Red West

Before he was an actor, Red West was Elvis Presley's high school friend, then his bodyguard, confidant and one of the songwriters in the circle around him. That job put him on film sets constantly, and the early credits are the proof: uncredited faces in Flaming Star, Wild in the Country, Kid Galahad, Follow That Dream, Fun in Acapulco, It Happened at the World's Fair, Tickle Me, Spinout, Paradise Hawaiian Style and Clambake. He was doing stunt work through the same years.

After he was fired, West co-wrote Elvis: What Happened? with two other Presley associates and the journalist Steve Dunleavy, a tell-all published in 1977. Whatever else it did, it closed one life and left him with another.

The second career is the better one. He had the face and the flat Memphis delivery of a man who had actually done things, and good directors used it: Sheriff Tanner in Walking Tall (1973), Red Webster in Road House (1989), the cowboy sheriff in Natural Born Killers, Buddy Black in The Rainmaker, Mr. Henderson in Cookie's Fortune.

The best of it came last. Goodbye Solo (2009) handed him a lead, William, at an age when most character actors are getting two scenes an hour, and he held it with nothing borrowed from the Elvis story to prop him up. At Any Price and Safe Haven followed. He died in 2017, having spent some fifty years on film sets, most of them as somebody's employee and a few of them as the reason to watch.