Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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WILL SAMPSON

I have always admired the work of Strother Martin and Donald Pleasance as character actors. Strother once mentioned, in an appearance on the Tonight Show, that he made a lot of money by portraying himself as prairie trash in westerns. Donald gave an absolutely superb performance as a badman in the movie Will Penny. Another actor that I never get weary of is a fellow named Will Sampson. Sadly, Will went up the flume before he played many roles. Most notably he was the supposedly deaf mute Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Jack Nicholson. In another favorite role he portrayed Chief Ten Bears in The Outlaw Josie Wales, starring Clint Eastwood.

Will was a full blood Muscogee Creek born on September 27, 1933 in the small native community of Hitchita in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma. For twenty years or so he was a bronco buster on the rodeo circuit. When rodeo announcer Mel Lambert heard that Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, the producers of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, were looking for a tall Indian to play Chief Bromden in the movie he recommended Will to them. It took some effort to locate Will on the rodeo circuit, but he was hired on the basis of an interview. He had never been an actor. The role of Chief Bromden did not carry many lines, but it required “presence”, which Will had plenty of. He stood six feet and seven inches tall. The box office success of Cuckoo’s Nest led to more work. As Chief Ten Bears Will was in full face paint. He suffered from an affliction known as scleroderma which attacked the heart and lungs and presented as a skin disease. The face paint covered that. In addition to acting and riding bucking horses Will was an accomplished artist. Some of his pieces are on display at the Creek Tribal Center Museum in Okmulgee. His work has also been shown at the Gilcrease Museum and the Philbrook Museum of Art. In 1983 he was the founder and served on the board of directors of the American Indian Registry of the Performing Arts. The scleroderma is a degenerative condition that only gets worse over time. By 1987 his weight had dropped from 260 down to 140 and he was suffering from malnutrition too. He died on June 3, 1987 from kidney failure after a heart and lung transplant done at Houston Methodist Hospital. He is buried in a family plot at the Graves Creek Methodist Cemetery in Hitchita.

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Photos

ME AND SONNY
To his family Will was just called "Sonny".