His quintessentially American characters usually went by names such as Spike, Rocky, Zero, Squint, Babe, Lefty, Monk, Knuckles, Cactus Jack or just Sarge--but he went to prison with Bogie, sailed to sea with the Duke, and shared the small screen with a scene-stealing dog named Rin-Tin-Tin--all while becoming one of the most familiar faces in classic movies, even though most of us rarely knew his name.
in Guelph, Ontario, he wasn't even American, his name was not Sawyer, and this good, all-round actor was interested in the world, not just acting:
Recalling Joe Sawyer
GUELPH — When movie directors of the 1930s, '40s and '50s needed a square-jawed tough guy, they looked no further than Joe Sawyer.
His stern, fair-haired Irish looks won him parts as the nemesis or sidekick of some of the best-known actors of the mid-20th century Hollywood: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Jimmy Durante, Phil Silvers and John Wayne. And Sawyer is known to baby boomers for his role in a family favourite television program that marks its 50th anniversary this year.
Yes, Joe Sawyer was the quintessential American everyman. Except, he wasn't an American. He wasn't of Irish background. He wasn't even a Sawyer.
The man who entered into the homes of millions of North American families as the gruff but warm-hearted Sgt. Biff O'Hara, in the small-screen classic The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, was born Joseph Frederick Sauers in Guelph.
While today's digital archives sketch out Sauers' life as a character actor, interviews with family members and family history sleuths flesh out the story of a Guelph native who followed the footlights to Hollywood.
Born in 1906 to German parents, Joseph and Lavina Sauers, Joe Sauers had an unusual childhood, according to Joe's son Riley Sauers, of Harrisburg, Ore.
Joe's father died while Joe was still a toddler. Although he was schooled in Guelph, says Riley, once Joe was old enough, he was regularly packed off halfway across Canada to spend his summers working on an uncle's farm in Saskatchewan.
Riley says that while Joe Sawyer became a bit of a "foodie," even becoming a member of a gastronomic society, he always had an abiding inclination toward "hearty" eating. "He would say to me," said Riley, "you'll never know what a breakfast is, son, until you eat a breakfast on a farm."
But Joe was not destined to stay on the farm. He made his way to California, worked at the Pasadena Playhouse and later took bit parts, often uncredited, but later credited as Joe Sauers and then changed his screen name to Joe Sawyer.
His early appearances did not signal a lifelong career in film. Joe was a bit player. If there was a need for a stocky, Irish-looking guy to be a sergeant, football player, man holding the gun for his buddy or a bouncer, Joe was a likely candidate.
The Internet Movie Database says that his "familiar mug appeared everywhere during the 1930s and 1940s, particularly as a stock player for Warner Bros. in its more standard college musicals, comedies and crime yarns. He could play both sides of the fence, street cops and mob gunmen, with equal ease."
In the early part of his career, Joe appeared uncredited in such films as Shopworn (starring Barbara Stanwyck) and Arsène Lupin (starring Lionel Barrymore and John Barrymore). And being a bit player meant you shared the same makeup mirror with other bit players. One of those unknowns who filled out the scenery with Joe in two films (The Coach and Maker of Men) was a then-unknown John Wayne, who became a poker and fishing buddy.
At age 29, Joe Sawyer's minor role in the 1935 John Ford-directed film noire The Informer brought him some critical attention, at a time when he was getting a lot of screen time. Still playing small parts, Joe appeared in 16 films released in 1934, 14 released in 1935 and 17 released in 1936.
Prominent among the 1936 releases was The Petrified Forest, where Joe plays henchman to the star, Humphrey Bogart. Sawyer appeared in five other Bogart films.
Joe Sawyer's filmography is extensive: there's the boundary-pushing Howard Hughes western The Outlaw and the perhaps lesser known Tarzan's Desert Mystery. In all, Joe worked on more than 200 films — Gilda, Sergeant York, The Grapes of Wrath, They Died With Their Boots On, It Came From Outer Space, North to Alaska — partly because he was not on contract to any one studio, so could work on several films at once.
This fluidity allowed him to work with many directors, including Stanley Kubrick in his complicated heist flick The Killing in 1956. Chuck Stephens writes for the blog The Criterion Collection that The Killing is a gem of film noire, thanks in no small part to Joe Sawyer's contribution in the ensemble cast.
