Motion picture studios often spend $20 million plus for a single actor they hope can help their film become desirable and memorable. Frequently, despite the star power of the lead actors, it is a smaller scene with a lesser known, or even unknown actor, that defines the film for years. Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, Jr. is responsible for possibly the most famous of those situations.
The film Deliverance was one of the major hits in 1972. Filmed primarily in Rabun County in North Georgia, it featured a primary cast that was soon to be superstars, like Jon Voight, who had already received one Oscar nomination and the established TV Western star Burt Reynolds. The area was in the spotlight a couple of years earlier when Karl Wallenda walked across a tightrope 750 feet above an area gorge.
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The most memorable parts of the film, and the scenes whose lines are still quoted today, over a half-century after the film’s release, came courtesy of “Cowboy”, an actor in his first-ever film role.
With his character simply called “toothless man” in the credits, Coward’s character is brutal and menacing, with an evil look that foretells the uneasy scenario he is about to share with the audience. I was graciously invited to his home to talk about his life, career, and legacy. In real life, he is a kind, soft-spoken man who is nothing like the character he famously portrayed.
Cowboy had an unconventional route to the movies. In the early 1960s, he met R.B. Coburn, the founder of the Ghost Town resort, and was the first employee hired to build the park. Ghost Town was to be a western-themed attraction, with gunfights in the street, saloons, dance halls, and everything the western towns on the hugely popular TV series offered.
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When construction was wrapping up, Cowboy was playing around and pulled a hammer out of his belt like drawing a pistol. One of the talent scouts witnessed it and offered him a job as a gunfighter in the park’s shows. His character carried a sawed-off shotgun in his holster instead of a pistol. He was featured in multiple gunfights daily, usually playing the bad guy. The actors did their own stunt work, and an accident in one of the shows cost him two front teeth, which would later help him perfectly fit his Deliverance character.
Two huge stars, Dan Blocker and Burt Reynolds, had a hand in Cowboy’s casting in the film. Many western stars of the era made publicity appearances at Ghost Town. Dan Blocker, the star of the hit show Bonanza, had appeared there in 1963 and met Cowboy. His appearance there was a hit, drawing a crowd of 16,000 fans.
In the 1960s, Burt Reynolds rose to fame in Gunsmoke, playing Quint Asper in fifty episodes over three seasons. Appearing at Ghost Town for several weeks around 1970, Reynolds met and became friends with Cowboy. This meeting started a friendship that would last the remainder of Burt’s life.
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When the film was being cast, over seventy-five actors had auditioned for one specific role, but the producers did not feel any of them were suitable for the part. Dan Blocker mentioned to the producers that someone he had met at Ghost Town, Cowboy, would be perfect for the role. No one knew how to reach the Ghost Town gunfighter, and the staff even resorted to calling operators in small towns, searching for the elusive Cowboy. A note was posted in the production trailer asking anyone for information about how to locate him. When Reynolds walked into the trailer and saw the message, he said, “Why don’t I just call him for you?”
Reynolds explained to the director that he thought Cowboy would be perfect for the role but that he couldn’t read or write other than his name. Reynolds coached Cowboy for his audition, telling him they would ask him to act hurt and mad, and they would try and see his emotional range by continuously asking, “Is that as mad as you can get?” After being asked a few times, Cowboy grabbed the shirt collar of director John Boorman and slapped him. Boorman hit the wall, and Cowboy got the role.
Cowboy went straight from his successful audition on Saturday evening to filming on location on Monday morning. Since Cowboy didn’t read or write, his lines were recorded on a portable tape recorder. Cowboy recalls filling up a bathtub with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, sitting down, drinking beer, and listening to his lines repeatedly until he memorized them.
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The first day of filming was for the famous hillbilly scenes. The day ended without getting all of the shots the director wanted. When the crew began to continue the scene the following day, the actors wrestled around to get dirty and sweaty like they had been the previous evening. As he and actor Bill McKinney were rolling around and preparing for the famous scene with Ned Beatty and Jon Voight, Cowboy suggested the lines “Squeal like a pig. Make him squeal like Pa’s old pig.”
