Warren Oates: A Wild Life (Screen Classics) (Hardcover)

~ Susan A. Compo (Author)
Key Phrases: chicken one day, Warren Oates, Los Angeles, Sam Peckinpah (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

""This book is not only useful but valuable; it pulls together a big piece of a compelling and important story. Susan Compo caught some of the contradictions that make Oates so resonant as a screen presence and now almost an American archtype."--Tom Marksbury, writer of the documentary Warren Oates: Across the Border" -- Tom Marksbury

""Susan Compo has written a garrulous and superbly readable biography of a genuine working actor--in the most honorable meaning of the term--and for that reason alone, her book will inspire anyone who believes that the love of the craft is about acting, not stardom.--Nat Segaloff, author of Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin" -- Nat Segaloff

""Warren Oates: A Wild Life tells an evocative story of a true maverick set against the background of one of the richest and most fascinating periods in American cinematic history. Susan compo's passion for her subject is evident on every page. She displays a rare flair for the telling detail."--Eddi Fiegel, author of John Barry: A Sixties Theme" -- Eddi Fiegel

""A finely drawn and deeply researched portrait of Warren Oates, set against the rich cultural and social landscape of a long-gone American and filled with a fascinating supporting cast that includes Robert Culp, Monte Hellman, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, and Sam Peckinpah. In writing this book, Susan Compo has done for the actor what he did for so many of life's misunderstood characters--give him depth, dignity, and importance. To paraphrase a line from Ride the High Country, one of the actor's first films, Compo can enter her house justified."--Deanne Stillman, author of Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West" -- Deanne Stillman

""An informative, welcome portrait of an underappreciated American icon."" -- Kirkus Reviews

""Compo seamlessly melds together quotations, analysis, and description. She discusses Oates's private and professional life, and her details on the creation of individual movies and involved personalities will appeal both to fans of the actor and to those interested in the cinema of the era."" -- Jim Collins, Library Journal

""A highly readable blow-by-blow of the actor's rocky and too-short life....The parts of Warren Oates' life are greater than its sum; he was not a visionary but a chameleon always searching for a new skin to inhabit. Behind the façade, Compo finds an ordinary human...."" -- www.latimes.com, Los Angeles Times

""Susan Compo skillfully captures the story of Oates' eventful life, indulgent lifestyle, and influential career."" -- Turner Classic Movies

""Susan Compo skillfully captures the story of Oates' eventful life, indulgent lifestyle, and influential career."" -- Turner Classic Movies

""Enormously entertaining."" -- WFMU

""The author serves up a lively and studious look at this extraordinary man, chronicling his early life in Kentucky as well has his later achievements and misadventures."" -- Tucson Citizen

""Compo builds a convincing case that Oates was a talented rebel often haunted by long periods of hard drinking, drug abuse and infidelities."" -- Tucson Citizen

""A vivid portrait of a talented actor with a raucous and self-destructive lifestyle that shortened his career and hindered his further success."" -- Armchair Interviews

""This is the first major biography of Oates, and Compo has done her homework, interviewing those who knew him best, including ex-wives, children, friends and costars."" -- Wallace Stroby, New Jersey Star-Ledger

""Extremely well-researched and well-written biography about a man who pursued happiness, hipness, and Hollywood as if he were in a fun-filled fever dream."" -- Robert Nott, Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo

""A Wild Life compresses a life's trajectory with a balance of tidiness and detours into some terrific anecdotes."" -- Vue Weekly

""An unusual and valuable book."" -- RINF

""Emphasizes Welles's artistic and political radicalism, which has been downplayed by numerous biographers."" -- RINF

""A Wild Life offers up ample anecdotes about the actor's antics."" -- Kelly Reichardt, Film Comment

""While Compo's recounting of these innumerable yarns is at times hard to follow, fans will find the effort worth their while."" -- Kelly Reichardt, Film Comment

""Susan Compo has done the necessary research and she writes quite well."" -- JakartaGlobe

Product Description

Though he never reached the lead actor status he labored so relentlessly to achieve, Warren Oates (1928--1982) is one of the most memorable and skilled character actors of the 1970s. With his rugged looks and measured demeanor, Oates crafted complex characters who were at once brazen and thoughtful, wild and subdued. Friends remember the hard-living, hard-drinking actor as kind and caring, but also sometimes as mean as a blue-eyed devil. Married four times, partial to road trips in his RV affectionately known as the "Roach Coach," and famous for performances for directors ranging from Sam Peckinpah to Steven Spielberg, Warren Oates remained a Hollywood outsider perfectly suited to the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Born in the small town of Depoy in rural western Kentucky and reared in Louisville, Oates began his career in the late 1950s with bit parts in television westerns. Though hardly lucrative work, it was during this time Oates met renegade director Sam Peckinpah, establishing the creative relationship and destructive friendship that produced some of Oates's most unforgettable roles in Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), and The Wild Bunch (1969), as well as a leading part in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Though Oates maintained a close association with Peckinpah, he had a penchant for working with a variety of visionary directors who understood his approach and were eager to enlist the subtle talents of the consummate character actor. With supporting roles in In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Hired Hand (1971), Badlands (1973), 1941 (1979), and Stripes (1981), Oates delivered solid performances for filmmakers as diverse and talented as Norman Jewison, Peter Fonda, Terrence Malick, Steven Spielberg, and Ivan Reitman. Oates's offscreen personality was just as complex as his on-screen persona. Notorious for being a nightlife reveler, he was as sensitive and introspective as he was outgoing and prone to periods of exuberant, and at times illegal, excess. Though he never became a marquee name, Warren Oates continues to influence actors like Billy Bob Thornton and Benicio Del Toro, as well as directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater, all of whom have cited Oates as a major inspiration. In Warren Oates: A Wild Life, author Susan Compo skillfully captures the story of Oates's eventful life, indulgent lifestyle, and influential career.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 536 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky; 1 edition (March 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813125367
• ISBN-13: 978-0813125367
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #83,553 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Never Had the Pleasure to Meet Warren Oates..., April 22, 2009

