As he drives across the southern U.S. in a $6,500 souped-up orange Pontiac sports car, the character called "GTO ' picks up half a dozen strays. As each hitchhiker gets into the bucket seat beside him, GTO shrewdly sizes him up and, chameleonlike, takes on a completely new identity, one that he hopes will impress his listener. Spinning out fantasies about imaginary pasts, GTO becomes by turns a gambler, a television producer, a racer, a war hero. The role of GTO in the movie Two Lane Blacktop calls for virtuoso acting, and gets it—from a 43-year-old veteran of a hundred movie and television westerns named Warren Gates. Still little known to the public, Oates is now being described by directors as a new Paul Muni, a John Garfield, a Humphrey Bogart.
Oates manages the role of the fantasist faultlessly. His eyes gleam, his smile shifts. Sometimes his face seems to be under two separate spells, one side of it benign, the other twitching with intimations of violence. And occasionally Oates will let all his defenses collapse, as when GTO sits in a North Carolina roadside diner and abstractedly orders "champagne and caviar and chicken sandwiches on toast." Suddenly there is a despairing glimpse of a schizophrenic life cracked by thwarted dreams.
Ragging the Hillbilly. With all its variety, the role bears some surprising resemblances to Oates' own life. He was born in Depoy, Ky., a poverty pocket in the coal-mining district. When the family lost its general store during the Depression, his father went to work at odd jobs on the road while his mother took in boarders. His Great-Aunt Sis used to tell about the night she took in Jesse James and his partner just before they robbed a bank in Russelville. They left a $10 gold piece under a breakfast plate. As a kid in bib overalls, Warren pitched in and did his share; he picked strawberries for 2¢ a quart, wormed tobacco for 25¢ a day, loaded sand onto trucks for road builders.
When he was 13, Warren moved with his family to Louisville, where he was ragged by his classmates for being "a hillbilly who dressed funny." Lonely, he spent most of his time in trouble at school, hanging out at the roller rink and getting into fistfights. At 18, Oates joined the Marines, because "I figured if I didn't, I'd end up in jail." After a two-year stint as an airplane mechanic, he landed at the University of Louisville. He drifted in and out of courses in business administration, anthropology and English. Introduced to drama when he read Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, Oates tried a student theater group. "After that, I didn't care about much else. I discovered that acting gave me an identity."