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Arthur Lee Hunnicutt (1910–1979)
Personifying the rustic but savvy characterizations of his home state, Arthur Hunnicutt became one of the most sought-after character actors in Hollywood, being nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in 1952’s The Big Sky.
Arthur Hunnicutt was born on February 17, 1910, in Gravelly (Yell County) and attended school in the Yell County area. He attended Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway (Faulkner County), now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). The Depression forced him to drop out of college when he ran out of funds. Even so, Hunnicutt was already perfecting the ability to project his Arkansas drawl and persona into a character he played in many plays and movies. He began his motion picture career in 1942, playing in B-westerns, most notably as “Arkansas” in the Charles Starrett Columbia western series of the early 1940s.
Jockeying between New York and Hollywood, Hunnicutt continued to perfect his character, adding a permanent beard and grizzled look to his portrayals; he got larger and larger roles and eventually graduated to higher quality movies, such as Lust For Gold (1949), Broken Arrow (1950), Stars in My Crown (1950), and The Red Badge of Courage (1951). The Big Sky (1952), directed by Howard Hawks, resulted in Hunnicutt’s Academy Award nomination for his role as Uncle Zeb, who is freed from prison by Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin) for a long voyage up the Missouri River. Uncle Zeb is a salt-of-the-earth teller of tall tales; he once bragged of sewing back on a man’s ear which had been torn off by a bear, saying, “Yep…but I sewed it on backwards, and he hated me until the day he died on account of every time he heard a rattlesnake, he’d turn the wrong way and step right into it.”
From that point, Hunnicutt was in constant demand. He played Davy Crockett in The Last Command (1955), an elderly Butch Cassidy in Cat Ballou (1965), and sidekick to John Wayne in El Dorado (1966). Hunnicutt also played television roles, such as the patriarch of a feuding mountain family on The Andy Griffith Show. He had other memorable roles on a variety of television shows, including Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Bonanza, and Perry Mason.
Hunnicutt died on September 26, 1979, and was survived by his wife of many years, Pauline Lile Hunnicutt, who returned to Arkansas after his death. He is buried in Coop Prairie Cemetery in Mansfield (Sebastian and Scott counties).
For additional information:
“Arthur Hunnicutt.” Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0402277/?ref_=tt_cl_t5 (accessed September 26, 2022).
Hames Ware
Little Rock, Arkansas
Many children in the Northridge, California, neighborhood where Arthur lived took piano lessons from his wife, Pauline. Some, like me and my cousins, were remarkably apathetic piano students who only persevered because after each lesson, we got to “play” with Arthur. I can tell you that he was the same man on screen and off. My favorite memory is of him teaching me (at the ripe old age of eight) to crack his bullwhip. To this day, I’m not sure if I really cracked it, but I am sure that I was convinced I had. I felt pretty lucky until years later I learned that Arthur had my cousin hold a green branch in his mouth while he snapped it out with that same bullwhip; I’m still jealous about that. Arthur was a wonderful man; he loved kids and he put a lot of fun in our rather dull suburban lives.