Maverick
1 9 5 7 - 1 9 6 2 (USA)
124 x 60 minute episodes
With a dark sense of humour, Maverick spoofed itself and
other Westerns (winning an Emmy award for Best Western Series in
1959). Bret Maverick (the then relatively unknown James Garner) and
his brother Bart were much better at cards than gun slinging, and
their life was a constant pursuit of money and the easy life. The
Maverick brothers were not heroes in the traditional Western sense.
They were devious, cowardly card-sharps who exploited easy situations
and quickly vanished when faced with potentially violent ones.
A popular part of their repertoire for evading difficult moments
were the "Pappyisms" that corrupted their speech. Quoting their old
Pappy and mentor they were likely to come out with sayings like "My
old Pappy used to say 'If you can't fight 'em, and they won't let you
join 'em, best get out of the county'". In addition to his words of
wisdom, Pappy also left each of his boys a $1000 bill for security
against bad times which they tucked inside their travelling clothes.
Starting out as a straight Western drama (for the first three
episodes), the series soon developed a comedy streak after writer
Marion Hargrove decided to liven up his scriptwriting work by
inserting the simple stage direction: "Maverick looks at him with his
beady little eyes." Other scriptwriters then followed suit and
Maverick took a unique turn away from the more formal and traditional
Warner Brothers Westerns then on the air (Lawman,
Colt .45,
Cheyenne and
Sugarfoot).
The series was created by producer Roy Huggins and developed out of
a story in which he tried to see how many TV Western rules he could
break and get away with; the script was filmed as an episode of
Cheyenne (the episode was called The Dark Rider) and featured
guest-star Diane Brewster as a swindler and cheat - a role she was
later to play in Maverick as a recurring character, gambler
Samantha Crawford.
During the early seasons recurring guest characters popped in and
out of the plots to foil or assist the brothers: Dandy Jim Buckley
(played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), Gentleman Jack Darby (Richard Long),
Big Mike McComb (Leo Gordon) and Bret's regular antagonist, the artful
con-woman Samantha Crawford (Brewster). Among the more amusing
episodes, Hadley's Hunters (in the fourth season) saw Bart
enlist the help of Ty Hardin (Bronco), Will Hutchins (Sugarfoot),
Clint Walker (Cheyenne), John Russell and Peter Brown (Lawman)
all playing their respective characters from the WB stable of Western
TV series (with Edd "Kookie" Byrnes from
77 Sunset Strip as a
blacksmith).
In the fifth season, an episode entitled Three Queens Full
was a wicked parody of Bonanza in which the Subrosa Ranch was
run by Joe Wheelwright and his three sons, Moose, Henry and Small
Paul!
Actor James Garner and his Warner Brothers studio bosses clashed
when Garner took out a lawsuit against the studio for breach of
contract arising out of his suspension during the 1960 writers'
strike. Warners claimed that it was justified in suspending Garner due
to the writers' strike. It was no secret at the time that Garner had
wanted to be released from his contract , and in December 1960 the
judge decided in favour of Garner. (During the course of the testimony
it was revealed that during the strike Warners had illegally obtained
around 100 TV scripts, and had as many as 14 writers working under the
pseudonym of "W. Hermanos" (Spanish for "brothers").
As a replacement for Garner in the fourth season of the original
series, Warners brought on board Roger Moore, as cousin Beauregard, a
Texas expatriate who had lived in England. When Moore departed after
just one season another Maverick brother, Robert Colbert's Brent
Maverick, a slight Garner/Bret look-alike, was introduced in the
spring of 1961 to alternate adventures with Bart. Colbert stayed only
until the end of that season, leaving the final (and longest
remaining) Maverick, Jack Kelly, to ride out the last Maverick season
(1961-62) alone.
The series came to an end after 124 episodes. Garner moved on to a
successful film career but returned to series television in the 1970s
with The Rockford Files (1974-79). He appeared as a guest star
along with Jack Kelly in the 1978 TV movie/pilot The New Maverick,
which produced the short-lived Young Maverick (1979-80) series,
minus Garner; he also starred in the title role of Bret Maverick
(1981-82) which he co-produced with Warners.
TRIVIA NOTE
A movie version of Maverick was released in 1994 with Mel
Gibson starring as Bret Maverick. James Garner appeared in a cameo as
Bret's father.
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