Jack Buetel: Western Actor Known for The Outlaw (1917–1989)

Jack Buetel, Western actor, was born Jack Allender Beutel in Dallas on September 5, 1917, to Otto Beutel and Norma (Allender) Beutel. Otto, the son of German immigrants, was a sales manager for P. F. Collier & Sons Publishing (best known for the popular weekly Collier’s magazine). Norma was a soprano in a singing ensemble. Along with his sister Betty, Jack Beutel was raised in the Oak Lawn section of Dallas and attended North Dallas High School. He performed at the Dallas Little Theatre, where he appeared in such productions as George Bernard Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion and The World We Live in, an English-language version of a Czech play by Karel and Josef Čapek.

In Dallas Beutel supported himself as an insurance clerk. On May 21, 1937, he married Cereatha Browning, a nineteen-year-old model, in Rockwall, Texas. Beutel set out for Hollywood, where he obtained bit parts in radio. He was later joined by his wife, who also pursued an acting career under the name Jill Browning.

The Outlaw (1943)

In 1939 a number of box-office successes, including Stagecoach, Destry Rides Again, and Dodge City, had helped revitalize the Western genre. The following year independent producer Howard Hughes began production on a film based on Billy the Kid, titled The Outlaw. Hughes hired Howard Hawks to direct the film, but Hawks was only on the job for two weeks. Hughes assumed directing duties and little or none of the footage Hawks shot was used in the finished film. Hughes sought to cast a young, unknown actor in the title role and selected Beutel. Hughes reportedly worried that moviegoers would mispronounce Beutel as “beetle,” and had him alter the spelling to Buetel. Hughes signed him to a long-term contract, for which Beutel received a weekly salary, starting at $75. His agent was former Marx Brother Milton “Gummo” Marx.

Beutel was not the only newcomer in the film. Both Hughes and Hawks were known for elevating starlets to leading roles, and among them was nineteen-year-old Jane Russell, who made her film debut in The Outlaw in the role of Rio McDonald, a fictional character. Hughes cast veteran actors Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston, respectively, as Sheriff Pat Garrett, Billy’s nemesis, and Doc Holliday, although there is no evidence that Holliday had ever met Billy the Kid.

Behind the camera, Hughes hired cinematographer Gregg Toland, who had won an Academy Award for his work on Wuthering Heights (1939). The script was written by Jules Furthman. A previous treatment had been penned by famed screenwriter Ben Hecht. The story employed a popular theory that Sheriff Garrett had shot the wrong man and that the real Billy the Kid had escaped.

Among the uncredited participants were stuntmen Ben Johnson and Richard Farnsworth, who both went on to long careers as character actors, and Texas-born child actor Dickie Jones. Another was assistant director Albert R. Broccoli, who produced all the James Bond movies from Dr. No (1962) through Licence to Kill (1989).

Although Beutel had the lead role, far more attention was accrued to his co-star Jane Russell. Her performance as a sultry young woman in revealing dresses and blouses dominated the movie and its marketing. Predictably, film watchdog groups found the steamy Western objectionable. Hollywood’s Hays Office found the film in violation of the industry’s Production Code, and the film’s distributor, Twentieth-Century Fox, refused to release it. The controversy, intentionally flamed by Hughes, delayed the film’s premiere but also served to create buzz.

The Outlaw finally debuted in 1943 in San Francisco, where Russell and Beutel recreated a cut scene following screenings. However, battles with censors delayed further distribution until 1946.

Subsequent Film Roles

Beutel joined the U.S. Navy for three years during and after World War II. He was discharged on May 1, 1946. While stationed at the naval air base in Alameda, California, he was divorced by his first wife. He married Gloria Jean Bailey, a Texas-born socialite, on April 22, 1947. In March 1948 she gave birth to a daughter, Cynthia, Beutel’s only child.

With The Outlaw finally being distributed in 1946, Beutel likely hoped to begin his film career in earnest. The film proved to be a major boost to Russell’s film career. Beutel, however, sat idly while under contract to Hughes, who did not cast him in any subsequent productions and also refused to loan him out to other studios who inquired about his services. Among the movies on which Beutel missed out was Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948).  Rumors of roles circulated in Hollywood gossip columns, but nothing materialized for Beutel. Frustration and boredom might explain his alcohol abuse, which resulted in a drunk driving arrest on March 16, 1949.

In 1951 Hughes finally relented and allowed Beutel to earn his first film credit since The Outlaw. In Best of the Badmen (1951), he played Bob Younger in yet another highly fictitious treatment of real Western outlaws, the James and Younger brothers. Next came the Westerns Rose of Cimarron and The Half-Breed in 1952. The latter was a story Hughes had bought years before as a vehicle for Beutel, but which he never got around to making. In April 1952 Beutel’s restrictive contract with Hughes finally ended. The enigmatic Hughes never offered any reason for his curious treatment of Beutel.

In 1954 Beutel played yet another historical Western figure, Frank James, in Jesse James’ Women, directed by and starring Houston-born Don “Red” Barry. In 1955 Beutel had a starring role as a horse-breeder in Mustang!, his final feature, which was not released until 1959.

Television Career

By the late 1950s, while B-Westerns were disappearing from the movie theaters, they were being reincarnated as television series. Almost all of Beutel’s television work was in the genre. He received credits in only two non-Western shows. One was for a 1960 episode of Hawaiian Eye (1959–63). Another was for a starring role in “Live Forever,” a 1954 episode of Your Favorite Story (1953–55), an anthology series. The latter episode was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s unfinished novel, Septimius Felton; or, The Elixir of Life (1871). Beutel also made occasional appearances as himself on game shows, such as Pantomime Quiz (1947–59), Juke Box Jury (1959–67), and Talent Parade (1954).

Beutel’s largest presence on television was as Deputy Jeff Taggert in thirty-nine episodes of Judge Roy Bean (Roy Bean was played by Edgar Buchanan), a syndicated series that ran from 1955 to 1956. He also appeared in two episodes of 26 Men (1957–59) in 1958, one episode of Mackenzie’s Raiders (1958–59) and one episode of Maverick (1957–62) in 1959, two episodes of Wagon Train (1957–65) in 1959 and 1961, and one episode of Lawman (1958–62) in 1961 (his final role). In 1961, at age forty-three, Beutel retired from acting. He had managed to fashion a nine-year, post-Hughes career. His only subsequent television appearance was on Night of 100 Stars, a variety special, in 1982.

Retirement to Portland and Death

Beutel’s second marriage ended in divorce in June 1959. His third marriage was to Joann Jensen Crawford, a wealthy widow from Portland, Oregon, in October 1962. Residing in Portland, Beutel became vice-president of an investment company.

Beutel’s third wife predeceased him in 1984. After a “long illness,” Jack Beutel died in Portland on June 27, 1989, at the age of seventy-one. He is interred in Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Mausoleum. His crypt bears the original spelling of his family name, Beutel, not the Hughes-sanctioned Buetel.