George Kennedy’s pummelling of a punch-drunk Paul Newman in the prison drama Cool Hand Luke and his ecstatic cheerleading as Newman later tries to eat 50 hardboiled eggs were among the most memorable film sequences of the 1960s.
As the character Dragline, an illiterate and thuggish inmate who bullies Luke, but is impressed by the fact that he refuses to go down, and is then humanised by the freewheeling hero, Kennedy won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1968. He would forever be associated with the cult movie that chimed with the rebellious mood of the times.
A bear-like man with a deep, booming voice, Kennedy had till then mainly paid his rent in Hollywood by playing “third-through-the-door bad guys” in TV westerns. His