I want you to try a little visualization experiment
with me to kick things off. Okay, I'm ready.
So imagine it's a Saturday afternoon, maybe it's
1950, maybe it's today, and you're just scrolling
through a classic movie channel. Right. And you
land on a Western, you know the exact scene immediately.
The saloon doors swing open. Exactly. The saloon
doors swing open, the music swells up, lots of
brass, lots of sweeping strings. Right. And in
walks the hero. White hat, perfect teeth, you
know, the fringe on his jacket that somehow isn't
dirty at all, even though he's been riding a
horse for three days. It's always spotless. Always.
He walks up to the bar. But I want you to look
past him. Look at the guy leaning against the
wall in the back. Right. Look at that guy. He's
not the main villain. He's the guy standing directly
behind the villain. Yeah, the muscle. Right.
He looks tough, maybe a little weathered. He's
got a scar or a crooked nose or he's just got
that look of someone who has actually worked
for a living. And then five minutes later, a
brawl inevitably breaks out. This guy throws
one punch, misses wildly, gets hit in the jaw
by the hero, falls backward over a breakaway
table. And you never see him again. And you never
see him again. The disposable bad guy. Henchman
number three. Precisely. Henchman number three.
If you have ever watched the old Cisco Kid shows
or Heroes of the Alamo or literally hundreds
of other Westerns from the Golden Age, you've
seen this man's face. Oh, absolutely. You've
probably seen him get fake shot off a roof or
fall off a horse or get dragged through the dirt
behind a wagon. But I guarantee you do not know
his name. And honestly, that is a massive oversight
in film history. Yeah. Because while the stars
got their names on the poster, people like him
were the actual, you know, the internal combustion
engine of the industry. The machinery. Exactly.
Without them, the hero is literally just a guy
in a costume punching the empty air. Well, today
we are pulling that guy out of the background.
We're putting him center stage. We are doing
a deep dive into the life of Carl Matthews. Yes,
we are. And let me tell you. Looking at the sources
we have compiled for this deep dive, we're talking
biographical records, extensive filmographies,
a bunch of census data. This is not your typical
Hollywood story. No, it's not the classic star
gets discovered sipping a milkshake at Schwab's
pharmacy kind of thing. Not even close. This
is a story about the absolute grind. We're talking
about a man who appeared in over 200 films, shorts,
and TV shows over a 33 -year career. 200. I mean,
that number just completely blows my mind. It's
a factory number. It really is. And that's really
our mission for this deep dive, right? To look
past those marquee names and try to understand
the machinery of old Hollywood. And we're doing
it through the lens of this one incredibly hardworking
guy. A guy who spent decades falling off horses
just to make the hero look good. While dealing
with a reality that was far grittier than anything
written in those scripts. So let's peel back
the curtain here. Who was Carl Matthews? Because
just looking at his resume, looking at where
he came from, he might have been the toughest
guy on any set he walked onto. Regardless of
who was playing the sheriff that day. Exactly.
He certainly had the background to back it up.
But, you know, even pinning down his origin is
a little tricky. The sources give us a bit of
a mystery right out of the gate regarding his
age. Yeah, I saw that in the notes. Pretty big
discrepancy between the census data and his death
certificate, right? It's a significant one. So
if you track the census data, 1910, 1920, all
the way up to 1940, the records are remarkably
consistent. They all point to him being born
on February 19th, 1903. But if you pull his death
certificate from 1959, it lists his birth year
as 1899. That's a four -year gap. What's your
read on that? Like, was he aging himself down
for Hollywood? You know, the whole, oh, I'm not
40, I'm a spry 36. I can still jump off that
balcony routine. It's very possible. I mean,
Hollywood has always been hyper age conscious,
even for stuntmen. Sure. If a casting director
thinks you're too old to safely fall off a roof,
you just don't eat that week. But it could also
go the other way. Maybe he aged himself up earlier
in life. To get a job. Or to join the military.
We see that a lot in official records from that
era. Kids lying about their age to enlist. Wow,
yeah. We can't say definitively which one is
the truth, but it adds this really fascinating
layer of ambiguity to his history right from
the very start. A guy who shifted his identity
to fit the need of the moment. Exactly. What
isn't ambiguous, though, is where he came from.
