Wilford Brimley: Noted Character Actor, Real Cowboy, and a Man of Few Words but Many Accomplishments

The three of us sat talking over breakfast in the coffee shop at Binion's Horseshoe. It was a stop-and-go conversation as we not so artfully dodged all the folks who stopped by to say hello to my two cowboy companions. After our between-bites interview, the two Western men hastily retreated to take their seats for the second day of the championship event at the World Series of Poker. As I began packing up my tape recorder, an out-of-towner stopped me and asked, "Pardon me, ma'am, but was that Wilford Brimley you were talking with?" After I verified his identification, the man replied, "I thought so, but what's he doing in Las Vegas?" When I told him that the famous character actor and TV pitchman was playing in the biggest poker tournament in the world, the gent thanked me and headed for the nearest slot machine, making no mention of my other breakfast companion, Amarillo Slim Preston.

Upstaging Preston isn't an everyday occurrence. Brimley then went on to outlast him in the "big one," too. "It's very rare that the lambs slaughter the butcher, but they did this time," Slim jested when told of his friend's feat of endurance. Of course, the modest Brimley makes light of his poker prowess: "What I know about poker, you can fit into a thimble with room left over, but I'm learning." Apparently, he is as quick a study at poker as he has been in his acting career. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Brimley moved to California when he was a child. When the Korean War began, he quit high school to enlist in the Marine Corps, never returning to the halls of academe. Upon his return from service in the Aleutian Islands, Brimley began doing movie and television stunt work involving horses, and earned a Screen Actors Guild card. He was one of the first members of the Los Angeles Actors Theater, where he acquired his first formal training as an actor, and later landed a "semiregular" part on The Waltons, plus character roles on other programs. But apparently deciding that he was more suited to life in the country, he quit acting and moved to Utah.

Years later in 1977, Brimley was passing through Los Angeles while transporting some horses from Denver when he stopped in to visit some old friends. Quite by chance, he was asked to audition for a part in The China Syndrome, and landed the role of Ted Spindler, the plant foreman. According to the Internet site Pax Stars, that role was pivotal to Brimley's late-developing acting career because it led to other movie roles, including The Electric Horseman, Brubaker, and Borderline. He also has appeared in Tender Mercies, The Natural, and Cocoon. One of his most memorable roles was in the NBC television series Our House, in which he portrayed Gus Witherspoon, a lovable 60-something guy who believed that he had earned the right, as Pax Stars quoted Brimley, "to call 'em as I sees 'em. It was a chance to communicate about life on its own terms." During my interview with him, I came to understand the depth of meaning that "calling 'em as you see 'em" has for the unpretentious and candid Brimley, a straight shooter who advocates and lives the values of a simpler way of life that's free from the fetters of conventionality and overregulation.

Wilford Brimley: I live on a ranch in Utah for now, but I'm gonna move. I've got another ranch to move to, but its location is a secret. When I get there, I'm gonna plow the road in behind me.

Dana Smith: I take it that you enjoy privacy?

WB: I do, or at least I think I do. I ain't had any for so long.

DS: Not long after you started acting, you left it for several years. Why was that?

WB: Everybody that's an actor leaves it for a while 'cause they ain't got a job.

DS: But then you got back into it somehow.

WB: Sure, somebody hired me.

DS: Do you have a publicist or an agent?

WB: No.

DS: A cell phone, or a computer, maybe?

WB: Yes, I have a cell phone, but I don't have a computer. I think computers are the worst thing that's ever happened to our society. Seems to me like things worked just as well when all we used was a pencil. You could get your bank balance and you could get an airplane ticket or whatever you needed without anybody telling you, "The computer's down."

DS: You were here at the Series two years ago when Noel Furlong won it. Was that the first time you'd ever played it?

WB: Yes, it was.

DS: Did Slim buy you in? Just joking, Wilford.

WB: Nope, vice versa (laughing).

DS: Why are you here playing this thing?

WB: It's very exciting, it's a real-life drama. And the folks who own this hotel and casino are dear friends of mine. As far as I'm concerned, this is maybe the last old gamblin' joint in this town.

DS: By "old," you mean traditional?

WB: Yeah. They used to say that no matter how much you wanted to bet, they'd save you right here at the Horseshoe. The place was built on the premise that people want to gamble, and they may as well do it here. They look after their clientele, and, hell, they treat me like I'm one of their family.

DS: You look like you could've been Benny Binion's brother, a real Westerner and a genuine cowboy.

