Ray Pourchot

Ray Pourchot had an interesting life starting out in Arizona but was drafted by the Marines during his senior year of high school. Because he was a football player in high school, it was only natural for him to be on the marine's football team at Goleta Air Base during his tenure in the service playing one of the ends on the football team. Once his enlistment was up, he went to USC and played on the 1947 USC Trojans football team once again starting at an end. During this time, Pourchot started occasionally appearing in movies that needed football players for extras and this was his introduction into the motion picture industry. By the mid 1950s, Pourchot was working as a bit player and film extra on a full time basis. His premature balding look and his stern demeanor got him jobs as prisoners, workmen, and occasionally cowboys. Like most extras of the day, he found his niche not only as a workman but also as a stand-in for actors like Robert J. Wilke who needed bigger extras to stand-in for them. During the 1960s, Porchout continued to appear in several big budget productions including a deleted scene in Send Me No Flowers (1964) where Pourchot was only one of two extras who allowed themselves to be seen without their toupee. He also managed to appear in Dean Martin's 4 for Texas (1963) and shows like The Twilight Zone (1959). With the 1970s coming on, Pourchot found regular work as a utility stand-in, bit-part actor, and an extra in a lot of James Garner's productions including Nichols (1971), and The Rockford Files (1974). He also managed to appear in some rougher neighborhoods in detective shows and in some westerns. With his career coming to a close, he continued to work throughout the mid 1980s appearing in shows and movies including Matlock (1986) and Bret Maverick (1981), finally winding down his career in the late 1980s and retiring to Pacific Palisades until his death in 2010.