Saturdays with the Stars: Sam Elliott

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we talked about Robert Redford, the blonde boy from Santa Monica who would not only be an unlikely figure in New Hollywood westerns, but also would become a major film director & the founder of the Sundance Film Festival.  This month, we're going to discuss another New Hollywood figure, one who actually costarred with Redford in the latter's most famous western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Unlike Redford though, and in fact unique to all of the actors we're going to look at this year, this month's star is a character actor, albeit one who did get very prominent roles in a number of films & TV shows, including westerns.  This month's star is Sam Elliott.

Elliott was born the son of a government worker & high school teacher, and grew up in Sacramento and then later Portland, Oregon.  Initially wanting to be a psychologist, he eventually got into stage acting, and after graduating from college, he went to Los Angeles (after the death of his disapproving father), and worked in construction while he started getting acting work, frequently in western movies & television programs.

Elliott's career is an interesting one to profile here.  He is undoubtedly a star of westerns, and when you bring him up, you'll think of him with a cowboy hat to go alongside that deep voice and distinctive mustache.  But Elliott's film work wasn't really celebrated until much later into his career.  He starred in a number of notable westerns, but they were for television like his Louis L'Amour adaptations with Tom Selleck in the late-1970's/early-1980's.  We don't usually count TV movies when we think about an actor's career for Saturdays with the Stars, and so while we'll discuss these movies, we're going to focus on his film career, including his brief foray into leading man status in "Poverty Row" style westerns/horror in the mid-1970's, as well as his move into mentor roles, including in one of the few hit 1990's westerns, the types of mentor roles that would eventually win him an Academy Award nomination.