FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - BARTENDER HARRY SPRAGUE

For our next inductee as a TV Western Friday Hall of Famer, we’re doing a massive conflation of characters – the many Old West bartenders played by character actor Harry Swoger.

From ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ wiki:
Harry Swoger was an American character actor. He portrayed a Barbershop Customer in Season 2 of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’.  

From the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ wiki

Not much is known about Harry Edward Swoger. He was born on March 6, 1919 in Clinton, Ohio, but there is not much known about his career. He was a character actor in more than a hundred television shows, mostly westerns, through the Sixties. He was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, a past master of the Farmers Lodge #153 and a 32nd Degree Mason at Scioto Consistory in Columbus, Ohio. His TV roles included appearances on "Mike Hammer," "The Texan," "Lawman," "Rawhide," "Maverick," "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" with Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "The Twilight Zone," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Untouchables," "Gunsmoke," "Wagon Train," "The Fugitive," "Bonanza," "Gilligan's Island," "Bewitched," "Wild, Wild West," "Ironsides," "Adam 12," "The Big Valley" and "Mannix." Among his movies are "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond," "Pocketful of Miracles," "Robin and The 7 Hoods," "The Over-the-Hill Gang" and an uncredited role in "Hello Dolly." He passed away at the age of 51 at the Valley Emergency Hospital in Van Nuys, California. He was buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.

In many cases, when an actor plays similar characters in a “contemporary” time period, but distant from each other and with different last names, I usually just say that they were either actual twins separated at birth or “identical cousins” whichever meaning for that you prefer.)

And when that situation has occurred in TV Westerns, usually when actors like Morgan Woodward, John Milford, and Jack Elam kept popping up in the same series over and over again as the bad guys, I attributed their new identities to either fake deaths engineered by the sinister undertaker Fabian Lavendor (‘The Wild Wild West’), or rejuvenation due to the magical powers of Jared Garrity (‘The Twilight Zone’). 

But with Harry Swoger’s run of saloon bartenders, the wild, wild West was full of itinerant cowboys who wandered from one cow-town to another.  The Mavericks are the perfect example of that.

So why couldn’t the same have happened with all of these bartenders?  Why can’t they all be the same man and for whatever reason (drunkenness, theft?), he was forced to move on to another establishment throughout the frontier.

It looks as though his longest run in any one place was in Stockton, California, where he served drinks to the Barkley Brothers and other residents of ‘The Big Valley’.  I’m going to assume that Harry Sprague was his real name, but in his travels he took on other aliases – perhaps to avoid recognition for… a past indiscretion.  When he was tending bar in Fort Hayes (as seen in ‘Wagon Train’, he went by the nickname of “Squat”.  And once he used the name of “Charlie”; another time “Mac”.  But that’s the type of nickname you use when you don’t know somebody else’s name.  And how many cowpokes just off the trail are ever going to know a bartender’s name?

Here is a partial list of those Wild West bartenders played by Harry Swoger….

The Big Valley
- The Fallen Hawk (1966)
... Bartender
- Explosion!: Part 1 (1967)
... Harry Sprague
- Explosion!: Part 2 (1967)
... Sprague
- A Flock of Trouble (1967)
... Bartender (uncredited)
- Joaquin (1967)
... Bartender (uncredited)
- In Silent Battle (1968)
... Harry the Bartender
- Run of the Savage (1968)
... Harry

The Virginian
- 50 Days to Moose Jaw (1962)
... Squat

The Over-the-Hill Gang
(1969 TV Movie) 
Mac (Bartender)

The Guns of Will Sonnett

- Reunion (1968)

... Bartender

- What's in a Name (1968)

... Charlie the Bartender
- The Man Who Killed Jim Sonnett (1969)
... Bartender 

Wagon Train

- The Gus Morgan Story (1963)

The Outcasts
- How Tall Is Blood? (1969)
... Bartender

The Wild Wild West
- The Night of the Cut-Throats (1967)
... Bartender

Tate

- Tigrero (1960)
 ... The Bartender

Now there could have been times during his journeys through the West when Harry Sprague couldn’t find a job as a bartender.  And so he had to take what work he could find.  Working in a stable might have been the best a man could do if he knew nothing else but slinging drinks…..

The Legend of Jesse
- A Burying for Rosey (1966)
... Stableman

Lancer

- Shadow of a Dead Man (1970)
... Liveryman

I’ve added the following shows because I can’t tell from the names of his characters whether or not they were bartenders.  I’m under the impression that almost any character with two names listed probably wasn’t a publican (save for Hank Green).

I’m going to try to track down these episodes and will both update this post with new information as well as update Swoger’s photo gallery in the Facebook page “TVXOHOF”.

Gunsmoke
- The Boys (1962)
... Hank Green
- Milly (1961)
... Sam Lawson
- All That (1961)
... Hank Green
- The Cook (1960)
... Hank Green
- The Badge (1960)
... Ike
- Colleen So Green (1960)
... Bull Reager
- Tail to the Wind (1959)
... Burke

O’Bservation:
I’m thinking that it could be Hank Green was a resident of Dodge City and therefore employed as a bartender?  These will be the first episodes I’ll be looking for. 

Bonanza
- Song in the Dark (1963)
... Felix
- The War Comes to Washoe (1962)
... Charlie
- The Many Faces of Gideon Flinch (1961)
... William 'Bullet Head' Burke
- Silent Thunder (1960)
... Tom
- The Avenger (1960)
... Bert

O’Bservations:
1]  I’m hoping that Swoger’s role in “The War Comes To Washoe” is as the bartender.  It would mean that the alias of “Charlie” was used by Harry Sprague more than once.  (See ‘The Guns Of Will Sonnett’ – “What’s In A Name”.  What’s in a name, indeed!)

2]  Earlier, Swoger played another character named Burke.  If we can make them the same guy, we now have his full name as well as his nickname. 

3]  If more than one of his characters on 'Bonanza' were bartenders, I've got a splainin for that.  The Ponderosa was near two towns - Carson City and Virginia City - and alternated between the two.  It's pozz'be, just pozz'ble, that he had bartender jobs in both towns and worked one on his days off from the other, using a different name at each.

Hotel de Paree
- Sundance and the Good-Luck Coat (1960)
... Moose
- Sundance and the Hostiles (1959)
... Big Huston

O'Bservation:
"Moose" sounds like a great alias/nickname for a bartender.

Perhaps, at the end of his travels, he found himself in the frozen north of Seward’s Folly…..

The Alaskans 
- The Silent Land (1960)
... Morse

It’s a shame Harry Swoger died at such an early age – only 51, in 1970.  It almost has the feel of Fate, in that the TV genre in which he excelled was also nearing its end.

At any rate, this is my small attempt to add to his onscreen immortality.

Welcome to the Hall, Harry the Bartender….

Happy trails!