Clu Gulager, the real-life cowboy from Oklahoma known for his turns on The Tall Man, The Virginian, The Last Picture Show and horror movies including The Return of the Living Dead, has died. He was 93

Clu Gulager, the real-life cowboy from Oklahoma known for his turns on The Tall Man, The Virginian, The Last Picture Show and horror movies including The Return of the Living Dead, has died. He was 93.

Gulager died Friday of natural causes at the Los Angeles home of his son John and daughter-in-law Diane, they told The Hollywood Reporter.

Gulager also portrayed the protégé of hitman Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) taken out by a mob boss (Ronald Reagan) in Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964), a race-car mechanic opposite Paul Newman in Winning (1969) and a detective working alongside John Wayne’s character in John Sturges’ McQ (1974).

More recently, he showed up on the big screen in such critical darlings as Tangerine (2015), Blue Jay (2016) and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

Gulager’s performance in The Killers convinced Peter Bogdanovich to cast him as Abilene, the caddish oil-field foreman who made love to Ellen Burstyn’s character and seduced Cybill Shepherd’s Jacy Farrow in a deserted pool hall, in The Last Picture Show (1971).

Part Cherokee, the playful Gulager burst on the scene in September 1960 when he starred as Billy the Kid opposite Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett in NBC’s The Tall Man. Two seasons later, the series was canceled in part because Congress objected to the notorious outlaw Billy “inaccurately” being portrayed as a hero to young viewers.

“But they left The Untouchables on, which was very violent,” Gulager noted in a 2015 interview. “I played a character on that called ‘Mad Dog’ Coll [in 1959] where I shot a horse in a horse race, killed a little boy in Brooklyn and cut off a bartender’s fingers. But they left that on because they thought that show was historically accurate.”

After guest-starring on two episodes of NBC’s The Virginian, Gulager arrived in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, for the start of the series’ third season in 1964 as Deputy Sheriff Emmett Ryker. He appeared with James Drury and Doug McClure on more than 50 episodes before departing in 1968.

In The Return of the Living Dead (1985), Gulager portrayed the head of a medical supply warehouse who battles the undead. It was a job he was hesitant to accept, he said. “I didn’t especially want to do it,” he recalled in 2017. “I thought I was kind of above that. And it turned out, if I’m remembered at all, that’s what I will be remembered for … I killed 18 zombies and then they came back and nuked me!”

Gulager appeared in another scary and noteworthy 1985 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Later, he played a shotgun-toting bartender in the horror film Feast (2005) and its two straight-to-video sequels, then worked in Piranha 3DD (2012). Those four films were directed by his son John.

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