Charles Napier in "The Blues Brothers" (1980) with John Belushi.

Character actor Charles Napier, recognized for his square jaw and playing hardboiled military figures and bad guys, passed away yesterday after collapsing in his Bakersfield home Tuesday October 4, 2011.  Among his most memorable roles are Tucker McElroy in The Blues Brothers, known for the line “You’re gonna look pretty funny trying to eat corn on the cob with no f—ing teeth.”, voicing the growls of the Incredible Hulk, Philadelphia, Silence of the Lambs, Rambo: First Blood II and series such as Mission: Impossible, Kojak, Baretta and Rockford Files.

Born April 12, 1936 in Mt. Union, near Scottsville, the son of a tobacco farmer, Charles Napier aspired to being a basketball coach.  He played in two high school state basketball championships for Scottsville’s public high school (1953 and 1954), but an athletic scholarship alluded him.  He instead joined the Army and was stationed in Germany for three years.  He was said to credit his time there for developing social skills he never learned during his rural childhood.  After his return he attended Western Kentucky University, graduating in 1961 with a BA in Art.

He returned to his high school to serve as assistant basketball coach but moved to Florida to teach art.  By 1964 he had returned home to attend graduate school at WKU where D. Russell Miller persuaded him to try out for a role. He played several roles at WKU and joined the community theatre after going back to his Florida teaching position.

By 1965 he was walking the streets of New York trying to break make it as an actor, but after giving up set his sights on Hollywood.

Once in Hollywood he fell in with unknown actors Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper who helped him to find an agent.  He debuted in Russ Meyer’s Cherry, Harry & Raquel!, appearing full frontal for the film.  After being picked up in theatres it became one of the first such movies to be seen outside of coastal smut houses.  He has been quoted as saying that opportunity came about when he was dating a stripper who was afraid to go meet with Meyer alone, so he chaperoned and left with the part.  He went on to make several soft core films with Meyer’s and worked in typical struggling actor day jobs such as parking attendant.

In 1967 he landed his first television guest star role on Mission: Impossible, followed by episodes of Star Trek. 

In 1968, inspired by a trucker movie he was in, he took a job with Overdrive, a popular trucking magazine and wrote and took pictures for them for the next couple of years.  During these years he often collaborated with close friend Hunter S. Thompson.  Both were beat up during a Teamsters truck strike in 1973 and Napier decided to return to Hollywood.

IMDB.com quotes Napier on what happened next in his career, saying: “So now I’m 40 years old and I’m back living on the streets of Hollywood in a parking lot under Russ Meyer, who owned the parking lot. And I said ‘It’s over, man. I have no agent, I have no phone, I have no address, I have no nothing.’ I had a little unemployment to go. And one day some guy came down the street with a megaphone asking my name, and I’m sitting there with the rest of the winos. I go ‘Yeah, what’s up, that’s me.’ I hadn’t had a haircut in two months, or a shave, or whatever. He says, “They want to see you at Universal.’ I go, ‘What for?’ He goes, ‘You’ll find out when you get there, you want to go or not?’ I go, ‘I’m assuming if I don’t go, your ass is gonna be in a lot of trouble, is that correct?’ He goes, ‘That’s correct.’ And we go straight to the lot in the back of the limo, straight to the office of Alfred Hitchcock. They said, ‘Don’t say a damn word to him, don’t even look at him. He’s gonna be 10 feet away, and he’s gonna spin around a chair in a dramatic way. He’s gonna say ‘Go away,’ or he’s gonna say ‘Sign him.'” So Hitchcock is looking at the guy standing beside him, and he says ‘Tell him to turn around.’ So I turned around, and Hitchcock said, ‘Sign him.’ And that was the end of it. I worked from then on, because I worked for Alfred Hitchcock.”

Under contract, he guest starred in many television series of the day including Golden Girls, Dallas, Murder She Wrote, Night Court, Walker Texas Ranger, Knight Rider, B.J. and the Bear, Starsky and Hutch and Deep Space 9.  He has also appeared in every movie Jonathan Demme ever directed, including his most proud role as the judge in Philadelphia.

In later life he was successful in the voiceover industry, giving voice to characters for The Critic, The Magician, Men In Black, Rugrats, The Thornberry’s, John Quest and Sylvester and Tweety.  He was also the national spokesperson for GM’s Montana Minivan by Pontiac.

In his seventies, Napier continued to love his work and take every part available, stating in 2009 according to IMDB.com: “Anyone can be a director now, as you well know. There’s no union, basically, per se anymore. They say it is, but these kids are going out and making… I just did a Western for some guy’s grandson up in Oregon, who is a timber baron, and he put up 200 grand for it. I did a film in Miami for a car dealer who wanted his daughter to be on-screen. And they never go anywhere. They just lay around on shelves. Somebody ought to wise up and figure out how to sell those movies at Wal-Mart, you know? But people have that kind of money, or they used to. It’s tough times now for all of us. Everybody’s scared to death. Nobody knows what’s going to happen now. I get along day by day, and that’s about the way it goes, and I always look forward to tomorrow. I’m as excited about doing the next one as I am the first one, and the energy is still there. Of course, my memory’s not as good as it used to be, so what the hell. Marlon Brando never learned a line in his life, so I don’t feel too bad, you know.”