The Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 American revisionist Western film set during and after the American Civil War. It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood, with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney and John Vernon. The film tells the story of Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer whose family is murdered by Union militia during the Civil War. Driven to revenge, Wales joins a Confederate guerrilla band and makes a name for himself as a feared gunfighter. After the war, all the fighters in Wales' group except for him surrender to Union soldiers, but the Confederates end up being massacred. Wales becomes an outlaw and is pursued by bounty hunters and Union soldiers as he tries to make a new life for himself.
Chief Dan George was a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, a Coast Salish band whose Indian reserve is located on Burrard Inlet in the southeast area of the District of North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He also was an actor, musician, poet and author. The Chief's best-known written work is "My Heart Soars". As an actor, he is best remembered for portraying Old Lodge Skins opposite Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man (1970), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and for his role in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), as Lone Watie, opposite Clint Eastwood.
The revisionist Western is a sub-genre of the Western film. Called a post-classical variation of the traditional Western, the revisionist subverts the myth and romance of the traditional by means of character development and realism to present a less simplistic view of life in the "Old West". While the traditional Western always embodies a clear boundary between good and evil, the revisionist Western does not.
William Denison McKinney was an American character actor. He played the sadistic mountain man in John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance and appeared in seven Clint Eastwood films, most notably as Captain Terrill, the commander pursuing the last rebels to "hold out" against surrendering to the Union forces in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Asa Earl Carter was a 1950s segregationist political activist, Ku Klux Klan organizer, and later Western novelist. He co-wrote George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama on a white supremacist ticket. Years later, under the alias of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that led to a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that was adopted into the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction.
John Keith Vernon was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada. He was best known for playing Dean Wormer in Animal House, the Mayor in Dirty Harry and Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Josey Wales is a Jamaican dancehall deejay. He has been called, along with Brigadier Jerry, Yellowman and sound system partner Charlie Chaplin, one of the best Jamaican dancehall deejays of the 1980s. Wales is named after the 1976 Western movie character from The Outlaw Josey Wales, played by Clint Eastwood, and subsequently nicknamed "The Outlaw".
John William Saunders III, better known by the stage name John Quade, was an American character actor who starred in film and in television. He was best known for his role as Cholla, the leader of the motorcycle gang the Black Widows in the Clint Eastwood films Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980).
Sydney Woodrow Parfrey was an American film and television actor from the 1950s to the early 1980s. He is often remembered as "one of TV's great slimeball villains".
Jerry Fielding was an American jazz musician, arranger, band leader, and film composer who emerged in the 1960s after a decade on the blacklist, to create boldly diverse and evocative Oscar-nominated scores, primarily for gritty, often brutally savage, films in western and crime action genres, including the Sam Peckinpah movies The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971).
The Education of Little Tree is a memoir-style novel written by Asa Earl Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter. First published in 1976 by Delacorte Press, it was initially promoted as an authentic autobiography recounting Forrest Carter's youth experiences with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains. However, the book was proven to be a literary hoax orchestrated by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member from Alabama heavily involved in segregationist causes before he launched his career as a novelist. Although claimed to be autobiographical originally, it is now believed that it is only based on Carter's fanciful but fraudulent family claims.
John Davis Chandler was an American actor.
Doug McGrath is a Canadian actor whose most notable role was that of "Peter" in the acclaimed Canadian film Goin' Down the Road (1970) and its sequel Down the Road Again (2011). He also played in acclaimed Canadian films Wedding in White (1972), The Hard Part Begins (1973), the original Black Christmas (1974), Russian Roulette (1975) and Coming Out Alive (1980). He had a supporting role as a gym teacher in the cult comedy Porky's (1981), and also played roles in The Escape Artist (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), the Australian comedy The Return of Captain Invincible (1983), Always (1989) and Ghosts of Mars (2001).
John Mitchum was an American actor from the 1940s to the 1970s in film and television. The younger brother of the actor Robert Mitchum, he was credited as Jack Mitchum early in his career.
Josey Wales is a fictional character created by author Asa Earl Carter for his 1973 novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales. Wales is portrayed in the 1976 western film The Outlaw Josey Wales by actor and director Clint Eastwood. Wales is also featured in The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales, the sequel to the first book, and is portrayed by Michael Parks in the 1986 sequel film The Return of Josey Wales.
Charles Tyner was an American film, television and stage character actor best known, principally, for his performances in the films Harold and Maude (1971), Emperor of the North Pole (1973), The Longest Yard (1974), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) and Pulse (1988).
The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales is a 1973 American Western novel written by Asa Earl Carter. It was adapted into the film The Outlaw Josey Wales directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. The novel was republished in 1975 under the title Gone to Texas.
The Return of Josey Wales is a 1986 American Western film directed by and starring Michael Parks It is a sequel to Clint Eastwood's 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales and was adapted from The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales, the 1976 second novel featuring the Josey Wales character, by Asa Earl Carter. The novel was published under Carter's pen name, Forrest Carter, which he used to present a false persona involving a claim of Cherokee ancestry.
William L. O'Connell Jr. is an American film and television actor.
The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales is a 1976 novel by the American writer Asa Carter, published under his pen name Forrest Carter. It is the second novel to feature his Josey Wales character and a sequel to The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1973). In the sequel, Wales follows the tracks of a group of Mexican criminals into Mexico. It was published by Delacorte Press.
