Western actor Ben Johnson, who appeared in more than 300 movies and won a best supporting Oscar for "The Last Picture Show," was one of America's favorite old-time movie cowboys. But unlike most of his peers on the screen, Johnson was a cowboy before he was an actor.
Johnson died Monday in Mesa, Ariz., of an apparent heart attack. He was 77.In 1939, he was making $40 a month as a ranch hand in his native Oklahoma when Howard Hughes hired him to take a load of horses to Hollywood. Johnson was entranced by the $175-per-week salary and decided to stick around.
His first movie chores were wrangling horses, doing stunts and being a double for John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart and other stars.
"Mostly I had to ride the horse, jump on the horse or fall off the horse," Johnson said of his start during the heyday of Hollywood westerns.
One fateful day, he was sitting on his horse when a stunt went awry in a John Ford picture. A wagon turned over and was careening out of control, pulled by horses. Johnson raced out, grabbed the horses and stopped them. Ford thanked him by offering him a part in an upcoming film.
The director cast him as a cavalry sergeant in two films and later gave him the star role in "The Wagonmaster."
Other big roles followed, including "Shane," "Mighty Joe Young," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "Rio Grande." The last two were for Ford, whom Johnson called "one of the great authorities on the West."
"Howard Hughes put me in the business, but John Ford was my education," he once said.
In 1971, Johnson won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as theater owner Sam the Lion in "The Last Picture Show."
"That changed my whole life," he told the Houston Chronicle last year. "Everybody thought I knew something after I won that old Oscar. All of them wanted to give me a new job and more money."
He originally turned the "Picture Show" role down, because the script contained too many curse words.
"First script they sent me, about every other word I had to say was a four-letter word," Johnson said. "So I turned it down. One morning about daylight, the phone rang, and it was John Ford, and he asked me, `Ben, would you do me a favor?' I said, `Yes, sir.' I wasn't smart enough to ask him what it was. He said, `I want you to do (director Peter) Bogdanovich's picture.' I called Bogdanovich and told him if he would let me take the script and rewrite my part and take the dirty words out, I'd do it. So I did."
Johnson also appeared in "Dillinger," "The Sugarland Express," "Bite the Bullet," "Breakheart Pass," "The Town That Dreaded Sundown," "Swarm," "Tex," "Red Dawn," "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys," "Radio Flyer," "Angels in the Outfield" and "Outlaws."
Johnson took a sabbatical from films once. In 1953, he quit the business to return to rodeo, where he won a world roping championship.