Joe also worked in television, on Maverick, Bat Masterson, Peter Gunn and Frontier Doctor. He played the role of Butch Cassidy on TV, a role made more famous by Robert Redford on the big screen. But Joe Sawyer was probably best known to baby boomers as Sgt. Biff O'Hara from The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, which ran from 1954 to 1959.
From today's perspective, Rin Tin Tin might sound like a rather thin offering. An orphan boy and his dog are adopted by an American cavalry troop at a fort in the "old West." Every episode, there's trouble. And "Rinty" comes to the rescue. But it was a force majeure in 1950s television.
Susan Orlean writes in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend that "the show was an instant success by every measure. It had one of the fastest ratings climbs in television history and from its start was ABC's second-highest-rated show overall, trailing only the Walt Disney show. Nine million of the 30 million televisions in the United States were tuned in, several million more than were tuned to Lassie, which had premiered on CBS a month earlier."
Compare that 30 per cent market share to the mere 13 per cent that NBC's Sunday Night Football now commands.
Network television had gruelling shooting schedules, said Sawyer's son, Riley, and Sawyer's daughter-in-law Gloria Sauers, who lives in Trabuco Canyon, Calif. She said that her late husband, Casey Sauers, would recount how his father would leave for work at 4 a.m. and get home at 8 p.m., day in and day out. Riley Sauers said the studio would shoot two 30-minute episodes a week, with each episode crammed into two and a half days of shooting.
But, says Riley, his dad loved the work: "He was a workaholic. He said that he couldn't count on having movie work five days a week, and he liked to have work five days a week."
So, early on in his career, Joe took advantage of the booming housing market in California and did home construction on the side, says Riley: "He drove to the studio with a pickup truck loaded with lumber and then went straight to the construction site after work."
His labours paid off, Riley and Gloria said, with good schools for his children, the ability to indulge in his passions for cigars, sailing, cars and shooting, and a nice home in Glendale, where he could host gatherings with such friends as John Wayne and Bela Lugosi. Gloria said her late husband referred to Joe as a "man's man" with a love for his Corvette and a penchant for using his basement shooting range at any hour.
It was a real Hollywood life, said Riley. His father once told of being awakened in the early morning hours by his agent to learn that billionaire recluse Howard Hughes wanted him to do a reading for a stage version of the soon-to-be-released film The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell and Walter Huston. Joe asked when the reading would take place. "Now," said the agent. So Joe found himself at 1 a.m. rehearsing with Huston under the watchful eyes of Hughes, doing the scene over and over until sunrise. Riley said, "And then Howard Hughes paid my dad a month's salary for the inconvenience of coming out in the middle of the night. He never forgot that."
But personal tragedy ended Joe's screen life in his 50s. His first marriage, to Jeane Wood, daughter of director Sam Wood, had been brief. Then Joe met and married in 1937 the love of his life — June Golden, 10 years his junior. She was, says Riley, one of the young women hired every year by the MGM Studios, some of whom became starlets.
The couple had five children, one of whom died in infancy, and then, in 1960, June died of leukemia. Both Riley and Gloria say that Joe had difficulty coping. He left the Glendale home and moved to a smaller home in Beverly Hills. He turned his back on the film business.
He was talked out of retirement to appear in another John Ford film with his fishing buddy John Wayne: the epic 1962 western How the West Was Won. But it was his last "bit."
He turned full time to property development, and was a key player in the construction of various projects in Southern California, including housing developments, shopping centres and a hospital.
Riley says that later in life, his father was able to indulge in his love of travel: "He loved the world, he loved people and he loved cultures." He was equally at home on an ocean freighter or a passenger liner, although "if he was going on a cruise ship, he would diet for three to four weeks before a trip, because he loved the food."
Riley said his father had many stories about his eating adventures, including a 36-course meal served over three days in Lima, Peru, and pancakes "the size of pizzas" at an eatery in Vancouver.
Illness curtailed Joe's travels, and he moved to Oregon to be closer to Riley. He died April 21, 1982, of liver cancer. He was 75.
"When he died, we got sympathy notes from Pickwick Books (in New York) and other book sellers. He was such an avid reader."
Riley, summing up his father's life, said that despite all the Hollywood connections, his father's focus was on his family. If they went out to dinner, he would gently turn aside fan requests because "he was having dinner with his family."
"He was a great father."