WB: Well, we all are what we are, I guess you might say by an accident of birth. I'm very proud of my heritage. I hang on to my lifestyle with my fingernails. And no matter what the government's trying to do to kill us off, I'm gonna stay the way I am. Slim and I were just talking about how they're trying to turn wolves back on us. If any young people are listening, it ain't gonna take us long to get rid of them this time.

DS: What do you mean by "they're turning the wolves back on us"?

Amarillo Slim Preston: They're turning wolves back into the wild again.

DS: You mean that wolves are not a protected animal any longer?

WB: That's their way of protecting them.

ASP: We can't use them.

WB: And we don't need them.

DS: Is it the environmentalists or the wolves that you don't need?

ASP: Neither one.

WB: You see this man right here (referring to Preston)? I maintain that if there is such a thing as a true and honest environmentalist, it's people like Slim and hopefully me, who have been caretakers of the land all our lives, along with the generations before us. And hopefully, generations after us will continue to protect, preserve, and look after this wonderful land. I resent the fact that people in places like Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco believe that they should be able to tell us how to live our lives, operate our businesses, and what to do with the land that we love and cherish.

DS: When you talk about your heritage with the land, what do you mean?

WB: My grandfather migrated from Wales when he was a 10-year-old kid and walked from Omaha to the Salt Lake valley draggin' a hand cart. And some of us have been there ever since, looking after some portion of the Rocky Mountain West. I live within 100 miles of the land that he and my other ancestors lived on.

DS: Are you married? Children?

WB: I'm a widower with three sons and seven grandchildren. One of my sons is my partner on the ranch.

DS: Do you run a working ranch?

WB: No. I raise horses, but I raise them on land that now couldn't support Calumet Farms. They've taken the little piece of ground that we have and overtaxed it and overburdened us with city rules and laws that make it nigh impossible. We're still there, but we're selling out and going somewhere else.

DS: To a secret place. Do you raise the same kind of horses that Slim raises?

WB: I raise quarter horses. Mine are mostly thoroughbred cross horses, a little bigger horses than some people like. I sell them or use them on the ranch. A lot of them go to the rodeo arena and some of them go to racetracks.

DS: Have you ever competed in rodeos?

WB: Yeah, I still do. I rope steers in team roping events. There's a header and a heeler on a roping team, and I'm the heeler.

DS: After the header ropes the steer around its neck, the heeler ropes its hind legs, right?

WB: Yep, on the last rope I get the end with the dung on it.

DS: I learned some things about roping from working with Byron "Cowboy" Wolford on his book, Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers. Did you ever rope with him back in the '50s when he was on the rodeo circuit?

WB: Nope, I didn't rope with Byron, but I know him. We have a lot of mutual friends, cowboys who were contemporaries of ours. In the early days, I roped calves. I was a wanna-be – I couldn't beat nobody if they let me bring my own calves, but I sure tried hard.

DS: Oh, come on now – I know that you've won a buckle.

WB: Yes, I won a silver-tooled buckle in the team roping event at the Walt Garrison All-Star Rodeo in Mesquite, Texas, in 1996 with my partner, Chris Lybbert. Chris won the "All-Around Cowboy" title in 1982, and Neal and Don Gay put on the rodeo.

DS: Do you like roping because it's competitive, or what?

WB: I like everything about it. I love watching a good horse do what he's bred to do – I guess that's what I like the most about it. And I love to see good athletes do what they're bred to do.

DS: And how about good poker players?

WB: Sure! I'm thrilled to be in that game in there (the World Series), I truly am. I'm honored and I'm thrilled, and I'm lucky to still be there. I've got about $30,000 in chips, not near enough.

DS: I'm rooting for you and Slim to get through today and make the third day with lots of chips.

WB: On the third day, you play differently. That's when you put your butt up and your head down and make a run at 'em.

DS: Did you play cards in your early cowboy days?

WB: I've always played cards. We used to play a game called "racehorse hitch," and we played five-card stud. I can't remember when there wasn't a gambling game going on somewhere, even if it was a craps game in a wheelbarrow on the backside of the racetrack. I came to Vegas back in the '40s, before this was the Horseshoe. There wasn't much on Fremont Street back then – two hotels, a couple of joints, and the railroad station. I've been coming to the Horseshoe for probably 25 years. I didn't know Benny Binion well, but he was my hero. Many things about him are admirable to a fella like me, you know. Benny was what I would someday like to become.

DS: Sort of a cowboy entrepreneur, a free spirit?

WB: I just admired the man, every single thing about him. You see, I'm not anybody's judge; I don't know what motivates people to do what they do. But I have a lot of admiration for anybody who can start with absolutely nothing and make a little something out of it.

