Who was Clu Gulager?

William Martin “Clu” Gulager, born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, was an American television and film actor and director. He died on August 6, 2022, at the age of 93.

Career

He rose to prominence on television, co-starring as William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid) in the 1960-1962 NBC television series The Tall Man and as Emmett Ryker in another NBC Western series, The Virginian.

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He went on to have a prominent career as a horror film actor, playing the lead in Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead (1985). He also appeared in the sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy’s Revenge (1985). In his 80s, he began acting in his son’s horror flicks—the Feasts films and Piranha DD—in 2005.

Gulager’s first big movie role was as a villain in Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964), opposite Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, followed by a supporting role in the racing film Winning (1969), opposite Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; in Peter Bogdanovich’s drama The Last Picture Show (1971); and opposite John Wayne in McQ (1974).

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Gulager appeared in many horror films during the 1980s, including The Initiation (1984) and the zombie comedy The Return of the Living Dead (1985). In 2005, he starred in the horror flick Feast and its installments. He also starred in Tangerine (2015), an independent film, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

Gulager directed the 1969 Cannes Film Festival short film A Day with the Boys, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film.

Family

Gulager was born on November 16, 1928, in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of John Delancy Gulager, who had worked as an actor before settling down to practise law in nearby Muskogee.

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According to one source, John Gulager is a cowboy entertainer. Martha Schrimsher Gulager, his paternal grandmother, was a sister of Mary Schrimsher, Will Rogers’ mother, making Gulager and Rogers’ first cousins once removed. He was Cherokee since he was a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

His Cherokee nickname was inspired by the clu-clu birds (also known as martins in English, like his middle name) that were breeding at the Gulager home at the time of his birth. Gulager served in the United States Marine Corps from 1946 until 1948. Gulager graduated from Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Texas, after entering Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

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He received a one-year scholarship to study overseas in Paris, where he worked with French actor and director Jean Louis Barrault. He returned to Baylor in 1952. He married fellow actor Miriam Byrd-Nethery on June 19, 1952. They had two children, John and Tom, and were married until she died in 2003. 

John Gulager directed his father in movies like Feast 1-3, Piranha 3DD, and Children of the Corn: Runaway.