Slowest Gun in the West

Jack Elam, a veteran character actor whose roles ran the gamut of western heavies to parodies of western heavies to western drunks, headed for the last round-up Monday at the age of 84. Elam's left eye, which was blinded in a fight at a Boy Scout meeting, wandered in its socket, adding an unsteady element to roles as the villain in such films as Rawhide and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and mania in comic roles in Support Your Local Sheriff and Cannonball Run. He was also a steady worker on the small screen, with more than 100 TV guest appearances, including 14 different roles on Gunsmoke, and the crazy old man in the Twilight Zone classic "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up." People with way too much time on their hands also may remember him as Loni Anderson's destitute uncle who comes to live with her in the crap-tacular 1986 NBC sitcom "Easy Street."