Not only did it get used in the film, but it also became one of the most famous movie lines in history. Many have tried to take credit for the line, but years later, Reynolds, on the Conan O’Brien Show, cleared up the mystery, saying, “So we started with that scene…the scene where he says ‘you got a mighty pretty mouth”…Those two guys…I told Cowboy, you can say whatever you want; if they don’t like it, they’ll cut it out. Well, he just started ad-libbing up a storm, and they kept every word because it was gold.”
An emergency arose during the month and a half that Coward was involved in filming. Cowboy’s wife had gone into labor with their youngest son and had complications. The hospital called the production office and told them Cowboy needed to get to the hospital. Cowboy had taken the bus to Clayton for his audition, so he didn’t have a car there. The producers had a staff member take him to the motor pool, but no vehicles were available. They went to the local Chevrolet dealer, where Cowboy got the keys to a new Chevy wagon to head to his wife’s side. Sometime later, he received the vehicle’s title in the mail. The production had given him the car. Coward hung on to the wagon for years afterward.
Reynolds would occasionally reveal his odd sense of humor during filming. Cowboy recalls being on location one day when a helicopter hovered overhead, then lowered a blue box down on a cable. It turned out to be a cooler filled with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Reynolds had told the producers that Cowboy, who was actually only an occasional drinker, would go crazy if he didn’t have beer every day, so they delivered it.
When the stuntman scheduled to descend from the cliff tried to hold out for more money, Cowboy said he would do it for the $500 the stuntman initially agreed to. When you see the man go off the cliff, you are seeing Cowboy in a harness dropping around seven hundred feet into the river. The water in the river was muddy on the day of the shot, so the scene in the movie where he hits the water was shot in a pool.
Coward attended the film’s Atlanta premiere but returned to Ghost Town, then more conventional employment after Deliverance. He appeared in the 2007 film Ghost Town and later the TV series Hillbilly Blood, as well as an episode of Moonshiners. For years, he was a popular draw at conventions and fan shows. He often gets phone calls from around the world asking him to quote one of his famous lines.
Reynolds and Cowboy remained friends for the remainder of Burt’s life. Reynolds once said on a talk show that he only had three real friends in his acting career, and Cowboy was one of them. Coward recalls a visit from Burt when he and his family lived in Hayesville, N.C., that started with a phone call from Reynolds, asking Cowboy to pick him up at the local airport where he had just landed his plane. Cowboy replied, “Burt, there ain’t been an airport there in ten years.” Burt had landed in a cow pasture where the airport once was.
Cowboy shared two sad memories of Burt. One was the emotional call from the famous actor when Cowboy’s son died, and the second was seeing Burt about two weeks before he passed away. Reynolds always said that people never stopped asking him about the line, “He got a real purty mouth, ain’t he?”
Cowboy, 84, had four children. Sadly, two have passed. He and his wife, Bertha, live humbly in a small North Carolina town. His constant companion is his pet squirrel, also named Cowboy. He doesn’t travel as he once did, but visiting his local grocery store always results in several fans asking for photos and autographs.
He stays in touch with Billy Redden, the young man who appeared to play the banjo in the film. A classmate of Billy’s, Mike Addis, was situated behind Billy, off camera, and you see Mike’s hand fretting the banjo.
Cowboy also remained friends with fellow villain McKinney, who died of cancer in 2011. Director Boorman called the performances by McKinney and Coward “terrifying,” saying that “Villains must threaten the audience, and these two guys did all of that and more.” He continued, “You must be awfully good to be convincingly bad,” In 2005, Maxim Magazine named Coward and McKinney “The top All-Time Movie Villains.”
Initially, the people of the North Georgia area where Deliverance was filmed were offended as the film portrayed them in a most unflattering manner. The film was the catalyst for kicking off Georgia’s film commission. The film did boost tourism to the area. Deliverance was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1972 but lost to The Godfather.
Cowboy also spoke two of the film’s legendary lines. “You gonna do some praying for me, boy, and you better pray good.” And “He got a real purty mouth, ain’t he?” The shotgun he carried in the film is on display at Warner Brothers in LA.
