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I was pleased as punch (and really, how pleased does punch actually get? Wouldn’t it be better to say “I was pleased to have punch”? What’s that? Oh, Punch the puppet… ah, nevermind) to see that a couple folks guessed Stephen Lang when I asked what actor was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tombstone, and Gettysburg. I came very close to using Lang, who appears this weekend in Avatar, as the quiz answer this week, but was worried he’s just not a well-known enough name yet… yet… (I have a feeling Avatar will get the fine, stone-faced character actor a lot more work.) And in fact, Lang was in both Tombstone (as Ike Clanton) and Gettysburg (as Confederate Gen. George Pickett), but alas he was not in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (More Lang trivia, and it’s not even his post: In the Gettysburg prequel Gods and Generals, he played Stonewall Jackson–it’s one of his biggest and best performances.)

So it was not Lang. However, many of you did know the correct answer, and Tim Sebastian knew it first! Tim gets the homemade construction-paper medal, while Mickey came in second, and Richie Rich was third. (Have you won a Threes yet, Richie? You’re due, man… you’re due…)

So what actor was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tombstone, and Gettysburg? Just saddle up the ol’ Inviso-Text and see!

It sure was Sam Elliott, host to the greatest living mustache, and a supporting actor in this weekend’s Did You Hear About the Morgans? (He also has a cameo in Up in the Air.)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was 25-year-old Elliott’s first film role–he’s one of the card players Sundance is winning from at the start of the film, though you only see the silhouette of his shoulder from behind.

After a lot more Westerns and TV show appearances, most folks noticed Elliott as Cher’s biker boyfriend in 1985′s Mask, and of course a few years later came his greatest role, Wade Garrett in Road House. Then there is one of my favorite Elliott appearances, as the wise, mysterious sarsaparilla-drinking cowboy Stranger in The Big Lebowski. “Sometimes you eat the baar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.”

In 1993′s Tombstone, Elliott played Virgil Earp, the older brother of Kurt Russell’s Wyatt, and in Gettysburg he was Union Brigader General John Buford, whose calvary troops were the first to meet the Confederate forces in the small Pennsylvania town and who then determined the site of the famous battle.

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