DS: Did you start with nothing yourself?

WB: Yeah. I was a horseshoer. Used to shoe horses for Montie Montana's spotted horse when he was hawking Weber bread. Montie and his family came out West in a wagon train, you know.

ASP: He used to do some shoeing for me, too. He was damned good at it, the best.

DS: Did you learn to shoe horses while you were in high school?

WB: I didn't go to high school.

DS: Well, how far did you go?

WB: Too far, way too far. I think that after you learn to read and write and do your numbers and flush the toilet behind yourself, you don't need no more schoolin'. You need to get out in the water and swim.

DS: And that's what Binion did?

WB: Yes, as far I can figure.

DS: Sounds to me like you've done an awful lot of that yourself, Wilford.

WB: I've done the best I can, darlin'.

DS: Your experience with horses is how you got into stunt work, but how did you become a character actor?

WB: Somebody hired me. The tough part isn't doing the work, it's getting the job. I don't know anybody in the world that can't do what I do.

DS: I think he's underrating himself, don't you, Slim?

ASP: Yeah, he's too modest.

DS: How did you learn to act? Did you go to school or are you a natural?

WB: I didn't go to acting school, but I've been observing my fellow man for 66 years now, and I would think that's the best school there is.

DS: What attracted you to acting?

WB: Nothing, absolutely nothing – except the money (laughing).

DS: In addition to parts in movies and television, you have been a pitchman, first for Quaker Oats for eight years and currently for Liberty. When we see you on television in the Liberty commercial, you're riding across a chilly mountain stream with majestic snowcapped mountains in the background. Is that for real?

WB: Yes, it just doesn't happen to be where I live in Utah; it's in Alberta, Canada.

DS: Are you sincere about recommending the company's home-care products for diabetics?

WB: I absolutely am. If I wasn't, I wouldn't do it. I've already got my rent paid, and it's too late in my life for me to go around talking up stuff that I don't like or believe in.

DS: You suffer from adult-onset diabetes. How has the disease changed your life?

WB: Many things for the worse and some things for the better. For the better, I've taken on a little bit of self-discipline that I never had before. In general, I'm looking after myself more. I do the blood tests about five times a day and inject my insulin twice a day, delivered by Liberty, of course.

DS: What was your favorite movie role?

WB: A film called The Stone Boy, about a ranch family up in Cascade County, Montana. It was about a lifestyle that I understand a little bit about, and one that I'm trying to hang on to with my fingernails. We did the film in the early '80s with some wonderful people in it, Robert Duvall and Glen Close. Duvall has been nominated for four Academy Awards – he's the best we've got, I think – and Close has already won one of them. It's worth a look.

DS: You played in The Natural with Robert Redford, which Card Player writer Andy Glazer said was his favorite performance of yours.

WB: Yes, but I like to say that it was with Richard Farnsworth. I played the manager and Dick played the trainer. Neither one of us had ever played baseball, but we knew how to be friends, and we knew how to relate to those kids. Dick never won an Academy Award, but he was nominated twice. He was my dear friend, a wonderful man.

DS: I was sorry to hear that Farnsworth died last year, as he was a hero of yours. Do you have any heroes in the poker world?

WB: Sure, I'm sitting with one of them (pointing to Amarillo Slim). I admire those guys playing in there, you know. My favorite players are the boys who fight their way into that deal and make a little something out of it, although I don't know many of them very well.

DS: A lot of them sure know you, Wilford. You stand out in a crowd.

WB: I'm an American sex symbol, for hell's sake. Of course they know me!

ASP: Wilford stands out because he's genuine, he's the real thing. This is not some SOB with a big hat on, a drugstore cowboy. This is a man that fits under that hat.u

Author's note: After building his stack up to almost $200,000, Brimley went out of the championship event at the WSOP near the end of the third day. According to reporter Andy Glazer, "Brimley picked up most of his chips in a big pot with Stan Schrier, but lost them back when he took Q-Q up against Schrier's A 8. They got all the money in on the flop, and Schrier immediately spiked an ace on the turn, knocking Brimley back down to about $35,000, and Schrier collected the rest of that a few hands later when his J-J held up against Brimley's A K." When I asked Brimley whether the loss bothered him, he replied with characteristic candor, "No, that's poker. To win, you've gotta get damned lucky."

Editor's note: Dana Smith is the owner of Cardsmith Publishing, which publishes the Championship series of poker books by T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy. For more details, visit www.pokerbooks.com.