Because this was definitely not a kid from the
Hollywood Hills with a dad already in the studio
system. Far from it. He was born on the Cherokee
Reservation in Oklahoma. His parents were Sam
and Hattie Matthews. And a really crucial piece
of data we pulled from the sources here is that
he was listed on the Dawes Rolls. Let's unpack
that for a second for the listener. The Dawes
Rolls, that sounds very official. But what does
it actually mean for his life? So the Dawes Rules
were the official federal records used to register
members of the five civilized tribes around the
turn of the century. And those were? The Cherokee,
Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes.
Right. Being on that role meant the U .S. government
officially recognized his lineage. According
to the records, Carl was one -eighth Cherokee.
Okay, so he grows up in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The
records also show his father was a butcher. That
paints a pretty specific picture, doesn't it?
It does. Very grounded, working class, dealing
with physical, messy labor from day one. Exactly.
And this is where the contrast with modern actors
is so sharp. You know, today, if you want to
be an action star, maybe you go to drama school.
Right, you take stage combat classes. Or you
hire a personal trainer for six months to get
completely shredded on chicken and broccoli.
Right. Carl Matthews. He didn't need a boot camp.
He lived a full, genuinely dangerous life before
he ever even saw a movie camera. I was looking
at his pre -Hollywood timeline in our research,
and it reads like an adventure novel. Or a cautionary
tale. Right. First off, he was a veteran of World
War I. Which, let's be honest, involves a level
of trauma and sheer toughness that's hard for
us to even quantify today. Totally. And then
in the 1920s, he served in the Merchant Marines.
Yeah. Stop there for a second. Merchant Marines.
Yeah. That's not just casually sailing around.
What does that actually entail on a day to day
basis? Well, it means you're comfortable working
at extreme heights. You're rigging sails, dealing
with shifting decks in the middle of storms.
You have to have incredible. Physical balance.
Absolute balance. And you have to be able to
take and execute orders instantly in a highly
chaotic environment. Which sounds a lot like
a movie set. Exactly. Think about how directly
that translates to stunt work later on. Rigging,
balance, chaos. Yeah, that tracks perfectly.
And then by the end of the 1920s, he was back
on dry land working for the railroads as a switchman.
A switchman. Okay, just so we are totally clear,
that's the guy physically running between the
tracks, manually throwing the heavy iron levers
to switch the rails. while massive trains are
barreling around him. Yes. It was frankly one
of the most dangerous jobs in America at the
time. I can imagine. You make a mistake, you
lose a finger, you trip, you lose a leg or get
crushed between train cars. It required constant
hypervigilance and agility. So we have a soldier,
a sailor, and a railroad worker. Yeah. That is
basically the trifecta of hard labor in the early
20th century. It really is. By the time he actually
gets to Hollywood, he's probably ten times tougher
than the stunt coordinators telling him what
to do. And that background provides a certain
texture to his performances. What do you mean
by texture? Well, when you see him on screen,
even if he's just standing in the background
holding a horse, he has a physicality that you
just can't teach in an acting class. He knows
how to inhabit his body. Yes. He knows how to
move. He knows how to work with his hands. He
knows what it actually looks like to be bone
tired. He wasn't playing grit. He was grit. So
he's in Muskogee. He's working the railroad.
And he's got a family by this point, right? Yes.
According to the records, he married a woman
named Margaret sometime in the 1920s. And they
had a son, Carl Jr., who was born in 1930. So
he's a dad. He's a husband. He's a railroad switch
man. What makes a guy with all those roots? Just
pack up his family and move out to Tinseltown.
Was it just the dream of fame? Yeah. Did he want
his name in lights suddenly? Honestly, looking
at the history, I don't think it was fame so
much as sheer survival. Oh, interesting. Look
at the dates. The census shows the family was
in Muskogee in 1930. But by 1935, they had relocated
and settled in Los Angeles. Ah, the mid -30s.
Yeah. Right in the brutal thick of the Great
Depression. Exactly. And think about where they
were coming from. Oklahoma, the dust hole. The
economy there was being utterly decimated. People
were moving west for work, any work they could
find. And the film industry in L .A. was one
of the very few places that was actually booming.
Specifically the production of B -Westerns, right?
Yes, the B -Western economy. We hear that term
a lot in film history, B -Western. But what does
it actually mean for a guy like Carl entering
the workforce? What was that economy like? It
was incredibly high volume, very low margin.
These were not artistic sweeping masterpieces
that took an entire year to film. These were
consumer products like churning out cans of soup.
