This video features one of my very favorite actors of all time….Strother Douglas Martin Jr. (March 26, 1919 – August 1, 1980) was an American character actor….who often appeared in support of such silver screen stars as John Wayne and Paul Newman…..and in western films directed by John Ford and Sam Peckinpah….who is best known as the prison “Captain” in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke….in which he uttered the line….“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” ….which just happens to be the # 11 on the American Film Institute list of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. Strother Martin appeared in all three of the classic Westerns released in 1969…..as a blood thirsty bounty hunter in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch….as Percy Garris, the “colorful” Bolivian mine boss who hires Butch and Sundance to protect deliveries in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ….and as Colonel Stonehill the horse dealer in Henry Hathaway’s True Grit….the film in which The Duke John Wayne wins his only Academy Award Oscar playing the role of Rooster Cogburn. Strother Martin frequently acted alongside L.Q. Jones, who in real life was one of his closest friends. This is a really funny comedy skit that the Two Martins” Strother and Steve pull off really well.
