The Southern Movies series explores images of the South in modern films as well as how those images affect American perspectives on the region.

The name of actor Robert Golden “RG” Armstrong may not be as well known as some, but fans of Southern movies will know him as Big Bear, the hardened moonshiner in the 1973 classic White Lightning. Even in a field of great actors giving strong performances – Burt Reynolds at Gator McCluskey, Ned Beatty as Sheriff JC Connors – Big Bear is still one of the memorable characters in Southern movies. Gator is introduced to this greasy and gruff leader of backwoods moonshine production by his friend Rebel Roy, and within a short time, the elder man has a large hunting knife to the new arrival’s throat. Ultimately, Big Bear will be one of the men who capture Gator, who has been let out of prison to infiltrate the operation. They intend to kill him, of course, but Big Bear is injured in the drunken melee instead. The last we see of him, he is sitting in JC Conners’ car at Dude Watson’s funeral and suggests that they go fishing some time.

RG Armstrong was born on this day – April 7 – in 1917 in Birmingham, Alabama. He later attended the University of North Carolina and did theater there before moving into an acting career. He had roles in the Southern classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Miracle Worker on Broadway. From the mid-1950s through the late 1960s, his acting work had him both on TV and in movies, often in westerns, and by the 1970s, he was landing roles in a wide variety of projects, even blaxploitation films. He played the sheriff in 1961’s The Fugitive Kind, which was set in Mississippi. In the 1970s, Armstrong had parts in other lesser-known Southern movies: 1972’s The Legend of Hillbilly John, 1975’s Dixie Dynamite, and 1979’s Steel. Later, in the ’80s, he was the town doctor in 1982’s The Beast Within and the mountain family’s patriarch in 1989’s Trapper County War. On TV, his work included roles on The Andy Griffith Show in 1960s and on The Dukes of Hazzard in the ’80s.

RG Armstrong died in 2012 at age 95. His New York Times obituary called him “a rough-hewed character actor known for playing sheriffs, outlaws and other macho roles.” Turner Classic’s website describes him this way: “A flinty, often imposing presence in features and television for over half a century, character actor R.G. Armstrong played men whose mere presence elevated the tension.” Aside from his prominent film career, Playbill magazine remembered him as a “Tennessee Williams Actor,” and the fan wiki for The Andy Griffith Show recounts his Farmer Flint character.