Lean, eminently reliable veteran Hollywood player whose crookedly menacing face with its roving, sightless left eye helped him carve a niche as a villain in numerous Westerns and crime dramas since the 1950s, and later as a reliably comedic presence in his golden years. The actor's trademark cockeye was the result of a childhood fight in Phoenix after a fellow Boy Scout stabbed him in the left eye with a pencil during a scrape at a troop meeting. After working as a theater manager, hotel manager and bookkeeper and accountant for film producers including Samuel Goldwyn, Elam was given his first