By	Richard Masloski (New Windsor, New York USA) - See all my reviews

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....until now! And what a joy and thrill it was to "meet" Mr. Oates - if only in the pages of this moving book. I have known him as an actor through his work; now I feel I know him as a man because of Susan Compo's labor of love. In a world overflowing with books about major stars, it is pure joy to learn about the life and times of an actor whose name is and was never on everyone's lips. But what an actor! "Dillinger" may have been a bad movie, but Oates was perfect in the part. (I can hardly imagine Johnny Depp being one-tenth as good in the role of Public Enemy Number One in the upcoming "Public Enemies" despite Depp's incredible talents.) And "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" - love it or hate it or be indifferent to it - Oates' truly compelling acting at the heart of it cannot be denied. And "The Wild Bunch" would not have been near as wild without the talents of Mr. Oates bringing Lyle Gorch to such vivid, violent life: what other actor could man the machine gun in the film's climactic battle with such maniacal merriment as Warren Oates? I could go on and on - but the book tells it all, in depth and detail.

Ms. Compo has definitely done her homework. Despite a few clumsy moments and doors that are opened for no apparent reason (such as her up-in-the-air description of the death of William Holden), the book is replete with trenchant commentary and a wonderfully choice offering of various quotes from those who knew Warren Oates best: friends, family, lovers, fellow actors, directors. If you have the slightest interest in an actor's life - and this one's in particular - get this book and read it and then go back to the man's work and enjoy anew. Warren Oates gave us much - and Ms. Compo's is a book "justified."

One point, however, I have always been curious about and it is, unfortunately, not addressed in this book. Warren Oates' starred in an episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "The Seventh is Made Up of Phantoms." Three modern-era soldiers are transported to the time of Custer's Last Stand. The end sequence - where the soldiers join the battle - is so similar to the Wild Bunch's readying for their own march to massacre that I have often wondered if Peckinpah drew inspiration from Warren Oates via the closing moments of the TZ episode. The similarities between the two scenes are extraordinary and it is hard to believe that Rod Serling's ending did not influence the Peckinpah film. The men approach each conflict side-by-side, they lock and load their weapons in a similar fashion and Pike Bishop's "Let's go" sounds like an echo of Sgt. Conner's "Let's do it!" as they enter the fray. The actor playing the Sgt. even resembles William Holden! Anyway - just a thought. One more thought: thank you again, Ms. Compo, for writing your thoroughly enjoyable biography of a great man and actor.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Believed its accuracy until the end, July 8, 2009

By	Karla Bushway (South Strafford, VT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Since I'm a relative newb to Oates' life (I've just seen a small handful of his movies and several 50s/60s TV episodes & rate as a shallow fangirl), the book seemed pretty impressive and solid (if a bit unimaginative in its prose) until it reached the very late point in his career with the miniseries "The Blue & the Gray." As luck would have it, I have seen that great Civil War epic at least a dozen times and the errors for that movie alone made me question mightily everything that Compo had previously researched about Oates' career. Since she erroneously called John Hammond's character John GENTRY, when a simple IMDB search shows the correct GEYSER, well, that's pretty suspect research. She claims that Oates plays a dual role as "Preacher/Major Welles." (Oddly enough, it seems she lifted that from IMDB's cast list.) He is only one character, a preacher named Welles who is a major in the Confederate Army. Had she watched the series, she would have known that. Also, she indicates that the series begins with the Siege of Vicksburg & slaughter of a horse by the starved citizens. Well, Episode 2 does, not Episode 1. I assumed that anyone undertaking the first full-fledged biography of a performer would watch everything they had acted in if it was available (and TB&TG is). That she obviously didn't is inexcusable.

I hope Compo writes another biography, with more applied research, because her even-handed approach is quite a welcome change from the tendency of some biographers to either pump up their subject at the expense of the others around him/her, or attack their subject with unreasonable ferocity (Scott Eyman exhibited the former in his book on Ernst Lubitsch, and Marion Meade is rightly notorious for her hatchet job on Buster Keaton). So balancing out the pros and cons, this book ends up being just about average. A shame it couldn't have been better, because Oates deserved it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only human being in pictures, October 6, 2009

By	Michael Siegel "eldoradofilm2" (Sindelfingen) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Loved the book.
It was really about time someone took care of everybody's favorite actor.
Thanks so much Susan Compo!
Although I'm into film history for 30 years now, so far I didn't really learn
too much about him besides the stories around him, Fonda, Hellman & Peckinpah.
It was great to finally get a complete picture (as complete as a book can deliver
of course).
A lot of books on film talent I push myself to read because I want and
need to know... This one was a pleasure to read.
Thanks for the effort !!