Herbert Lee "Cowboy" Coward (born August 21, 1938) is an American
actor. He played one of two sadistic mountain men in John Boorman's
1972 film Deliverance (with Bill McKinney), and several of his lines
became infamous in pop culture.Coward was born in 1938 in Haywood
County, North Carolina, the ninth child of Fred and Moody Parker
Coward. His mother died at a young age, so he left school and began
working a variety of itinerant labor jobs to help support the family,
including at an orchard and operating heavy machinery. After getting
married in the early 1960s and briefly living in Raleigh, he moved
back to the mountains with his wife when she became homesick.After
returning home, a friend offered Coward a job as an outlaw gunfighter
at an Old West ghost town amusement park in Maggie Valley. While
performing at the park with an assortment of acting school students
working over their summer break, locals, and professional actors, an
accident with a prop pistol resulted in two of his front teeth being
knocked out. Known actors, including Dan Blocker who starred on
Bonanza, performed at the park, and one summer, based on his
appearances on Gunsmoke, Burt Reynolds appeared there. During this
time, Reynolds and Coward became friends. In 1970, when Deliverance
began filming in Rabun County, Georgia, Blocker mentioned to producers
that Coward would be an ideal person for a role in the film; they were
unable to locate him, so wrote his name on a potential cast board as
"Cowboy Coward". Reynolds saw this and called Coward to recruit him
for the role, telling the producers "...he can’t write or anything,
but I’m telling ya, if we can get him, we got something special. Let
me bring him in. His name’s Cowboy, and he’ll just talk to you,
and you see if you like him." Coward was subsequently cast as
"Toothless Man", one of the two sadistic mountain men encountered in
the woods by Reynolds and the film's other protagonists. Like the
others in the film, Coward performed his own stunts, including being
lowered off a cliff into a river. Upon the film's release he became
infamous for his often repeated line "He’s got a real pretty mouth,
ain’t he?"After appearing in the film, Coward worked at the BASF
factory in Asheville for 27 years. He also appeared in one other film,
Ghost Town: The Movie (2007), and on television's Hillbilly Blood in
2013.
actor. He played one of two sadistic mountain men in John Boorman's
1972 film Deliverance (with Bill McKinney), and several of his lines
became infamous in pop culture.Coward was born in 1938 in Haywood
County, North Carolina, the ninth child of Fred and Moody Parker
Coward. His mother died at a young age, so he left school and began
working a variety of itinerant labor jobs to help support the family,
including at an orchard and operating heavy machinery. After getting
married in the early 1960s and briefly living in Raleigh, he moved
back to the mountains with his wife when she became homesick.After
returning home, a friend offered Coward a job as an outlaw gunfighter
at an Old West ghost town amusement park in Maggie Valley. While
performing at the park with an assortment of acting school students
working over their summer break, locals, and professional actors, an
accident with a prop pistol resulted in two of his front teeth being
knocked out. Known actors, including Dan Blocker who starred on
Bonanza, performed at the park, and one summer, based on his
appearances on Gunsmoke, Burt Reynolds appeared there. During this
time, Reynolds and Coward became friends. In 1970, when Deliverance
began filming in Rabun County, Georgia, Blocker mentioned to producers
that Coward would be an ideal person for a role in the film; they were
unable to locate him, so wrote his name on a potential cast board as
"Cowboy Coward". Reynolds saw this and called Coward to recruit him
for the role, telling the producers "...he can’t write or anything,
but I’m telling ya, if we can get him, we got something special. Let
me bring him in. His name’s Cowboy, and he’ll just talk to you,
and you see if you like him." Coward was subsequently cast as
"Toothless Man", one of the two sadistic mountain men encountered in
the woods by Reynolds and the film's other protagonists. Like the
others in the film, Coward performed his own stunts, including being
lowered off a cliff into a river. Upon the film's release he became
infamous for his often repeated line "He’s got a real pretty mouth,
ain’t he?"After appearing in the film, Coward worked at the BASF
factory in Asheville for 27 years. He also appeared in one other film,
Ghost Town: The Movie (2007), and on television's Hillbilly Blood in
2013.
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