AS SEEN ON TV: MERVIN & MAUDE WENDELL

MAUDE & MERVIN WENDELL

CREATED BY:

James Michener

PORTRAYED BY:

Mervin Wendell - Anthony Zerbe

Maude Wendell - Lois Nettleton

AS SEEN IN:

'Centennial'

TV STATUS:

"Born To Rerun"

(Splainin to follow)

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

Mervin Wendell (Anthony Zerbe), his wife Maude (Lois Nettleton), and young son Philip (Doug McKeon) come to town. The Wendells are ostensibly itinerate actors but in reality they are charlatans and con-artists working their way across the new railroad towns one step ahead of the law. Their favorite con is called the "badger game". 

The con works on the local pastor and the Wendells reap large blackmail proceeds. Their plan turns sour when they try it on a worldwise businessman, Soren Sorenson (Sandy McPeak). He recognizes their trick, too late, and threatens to expose them. Wendell attacks him. They struggle and Sorenson is killed by Maude Wendell. While looking through his belongings, they find a large fortune in cash that Sorenson was going to use to finance a real estate purchase. Philip hides the body in a subterranean cave along the riverbank. They keep the money but realize that they cannot spend it as it will expose their guilt.

With the sheriff now out of the picture, Mervin and Maude Wendell are now free from legal suspicion. He charms a railroad land agent and begins planting the seeds of a future real estate empire.

By the turn of the 20th century, Mervin Wendell has grown rich selling marginal land to naive immigrants and easterners for dryland farming, lending on the land at extortion rates then foreclosing and reselling the land at a profit. Though the secret of his family's success still haunts Philip, he continues the family real estate business often mercilessly foreclosing on unsuccessful farmers. Among those are young Iowans Earl and Alice Grebe. Despite warnings from Hans Brumbaugh and Jim Lloyd, the Grebes settle on the drylands of the prairie and take out a mortgage with Mervin Wendell. 

Two for Tuesday!

BCnU!