The studios were just pumping them out. Sometimes
they'd shoot a whole feature film in five or
six days. Six days for an entire movie. Sometimes
less. And because they were moving at that breakneck
speed, they just needed bodies. They didn't have
time for divas. No time at all. They needed guys
who could... Ride horses, take a punch, hit the
dirt, get back up, and do it again ten minutes
later from a different angle without complaining.
They needed absolute reliability. And that is
exactly where Carl Matthews found his lane. His
very first credited role in The Sources is from
1935. It was a movie called Rough Riding Ranger.
A B -Western. A low -budget western, which perfectly
sets the tone for his entire career trajectory.
He played a character named Cinch Clemens. Cinch
Clemons? I absolutely love that name. It sounds
like a guy who's definitely going to try to rob
a stagecoach and just fail immediately. That
is remarkably accurate for the kind of roles
he got. This brings us to the specific archetype
Matthews embodied on screen. The sources describe...
Most of his roles as being one of the underlings
of the antagonist. The classic henchman. The
henchman. The guy who takes orders from the smooth
-talking bad guy. He's the muscle. Right. And
because he's the muscle, his job description
in the script is inevitably to lose the fight.
It's kind of funny when you really think about
it. Here is a World War I vet, a merchant marine,
a guy who survived work in the railroads. Yeah.
And his professional life becomes getting beat
up on camera. by actors who, let's be real, probably
had manicures earlier that morning. That's the
grand irony of Hollywood. Yeah. But we have to
look at the sheer volume of his work to truly
understand the grind he was on. We mentioned
he was in over 200 productions. When you scroll
through his filmography, you see titles that
really capture the specific flavor of that era.
Oh, I have the list right here in our research.
These are just incredible. The Sagebrush Family
Trails West. Classic. Billy the Kid's Gun Justice.
Custer's Last Stand. And he wasn't just stuck
in the series gritty ones, he did the spoof movies
too. Yeah, I saw one title in the filmography
that just stopped me in my tracks, Skip Along
Rosenblum. Yes, Skip Along Rosenblum. Released
in 1951, it was a parody western. That title
alone deserves some kind of Academy Award. But
it really shows he was working constantly. It
didn't matter if it was high drama or total lowbrow
comedy. If there was a paycheck, he was on set.
And that intense work ethic continued right through
the transition from film to television. The records
show he appeared in dozens of episodes of The
Cisco Kid. Now that's interesting because television
was the wild new frontier back then. It must
have changed the workflow completely. It made
it even more of a grind, actually. It was essentially
the gig economy long before we even had a phrase
for it. The Cisco Kid was a huge hat. For a character
actor like Matthews, a recurring gig on a show
like that, even if he was playing a totally different
henchman or background character week after week,
was incredibly valuable steady pay. So he's basically
the Uber driver of Hollywood henchmen, just picking
up rides wherever and whenever he can. In a way,
yes, but with significantly higher physical stakes.
Right. Let's really dig into those physical stakes.
Because you say he acted in 200 films, but a
lot of what he was doing was. way more dangerous
than just standing there and delivering a line
of dialogue. Absolutely. We have to talk about
the stunt work. In the production sources, he's
frequently listed as a stuntman or a body double.
Okay. This is where that insane background, the
balance from the ships, the special awareness
from the railroad really pays dividends. What
kind of stunts are we actually talking about
here? We're talking about the absolute classics
of the genre. Horse falls, wagon crashes, massive
bar brawls. He performed stunts in films like
Heroes of the Alamo in 1937 and Buffalo Bill
Rides Again in 1947. And he worked in the serials
too, right? Like The Great Adventures of Wild
Bill Hickok. Yes. And think about the actual
structure of a movie serial back then. It's usually
12 or 15 chapters, and every single one ends
in a crazy cliffhanger. So the hero is always
in peril. Exactly. That means 12 or 15 major
action sequences per production. Chases, fistfights,
explosions. They required consistent, repeated,
physical exertion. And Matthews was right there
in the thick of it, taking the hits. Every time.
You mentioned body doubling earlier. That seems
like a very specific skill set. It's not just
being brave and willing to fall down. It's about
mimicry, isn't it? It is. The records show he
doubled for stars like Fred Scott and Ray Corrigan,
who is known as Crash Corrigan. Crash Corrigan.
Now, Ray Corrigan was a big guy, a very physical
actor, hence the nickname Crash. The fact that
Matthews could seamlessly double for him tells
us a lot about Matthews' own physique and presence.
He had to match his body language perfectly.
