L.Q. Jones

The Marine Who Stole a Name

Justice Ellis McQueen Jr. arrived on the set of Battle Cry in 1955 without knowing he would lose his legal identity before the film wrapped. The character he played was named L.Q. Jones, and the studio decided that name worked better on posters than his original one. He accepted the change with the practicality of someone who served in the United States Marine Corps and understands that orders aren't debated.

And the name stuck forever.

He had the lean, sun-weathered look of a Texas wolf. He didn't have the granite jaw of the leading men of the era, but his gaze projected a dangerous mix of intelligence and amorality. That physical presence caught the attention of Sam Peckinpah during the shoot of Ride the High Country in 1962. It marked the start of a professional partnership that would define the look of the violent new Western of the 1960s and '70s.

Jones joined the director's regular supporting cast, a group of actors who shared grueling shooting days and nights of drinking in Mexico. He appeared in Major Dundee in 1965 and played a key role in The Wild Bunch in 1969. In the latter, he played T.C., one of the bounty hunters chasing William Holden's gang under a merciless sun.

Peckinpah's cinema can't be understood without his face.

But Jones didn't just wait for a call from his go-to director. He quickly understood that the film industry was a survival business, so he founded his own production company, LQJaf, to finance projects no one else wanted to touch. He worked on more than 500 television credits, combining series like The Virginian with fleeting appearances in nearly every hit on NBC over three decades.

A Dog, a Boy and the Cult

In 1975, he made the leap to directing with a daring gamble. He adapted Harlan Ellison's novella A Boy and His Dog, a post-apocalyptic story about a young man and his telepathic dog in a devastated world. The film was raw and strange, and it ended with a cannibalism joke that left critics of the time baffled.

The production was chaotic, plagued by a lack of funding and clashes with the original author. Ellison hated the script until he saw the final cut and realized Jones had captured the cynical essence of his work. Over the years the film became a cornerstone of low-budget science fiction and directly inspired later franchises such as Mad Max and the video game Fallout.

It was his only serious venture behind the camera, but it was enough to get his name into the books on fantasy cinema. Jones preferred the security of acting to the torment of hunting for funding for his own ideas. So he went back to luxury supporting roles, where he could steal scenes with barely three well-delivered lines.

And the gamble paid off.

Martin Scorsese called him in 1995 to play Pat Webb in Casino. In an ensemble full of stars, Jones stood out as a Clark County commissioner who put the character played by Robert De Niro on the ropes. His performance proved that age had not dulled his ability to be menacing without raising his voice.

In 1998, he appeared in The Mask of Zorro under director Martin Campbell. He worked steadily until 2006, when Robert Altman offered him his last major role, in A Prairie Home Companion. In the film, he played Chuck Akers on a set that was, in essence, a reunion of old-time American entertainment legends.

He passed away on July 9, 2022, at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 94, from natural causes.