Bill Thurman, actor

“Bill Thurman was an actor. He was born on 04/11/1920. He was born in Texas in the country USA. He died on 13/04/1995. Bill Thurman had the American nationality. He used the name Bill Thurman as an artist name, but was born under the name of Billie Thurman.” (Foreigners shouldn’t write about American actors.)

http://www.gazillionmovies.com/Actor/B/Bi/BillThurman.htm

Thurman was the bartender in Silverado, an air traffic controller in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and also had parts in Charge of the Model Ts, Sugarland Express and Places in the Heart.

In 1992, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, to give professional guidance to the community theater actors, Thurman sat in a small travel trailer behind the Hopkins County Civic Center, drinking coffee, smoking Marlboros and answering questions from a reporter who had never heard his name. I had seen all those movies, but remembered only Thurman’s bartender role, which he performed with professional, character-actor finesse. “What are you doing in here, Buck?” he said to Mal, Danny Glover’s character. And maybe, “We don’t serve your kind.” That scene was important, because it introduced Mal to Paden (Kevin Cline) and Emmett (Scott Glen), and right after a fight, Sheriff Langston (John Cleese), and then brought in Jake (Kevin Costner).

Yes, Thurman “was born in Texas in the country USA.” Specifically, on a farm in Hopkins County.

The farm had much to do with Thurman’s vocational decision. When World War II came along, the farmboy enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. Somewhere in the Pacific, he took a bullet or piece of artillery steel or something that caused his evacuation to a Navy hospital in California.

While recuperating, Thurman met another Marine, 1st Lt. Tyrone Power. The then-R5D pilot commented, “If you ever get to Hollywood, look me up. I think I can find something in the movies for you.”

Forty-seven years later Thurman said he didn’t have to think too hard about Power’s offer.

“I decided I didn’t want to go back to Hopkins County and spend the rest of my life looking a mule in the rear end,” he said.

So began almost 50 years of what could be called small parts in some big movies. An actor would probably say there is not such thing as a small part in a movie or a play. And, he would be right. Every part is a link in the chain.

Interestingly, Charge of the Model Ts was written by Henry Lee Somerville of Red River County, Texas, Not too often do a couple of Northeast Texas farmboys wind up as principals in the same movie.

Yes, Bill Thurman had the American nationality.

He died in Dallas in 1995.