Down to the way he walked. If Ray Corrigan had
a specific swagger or a specific way of swinging
up into a saddle, Matthews had to replicate that
exactly. Right, because if he didn't, the audience
would spot the fake immediately. Exactly. You
have to convince the camera from 50 feet away
that you are the star. You essentially have to
erase your own ego and become someone else's
shadow. It's a pretty thankless job, isn't it?
I mean, you do the dangerous jump, you risk the
broken collarbone, and then the film cuts to
a close -up of the beautiful star dusting off
his hat, and the star gets all the applause in
the theater. It is entirely thankless, and it's
incredibly physically punishing over time. We
have to remember, safety standards in the 1930s
and 40s were virtually non -existent compared
to today. Right. There was no CGI to fake it,
no hidden wires removing the impact of a fall.
If the script said fall off the horse at a full
gallop, you fell off the horse at a full gallop.
Ouch. They used to use these things called running
W wires to actually trip the horses during a
chase. Which is incredibly cruel and totally
illegal now. Very illegal now. But back then,
it meant the crash was violent, chaotic, and
completely unpredictable for the rider. So you're
hitting the hard dirt. Repeatedly. Take after
take. Exactly. And gravity is gravity. You do
that for 30 years, your body is going to keep
the score. Yeah. Every single fall is a micro
trauma. And I think that brings us to the darker
side of this story, because you really can't
live that kind of life. The chronic physical
pain, the constant hustle for the next gig, the
massive adrenaline spikes without it taking a
serious toll on your personal life. Unfortunately,
the historical records regarding his personal
life reflect exactly that kind of instability.
We mentioned his first wife, Margaret, earlier.
They moved to L .A. together around 1935, right
at the start of his film career. Right. They
make the big move. The career starts to pick
up some momentum and the marriage collapses.
Really? Yeah. Shortly after he entered the film
industry, they divorced. The census sources show
that Margaret actually returned to Oklahoma with
their young son, Carl Jr., to live with her parents.
Oh, man, that's rough. So the Hollywood dream
starts to become a reality and his family falls
apart almost immediately. It definitely seems
that way based on the timeline, and the pattern
unfortunately repeated itself. By the 1940 census,
records show he had remarried. Okay. His new
wife was a woman named Irene. But further sources
indicate that this marriage also eventually ended
in divorce. It's the classic Hollywood tragedy,
isn't it? Yeah. We always hear about the massive
A -list stars having, you know, seven husbands
or wives, the whole Elizabeth Taylor lifestyle.
Right. But even for the blue collar guys working
in the background, the pressure was exactly the
same or honestly, maybe even worse. I'd argue
it was much worse. They dealt with the same incredibly
long hours, the same constant travel to locations,
the same deep instability. But they didn't have
the mansions or the personal assistants or the
massive bank accounts to smooth things over.
Yeah, they were just scraping by. And then you
have to factor in the physical pain we talked
about. Right. If you're waking up incredibly
sore every single day from being thrown through
a breakaway window and you have to get up at
4 a .m. to drive to some dusty ranch in the valley
to do it all again, how do you actually cope
with that? In 1940s Hollywood, you drink. Yeah.
There wasn't physical therapy for bit players.
There wasn't advanced sports medicine or pain
management as we know it today. There was just
whiskey at the end of the day. Which sadly leads
us to the end of his story. Yes. Carl Matthews
died on May 3rd, 1959 in Los Angeles County.
And what did the record say? The official cause
of death listed on his certificate is psoriasis
of the liver. Which usually points pretty directly
to long -term alcohol abuse. It does. It's a
very tragic, very common ailment for men of that
specific generation, and especially in that line
of physical work. It strongly suggests a life
of self -medication. He was trying to get through
the days. Exactly. He was likely in constant
pain, both physical and perhaps emotional from
the broken marriages. And alcohol was the cheapest,
most available remedy. And if we circle back
to that age discrepancy we talked about at the
very beginning of the deep dive. Right. If he
was actually born in 1903, like the census consistently
said, he was only 56 years old when he died.
Wow. If the death certificate was right and he
was born in 1899, he was 60. 56 or 60. I mean,
either way, that is not a ripe old age. That
is startlingly young to pass away. It really
highlights the ultimate cost of that tough guy
lifestyle. Think about his whole arc. He survived
the brutal trenches of World War I. He survived
the treacherous storms in the Merchant Marines.
He survived dodging trains on the railroads.
But Hollywood. Hollywood kind of chewed him up.
