The role Burt Reynolds called the worst of his career: “And that’s saying something”
Burt Reynolds didn’t become a movie star by making good movies, and I mean that as a compliment. He had the type of charisma that could punch through a brick wall or, more helpfully in his case, through a terrible script. Throughout his many decades in Hollywood, he proved time and again that an idiotic plot was no match for his movie star wattage.
That isn’t to say that Reynolds has made exclusively bad movies. John Boorman’s Deliverance continues to be one of the most searing, uncomfortable movies of the 1970s, which is a very high bar indeed, and Boogie Nights is one of the great Paul Thomas Anderson films. However, for every Deliverance, there is a Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, and for every Boogie Nights, there is a Crazy Six.
The actor himself had a personal least favourite, and it dated back to the very beginning of his career. Not long after toiling in the trenches of TV westerns, he took on a role in a 1969 comedy called Sam Whiskey. Set in the Old West, it stars Reynolds as the titular Whiskey, a gunslinging gambler who is seduced by a widow (Angie Dickinson) into recovering a hoard of gold bars that her husband had stolen and returning them to the mint.
Reynolds’s issue with the film was twofold. The first part of his animosity came down to cultural insensitivity, and the second came down to wigs. Regarding the first problem, Reynolds felt that the script was bigoted towards Native Americans. This was pretty much a prerequisite for all westerns at the time, so one can only imagine how racist it would have had to have been in order to draw his attention.
In his memoir, But Enough About Me, the actor claimed to have Cherokee ancestry and said that he was known to request script changes whenever he felt that a movie was derogatory towards Native Americans. There is a long and performative history of white people loudly claiming indigenous heritage, and the slightest bit of research will tell you that having a distant ancestor who was a member of the Cherokee Nation does not mean that you have any claim or even insight as a result. However, Reynolds insisted, rather implausibly, that “Native Americans have thanked me for playing them with dignity.”
Aside from feeling that the script was not culturally sensitive, Reynolds felt that the hairpiece he was given was beyond the pale. “The first day on the set the costume guy chopped up a ratty old wig and glued it on my head,” he recalled. “It was the worst wig I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something.” He said that it made him look like the actor Natalie Wood. For the sake of accuracy, it’s worth noting that it looked remarkably similar to his actual hair, unless costume designers from then on decided to use the same wig.
Sam Whiskey (tagline: “Don’t mix with Sam Whiskey. It’s risky”) did not do gangbusters at the box office, and it doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny nearly 60 years later. However, it was a masterpiece compared to another of his films that year, the hysterically titled Shark! Luckily, three years later, he landed the meaty role in Deliverance, and the past was well and truly behind him.
