By RAY KELLY
Peter Jason, a character actor whose career stretched from Rio Lobo to the popular HBO series Deadwood and included Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, died on February 20, 2025 at his West Hollywood home. He was 80.
He worked with such directors as Howard Hawks, Steven Spielberg, Walter Hill, John Carpenter, and Ethan and Joel Coen to name but a few. Jason’s more than 250 film and television appearances included 48 Hrs., The Hunt for Red October and The Karate Kid. He played the ghost of Welles in the 2014 comedy short Conjuring Orson.
Producer-director Frank Marshall, who worked with his longtime friend on several projects, including The Other Side of the Wind and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, described him as a “big personality with an even bigger heart.”
“He created memorable characters throughout his extensive career, including the wonderfully funny football coach in Arachnophobia,” Marshall told Wellesnet. “He loved life, his job, his family and friends. His boundless energy and enthusiasm elevated everything he touched, always creating and entertaining with music, plays, books, food, furniture, art objects, and helping those in need. He was a cheerleader at my high school, Newport Harbor, when we first met in 1962, and he continued to be that cheerleader throughout every aspect of his life.”
He added, “Not many actors build an entire career playing supporting roles, but ‘The Jase’ did, winning the praise of directors from John Carpenter to Walter Hill to Orson Welles, all who cast him in numerous films throughout his career. He was loved by all who knew him and will be truly missed by a vast family of friends and colleagues. Sail on, my dear friend.”
Larry Jackson, who served as a production manager alongside Marshall on The Other Side of the Wind, described Jason as “truly a mensch for all seasons.”
“The extraordinary talented Peter Jason was a core member of a small group of us. Frank Marshall dubbed VISTOW – Volunteers In Service To Orson Welles. Our motley group was always ready to help Orson with anything he needed, whether it was acting, driving, working on set, or delivering groceries,” Jackson said. “Peter, most of all kept us all laughing and in good humor. He did everything went great talent, great warmth, and infectious humor.”
Fellow VISTOW member and film historian Joseph McBride said he was saddened by the death of the veteran actor.
“Peter had many film and TV credits, but I knew him from The Other Side of the Wind, in which he plays one of Jake Hannaford’s righthand men. Peter played a similar role off-camera too. Peter was the epitome of a VISTOW member. Orson took a special liking to Peter (who didn’t?), a man whose bonhomie was as bountiful and generous as his own,” McBride said. “Besides acting in the film, Peter became an aide to Welles to do whatever needed to be done. He could always make Orson laugh. I especially remember one time when Orson had some knotty problem to solve, and Peter volunteered to go take care of it by using ‘my Orange County charm,’ which Orson found hilarious and kept repeating when he asked Peter to do things.”
“I last saw Peter in 2018 at the Telluride Film Festival North American debut of Other Wind and the documentaries about its making andpostproduction. When I met Peter in the early ’70s I told him I admired his death scene in his film debut, Howard Hawks’s last film, Rio Lobo (1970). The young Union Army lieutenant is fatally injured in the train crash early in the film. John Wayne comforts him as he is dying. At first Hawks thought Wayne was too corny with the way he comforts him and told Wayne to play it more directly. So Wayne put a movingly stoical honesty into his line, ‘Lieutenant, your neck’s broken.’ Peter asks his commander to leave him so he can die by himself, because he’s not sure how he will do. I asked Peter if he realized they were redoing a scene from Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings, when the dying Thomas Mitchell bids a terse farewell to Cary Grant and asks him to leave. Peter chuckled and said when they were about to do the scene, Hawks came over to him and said, ‘Peter, I did this scene once before in a picture called Only Angels Have Wings, and it seemed to work pretty well…’”
A Los Angeles native, Jason is survived by his wife Eileen and a daughter, Robin Goldwasser.
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