content in his most popular films and in many ways perpetuated by himself, affected his artistic legacy. His friends and family have claimed this does a disservice to a man who was actually more complex than generally credited. He used such actors as Warren Oates, L. Q. Jones, R. G. Armstrong, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, and Kris Kristofferson, and collaborators (Jerry Fielding, Lucien Ballard, Gordon Dawson, and Martin Baum) in many of his films, and several of his friends and assistants stuck by him to the end of his life. Peckinpah spent a great deal of his life in Mexico after his marriage to Palacios, eventually buying property in the country. He was fascinated by the Mexican lifestyle and Mexican culture, and he often portrayed it with an unusual sentimentality and romanticism in his films. Four of his films, Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), were filmed entirely on location within Mexico, while The Getaway (1972) concludes with a couple escaping to freedom there. From 1979 until his death, Peckinpah lived at the Murray Hotel in Livingston, Montana. Peckinpah was seriously ill during his final years, as a lifetime of hard living caught up with him. Regardless, he continued to work until his last months. He died of heart failure at age 59 on December 28, 1984, in Inglewood, California. At the time, he was working on the script for On the Rocks, a projected independent film to be shot in San Francisco. Television career On the recommendation of Don Siegel, Peckinpah established himself during the late 1950s as a scriptwriter of western series of the era, selling scripts to Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, Broken Arrow, Klondike, The Rifleman, and Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, the latter Four Star Television productions. He wrote one episode "The Town" (December 13, 1957) for the CBS series, Trackdown. Peckinpah wrote a screenplay from the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, a draft that evolved into the 1961 Marlon Brando film One-Eyed Jacks. His writing led to directing, and he directed a 1958 episode of Broken Arrow (generally credited as his first official directing job) and several 1960 episodes of Klondike, (co-starring James Coburn, L. Q. Jones, Ralph Taeger, Joi Lansing, and Mari Blanchard). He also directed the CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve,