A quintessential American character actor, Slim Pickens brought an authentic rodeo cowboy's drawl and swagger to Hollywood after years as a real-life bronco rider. He is immortalized as Major Kong, whooping astride a plummeting bomb, in Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' (1964). He filled countless Westerns with earthy comic menace and worked for directors from Kubrick to Mel Brooks. An American actor of unmistakable regional flavor, he died in 1983, remembered as one of the great Western character faces. Read more