Friday, August 14, 2009

AS SEEN ON TV: WYATT EARP, A 43 YEAR SPAN

As the time for my vacation draws nigh, I figured I'd close out the week with a couple of Western "two-fers" for the "As Seen On TV" showcase.

For Friday:

WYATT EARP
Spring, 1877

AS SEEN IN:
'Deadwood'

AS PLAYED BY:
Gale Harold

WYATT EARP
Summer, 1920
AS SEEN IN:
"The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies"

AS PLAYED BY:
Leo Gordon

Trespassing into the movie universe for a moment, I always figured that a nice double-bill would be "Hour Of The Gun" and "Sunset" for the same reason - James Garner played Wyatt Earp in both, at two different points in his personal timeline.....

BCnU!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gale Harold's Wyatt Earp on Deadwood was a clever bit of revisionism -- sort of a publicity seeking fraud, who manufactured (along with his brother) a stagecoach attack from which to "rescue" the stagecoach and ride into Deadwood as heroes. He had nice scenes with Bullock and Swearengen, and a nice bit where he planted a gun on a nasty Pinkerton his brother had just shot. Swearengen sees right through him, and Bullock is a bit threatened by the competition (they dressed Harold a lot like Timothy Olyphant). It was all a disappointment to a lot of people who were expecting a hero like Keith Carradine's Buffalo Bill, but it was pretty clever. There's room in the Wyatt Earp canon for Wyatt the Self-Promoter. And his caretaker role towards his loose-cannon brother was kind of sweet. Gale Harold, even grunged up, is pretty hot.

Unknown said...

James Garner's second time around as Wyatt was in the movie "Sunset", not "Twilight".

Toby O'B said...

Thanks, PT!