Richard Jaeckel

 Richard Jaeckel, born R. Hanley Jaeckel (October 10, 1926 – June 14, 1997)

Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor with his role in the 1971 adaptation of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. A casting director auditioned him for a role in the 1943 film Guadalcanal Diary; Jaeckel won the role and settled into a lengthy career in supporting parts. He served in the United States Merchant Marine from 1944 to 1949, then starred in two of the most remembered war films of 1949: Battleground and Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. One of Jaeckel's shortest film roles was in The Gunfighter, in which his character is killed by Gregory Peck's character in the opening scene. He played the role of Turk, the roomer's boyfriend, in the Academy Award-winning 1952 film Come Back, Little Sheba, with Shirley Booth, Burt Lancaster, and Terry Moore.

In 1960, he appeared as Angus Pierce in the western, Flaming Star, starring Elvis Presley. He played Lee Marvin's able second-in-command, Sgt. Bowren, in the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen for director Robert Aldrich, and reprised the role in the 1985 sequel, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission. Jaeckel appeared in several other Aldrich films, including Big Leaguer (1953), Attack (1956), Ulzana's Raid (1972), and Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977). He guest-starred in many television programs. He was cast as a boxer in a 1954 episode of Reed Hadley's CBS legal drama, The Public Defender. Also in 1954, Jaeckel portrayed Billy the Kid in an episode of the syndicated western anthology series, Stories of the Century, with Jim Davis as the fictitious Southwest Railroad detective Matt Clark. Seven years later, Jaeckel played "Denver" in "The Grudge Fight" episode of the NBC western series The Tall Man.

On May 29, 1947, Jaeckel married Antoinette Helen Marches in Tijuana, Mexico. They had two sons, Barry and Richard. Jaeckel died at the age of 70 in 1997 as a result of cancer, at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.