Rosco Ates

Roscoe Blevel Ates, also billed as Rosco Ates, was born on January 20, 1895, in Grange, a rural hamlet northwest of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He died on March 1, 1962, of lung cancer at West Valley Community Hospital in Encino, California, at the age of 67. Over the course of his career he worked as a vaudeville performer, stage and screen actor, comedian, and musician, becoming particularly associated with western films and television. He was best known for his recurring portrayal of the western character Soapy Jones.

As a child, Ates contended with a speech impediment, which he overcame by the time he was 18. His early professional work included playing violin to accompany silent films at a theater in Chickasha, Oklahoma. He subsequently pursued a career as a concert violinist before determining that vaudeville comedy offered greater economic opportunity. Performing as half of the team of Ates and Darling, he spent fifteen years as a headliner on the Orpheum Circuit, where he revived his former stutter as a source of comic effect.

Ates made his Broadway appearance in 1937, playing the role of James McCracken in the musical comedy Sea Legs. During the late 1930s he also undertook a personal appearance tour of Scotland and England, and toured selected American cities in Hollywood Scandals, a stage revue featuring a company of 35 performers.

His film career began with a role as a ship's cook in South Sea Rose, followed the next year by the role of Old Stuff in the widescreen production Billy the Kid, starring Wallace Beery. He performed songs in a number of his films, including Turkey in the Straw in Billy the Kid (1930), The Wedding March in Remote Control (1930), Farmer in the Dell in Renegades of the West (1932), and Home on the Range in Colorado Serenade (1946), among others.

Ates served in World War II, participating in the training program for Air Force fighter squads at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. His television career began in 1950 when he was cast as Deputy Roscoe in the ABC series The Marshal of Gunsight Pass. He subsequently appeared in a wide range of television productions, including the syndicated western series The Cisco Kid, in which he played Henry Wilson in the episode The Census Taker, and Gale Storm's sitcom My Little Margie. He portrayed Curly Dawes, a telegraph operator, in Gail Davis's Annie Oakley series, and was cast as Old Timer in the Wagon Train episode The Sacramento Story on NBC in 1958. Between 1958 and 1960 he appeared five times on CBS's Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Additional television credits from 1959 and 1960 include The Restless Gun, State Trooper, Buckskin, Maverick, Man with a Camera, Shotgun Slade, and Bourbon Street Beat. In 1960 he appeared as a guest on NBC's This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards, for a presentation honoring honorary Hollywood mayor Johnny Grant.

His final credited roles came in 1961, when he appeared as a drunk in Robert Stack's ABC series The Untouchables and as sheriffs in The Red Skelton Show. His last screen appearance, in Jerry Lewis's 1961 film The Errand Boy, was uncredited.

Ates was married three times. Following his divorce from Clara Callahan, he married Leonore Belle Jumps in 1949; she died in 1955. In December 1960 he married model Beatrice Heisser.