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Herbert Coward, the actor whose modest career included the small but memorable role of Toothless Man in the 1972 thriller “Deliverance,” died Thursday in a car accident in North Carolina. He was 85 years old.
Coward died after driving on U.S. Highway 23 in Haywood County, in the western part of the state, and was hit by a truck, said Sgt. Marcus Bethea, spokesman for the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. A passenger in Coward’s vehicle, Bertha Brooks, 78, also died, as did a chihuahua and a pet squirrel, Sergeant Bethea said.
Mr. Coward, who lived in Canton, North Carolina, in Haywood County, was often seen with his pet squirrel, according to local news reports.
The truck driver, 16, was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, according to Sergeant Bethea. She said it was unclear what caused the accident and that no charges had been filed.
Coward, nicknamed Cowboy, was best known for his role in “Deliverance,” which starred Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight. The film is an adaptation of a James Dickey novel about four Atlanta businessmen on a harrowing canoe trip through rural Georgia.
In the film, two of the businessmen encounter two hostile mountain men in the woods, one of them being Toothless Man. The men tie one of the friends to a tree and then force the other to strip down to his underwear and “scream like a pig.”
As the two men contemplate what to do with their friend tied to the tree, Mr. Coward’s character says, “He has a very pretty mouth, doesn’t he?”
The four friends eventually reunite and escape by killing one of the men with an arrow and driving away Mr. Coward’s character. The scene is brief, but Mr. Coward’s line became one of the most memorable movie lines of the 1970s and the most remembered of his career.
Coward’s acting career was largely limited after “Deliverance.” He appeared in the 2007 film “Ghost Town: The Movie” and in an episode of the television series “Hillbilly Blood” in 2013, according to IMDB.
Herbert Coward was born in Haywood County on August 21, 1938, the son of Fred and Moody Parker Coward, said in a interview with The Smoky Mountain News in 2019. His mother died when he was young, and Coward said he worked different jobs around the country, including acting at a Wild West theme park in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.
Complete information about the survivors was not immediately available Thursday.
While at the theme park, Coward briefly worked with Reynolds, who later recommended him for the role of Toothless Man, Coward said in the interview.
in a television interview in 2022 Reflecting on the 50th anniversary of “Deliverance,” Mr. Coward said he was illiterate and learned his lines for “Deliverance” by listening to a script on a tape recorder.
“I write my name,” he said, “and that’s it.