Trivia

When director John Boorman was having trouble finding a talented actor who was also toothless for a key role in Délivrance (1972), co-star Burt Reynolds remembered Coward from having worked with him in a Wild West show in Maggie Valley, NC. Coward--who was not an actor and was toothless and illiterate--arrived for his audition looking so perfect for the part of a rural mountain man that Boorman first thought Reynolds had prompted him on how to dress.

When director John Boorman explained to Coward that one of the things his character was going to do was to rape a man, Coward replied, "I've done worse."

Started acting at the Wild West Show called "Ghost Town in the Sky" in Maggie Valley, NC , in 1961. He played a "Grandpappy" who came to town to avenge his son's death. There he confronted the Marshal (Harry Valentine) and Digger the Undertaker, who buried Grandpappy's son. Digger was played by Robert Doyle Teaster. Actor Dean Teaster is Teaster's son. Coward, Harry Valentine and Doyle Teaster acted with Dan Blocker, Tony Dow, Clu Gulager, Paul Fix and Burt Reynolds. "Ghost Town in the Sky" finally closed in 2003. During that time, the above original Ghost Town Gunfighters did live theater in the streets every hour.

He played one of two sadistic mountain men in John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance (with Bill McKinney), and several of his lines became infamous in pop culture.

Coward's performance and physical appearance in Deliverance has provided inspiration for other media, most notably the main character from the Primus video "My Name Is Mud", which also sampled lines from the film.

A friend offered Coward a job as an outlaw gunfighter at the Old West amusement park, Ghost Town in Maggie Valley. While performing at the park with an assortment of acting school students working over their summer break, locals, and professional actors, an accident with a prop pistol resulted in two of his front teeth being knocked out.

He left school and began working a variety of itinerant labor jobs to help support the family, including at an orchard and operating heavy machinery.

Like the others in the film Deliverance , Coward performed his own stunts, including being lowered off a cliff into a river.

After appearing in the film Deliverance, Coward worked at the BASF factory in Asheville, North Carolina for 27 years.

Born on exactly the same date as country/western legend Kenny Rogers, whose better-known work includes "Coward of the County" (although "Cowboy" is not mentioned in the song and did not appear in the movie).

Coward was reportedly turning onto the highway when he was hit by an oncoming truck. His companion, Bertha Brooks, Coward's pet squirrel, Angel, and his Chihuahua, Little Man, were also killed in the crash.