Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid star Charles Dierkop has died. He was 87.
Dierkop, who was also known for his roles in The Sting and Police Woman, died in a California hospital on February 25, according to his daughter, Lynn, who confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday (Tuesday in Australia).
According to the publication, Dierkop had suffered a recent heart attack and pneumonia before his death.
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Dierkop married just once to Joan Addis, though the pair reportedly divorced in 1974.
They shared two children; daughter Lynn, and son Charles Jr. who died in 1990. He was 29.
Born in 1936 in Wisconsin, USA, Dierkop’s father left the family when he was an infant and his mother “left home” not long after.
He was raised by his aunt and uncle until he dropped out of high school in the 1950s and enlisted in the U.S. Marines.
Dierkop served in post-war Korea for a time before being discharged at age 19, at which point he reunited with his mother in Philadelphia and began acting.
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His first TV role was in police procedural Naked City, which ran from 1958 until 1963, followed by breakout film roles in The Hustler (1961), The Pawnbroker (1964) and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967).
In 1969 he landed the role of outlaw George “Flat Nose” Curry in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, working alongside Paul Newman in the legendary Western.
They had previously worked together on The Hustler and would collaborate again on The Sting (1973)
He also made a guest appearance on Star Trek in 1967 and told reporters in 2017 that he was still getting recognised by fans 50 years later.
“In the beginning, it was just another show for me, and it was another science-fiction type show. I’d done other ones,” said Dierkop.
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“I was at a reunion event on the lot [and] there’s a big, long line of people outside, waiting to see people from the show come in, trying to get autographs.
“They were saying, ‘There’s Morla, Mr. Morla from Wolf in the Fold!’ I didn’t even remember what the title of the episode I did was. They’re remembering me all these years later. That’s when I first really realised how big this was.”