He wasn’t born LQ Jones. He was born Justice Ellis McQueen Jr, which is a bloody good name for a film actor. However, after playing a character called Private LQ Jones in his debut film Battle Cry (1955) that was how Mrs McQueen’s little boy chose to be known for the rest of his 60-odd years in film.
Those years were sometimes very odd indeed. Eons playing often uncredited parts in so-so Westerns; biting the bullet in seemingly every TV cowboy series - Jones was pretty much cannon fodder. Then, while filming an episode of The Rifleman, he bumped into writer-director Sam Peckinpah and after that, our man would never be alone on the high chaparral ever again.
Superb as the diseased Sylvus Hammond in Bloody Sam’s Ride The High Country, Jones would become every bit as valued a member of Peckinpah’s stock company as John Davis Chandler, Ben Johnson, Dub Taylor, RG Armstrong and Warren Oates. All six of these grizzled young veterans showed up in Sam’s ambitious Major Dundee (1965) and most would return four years later in the man they called ‘The Monster’s’ most successful picture, The Wild Bunch.
Fabulous feral as bounty hunter TC in Bunch, LQ played a similar role in Peckinpah’s comparatively bucolic The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970). He was also excellent as William H. Bonney’s lieutenant Black Harris in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, the last movie actor and director made together.
There was much more besides the Peckinpah pictures of course. During his career. LQ Jones worked with Martin Scorsese (Casino), Robert Altman (A Prairie Home Companion) and Don Siegel (Hell Is For Heroes). He also adapted and directed the superb science-fiction drama A Boy And His Dog (1975).
Right now, however, I just want to watch Ride The High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett… just anything in which LQ Jones rode under the command of David Samuel Peckinpah. For if he isn’t in fact Peckinpah’s last cowboy, it certainly feels that way.
“Ain’t that many of us left,” says Black Harris in Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. There are even fewer today.