It really did. It's very sobering. You look at
a list of 200 credits on an actor's page and
you naturally think, wow, what an incredibly
successful career. And to be fair, it was successful.
He worked more consistently than 99 % of actors
who come to L .A. ever do. That's true. But the
human cost behind that long list of credits is
just immense. I think that's a very fair assessment
based on the sources. The studio industry needed
men like him. They needed men who could take
a heavy hit, men who could ride fast, men who
genuinely looked the part of a hardened pioneer.
But the industry didn't necessarily take care
of them in return. No, it's an extractive industry
at its core. Once those guys couldn't take the
hard fall anymore or once their bodies gave out,
they were often just replaced, just gone. But
I think it's really important as we wrap up here
that we don't just view Carl Matthews as a victim
of the system. He was a true professional. Absolutely.
We shouldn't pity him at all. We should respect
the incredible hustle. He worked consistently
for 33 years in what is famously the most fickle
industry on Earth. Right. That takes an immense
amount of talent, endurance, and profound reliability.
Directors knew that if they hired Carl Matthews
for a shoot, he would show up on time, he would
hit his mark perfectly, and he would make the
scene work. That's such a great point. Reliability
is its own kind of talent. Especially when the
sun is going down, you're losing light and you
only have one shot to get the wagon crash right
because the studio can't afford to rebuild the
wagon. Exactly. You need the guy who gets it
right the first time. Yeah. And connecting his
specific story to the bigger historical picture.
When we talk about the golden age of Westerns,
we spend a lot of time talking about the myth
of the West. Right. The rugged individualism,
the frontier spirit, the whole taming of the
wild land narrative. The John Wayne fantasy.
The idea that one stoic man with a gun can solve
every complex problem. Carl Matthews was. In
a very strange way, the actual reality behind
that shiny myth. Yes. He was the actual laborer.
He was the actual war veteran. He was the actual
guy with Cherokee heritage working day in and
day out in a movie genre that often simplified
or completely mythologized all of those complex
things. He was the real deal pretending to be
a fake cowboy while the fake cowboys got all
the glory. That is perfectly said. And without
him. And without the hundreds of other working
class stuntmen and bit players just like him,
that Hollywood myth would have just been actors
in clean costumes standing around talking on
a soundstage. He gave it the necessary grit.
He gave it the illusion of real danger. When
you watch an old film and a fight scene feels
surprisingly visceral, it's not because of the
star throwing the fake punch. It's because of
the guy taking the hit and selling it to the
camera. So, after digging through all these records
and filmographies, what does this all mean for
us, the viewers, sitting at home today? I think
it fundamentally changes how you watch these
films. Or at least, it really should. How so?
Well, the next time you watch The Cisco Kid or
Buffalo Bill rides... Again, don't just focus
on the guy with the most lines. Look at the edges
of the frame. Right. Look at the guy quietly
holding the horses in the background. Look at
the guy taking the punch and falling over the
table. That's where the real physical work of
cinema is happening. That's Carl Matthews. It's
like seeing the hidden strings on a puppet. But
instead of ruining the magic of the show, it
actually makes you appreciate the skill of the
puppeteer even more. Exactly. It deepens your
appreciation for the sheer collective craft of
filmmaking. It's a massive group effort built
on the bruised backs of people whose names usually
don't ever make it onto the movie poster. Carl
Matthews. Born on a reservation, worked the dangerous
railroads, and died in Hollywood. 150 plus films
where his only job was to play the underling
who loses. Yeah. But today, for a few minutes
at least, he gets to be the star of the show.
And deservedly so. He really represents a massive,
largely invisible workforce that quite literally
built the cinema history we cherish today. You
know, it really makes you wonder the next time
you're scrolling through a streaming app or watching
an old black and white movie on cable, just pause
it during a big crowded scene like a bar fight.
Just freeze the frame. Yeah, freeze the frame
and really look at the faces in the background.
We focus so much of our cultural energy on the
stars, the offscreen drama, the big awards. But
here's a thought I want you to take with you.
How many other Carl Matthews are frozen in those
frames? How many of those nameless extras stormed
a beach in Normandy or built a skyscraper with
their bare hands or lived a life that was ten
times more dramatic than the script they were
filming that day? We see them for split second,
but they carried a whole rich world with them.
A whole world in a single frame. Well, thanks
for listening to this deep dive into the life
of the invisible cowboy. We'll catch you on the
next one.