judge Reinhold, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield, and Bill Paxton; Tony Richardson’s The Border (1982), with Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Valerie Perrine, Elpidia Carrillo, and Dirk Blocker; John Badham’s Blue Thunder (1983), with Roy Scheider, Daniel Stern, Candy Clark, and Malcolm McDowell; and Richard Fleischer’s Tough Enough (1983), with Dennis Quaid, Stan Shaw, Grier, Charlene Watkins, and Wilford Brimley – the latter 2 being posthumous releases.
TV movies and miniseries include Something for a Lonely Man (1968), with Dan Blocker, Susan Clark, John Dehner, and Don Stroud; The Reluctant Heroes (1971), with Ken Berry, Jim Hutton, Trini López, Don Marshall, Ralph Meeker, and Cameron Mitchell; True Grit: A Further Adventure (1978), with Lisa Pelikan and Lee Meriweather; And Baby Makes Six (1979), with Colleen Dewhurst and Timothy Hutton; My Old Man (1979), with Kristy McNichol, Eileen Brennan, and Michael Jeter; East of Eden (1981), with Bottoms, Jane Seymour, Bruce Boxleitner, Soon-tek Oh, Sam Bottoms, Hart Bochner, Karen Allen, Lloyd Bridges, Anne Baxter, Richard Mauser, and M. Emmett Walsh; and The Blue and the Gray (1982), with John Hammond, Stacy Keach, Bridges, Kathleen Beller, Bruce Abbott, Sterling Hayden, Robert Vaughn, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page, Paul Winfield, and Gregory Peck – the latter being a posthumous release.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen rereleased in theaters)
- Up Periscope (1959) – directed by Gordon Douglas – uncredited
- Yellowstone Kelly (1959) – directed by Gordon Douglas
- The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) – directed by Budd Boetticher
- Private Property! (1960) – directed by Leslie Stevens
- Ride the High Country (1962) – directed by Sam Peckinpah
- Hero’s Island (1962) – directed by Leslie Stevens
- Mail Order Bride (1964) – directed by Burt Kennedy
- The Rounders (1965) – directed by Burt Kennedy – uncredited
- Major Dundee (1965) – directed by Sam Peckinpah
- The Shooting (1966) – directed by Monte Hellman
- Return of the Seven (1966) – directed by Burt Kennedy
- Welcome to Hard Times (1967) – directed by Burt Kennedy
- In the Heat of the Night (1967)** – directed by Norman Jewison
- The Mystery of Edward Sims (1968) – directed by Seymour Robbie – miniseries
- The Split (1968) – directed by Gordon Flemyng
- Something for a Lonely Man (1968) – directed by Don Taylor – TV movie
- Smith! (1969) – directed by Michael O’Herlihy
- Crooks and Coronets (1969) – directed by Jim O’Connolly
- The Wild Bunch (1969) – directed by Sam Peckinpah
- The Movie Murderer (1970) – directed by Boris Sagal – TV movie
- Barquero (1970) – directed by Gordon Douglas
- There Was a Crooked Man… (1970) – directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) – directed by Monte Hellman
- The Hired Hand (1971) – directed by Peter Fonda
- The Reluctant Heroes (1971) – directed by Robert Day – TV movie
- Chandler (1971) – directed by Paul Magwood
- The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) – directed by Bud Yorkin
- Tom Sawyer (1973) – directed by Don Taylor
- Kid Blue (1973) – directed by James Frawley
- Dillinger (1973) – directed by John Milius
- Badlands (1973) – directed by Terrence Malick
- The White Dawn (1974) – directed by Philip Kaufman
- Cockfighter (1974) – directed by Monte Hellman
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) – directed by Sam Peckinpah
- Rancho Deluxe (1975) – directed by Frank Perry – uncredited cameo
- Race with the Devil (1975) – directed by Jack Starrett
- 92 in the Shade (1975) – directed by Thomas McGuane
- Dixie Dynamite (1976) – directed by Lee Frost
- Drum (1976) – directed by Steve Carver
- The African Queen (1977) – directed by Richard C. Sarafian – TV movie
- Prime Time (1977) – directed by Bradley R. Swirnoff
- Sleeping Dogs (1977) – directed by Roger Donaldson
- True Grit: A Further Adventure (1978) – directed by Richard T. Heffron – TV movie
- China 9, Liberty 37 (1978) – directed by Monte Hellman
- The Brink’s Job (1978) – directed by William Friedkin
- And Baby Makes Six (1979) – directed by Waris Hussein – TV movie
- My Old Man (1979) – directed by John Erman – TV movie
- 1941 (1979) – directed by Steven Spielberg
- Baby Come Home (1980) – directed by Waris Hussein – TV movie
- Stripes (1981) – directed by Ivan Reitman
- East of Eden (1981) – directed by Harvey Hart – miniseries
- The Border (1982) – directed by Tony Richardson
- The Blue and the Gray (1982) – directed by Andrew V. McLaglen – miniseries – posthumous release
- Blue Thunder (1983) – directed by John Badham – posthumous release
- Tough Enough (1983) – directed by Richard Fleischer – posthumous release
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