SALOON GIRL SHOWCASE - UNHAPPILY EVERS AFTER

Here's another saloon girl who may be responsible for so many TV characters from the 20th Century......

FAN

'THE GUNS OF WILL SONNETT'

"TRAIL'S END"

Fan was working as a saloon girl in a small Western settlement when Will Sonnett and Jeff Sonnett rode into town looking for Jim Sonnett (Will's son and Jeff's father.)  Jim had been there a month earlier and Miss Fanny fell for him... hard.  She found him to be "decent" and "gentle".  I think that was her way of saying what kind of a lover he was.  And Miss Fanny knew how to keep the fact that she was pregnant by him a secret once the other Sonnetts rode out of town.

Fan killed a maniac named Wilk when he was about to gun down Jeff Sonnett.  She ended up in jail, but the sheriff thought it unlikely that she would serve any time or that the circuit judge would even allow her to stand trial, especially since everybody in town would swear that she did no more than put down a mad dog.

On their departure, Jeff Sonnett stopped into the sheriff's office to say goodbye to Fan and although she had earlier said that she really wanted to see his father once again (probably to tell him that she was pregnant), Fan decided it would be better for all concerned if Jim Sonnett focused his attentions as a "family man" on the son he already knew.  She didn't want him to come back to her.

Fan probably was released from jail soon after and I think she would have headed East to New York City or some other large metropolis in order to raise Jim Sonnett's child in an environment where she would have more opportunities in Life than Fan had.

And yes - I think Fan would have given birth to a girl, one who would have many children of her own.  And all of them would have many children who would eventually sire or give birth to Jim Sonnett's telegenetic lookalikes.

Among them:

• Dr. Jim Lord ('Matlock')
• Dr. Marshall McGill ('Murder, She Wrote')
• Dr. Ralph Simpson ('The Bold Ones: The Doctors')
• Jerry Perrine ('The Scarecrow & Mrs. King')
• Warren Avery ('T.J. Hooker')
• Lloyd Kohler* ('Vega$')
• Fred Gesslin ('CHiPs')
• Roland Merrill ('MacMillan')
• Roger Sloan ('Banacek')

Many of them walked on the dark side, but Fan would have been most proud of Professor Joseph Howe of Channing University.  ('Channing')

And those are only just a few of the pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, descendants from Miss Fanny's liaison with Jim Sonnett.......

BCnU!

O'BSERVATIONS:

Jason Evers played Jim Sonnett in thirteen episodes of 'The Guns Of Will Sonnett' (and he starred as the 'Wrangler' Pitcairn whom I believe was Jim Sonnett using an alias), as well as all of those roles listed above.  Evers was one of the busiest guest stars in Toobworld throughout the 1960s & 70s, working until 1990.  (He died in 2005.)  

There were so many other characters of the late 20th Century whom I could have chosen for this post, but I decided to limit myself to just a handful of roles  And I avoided all of those shows in which he played more than one character over the course of the series run, like 'Cannon' and 'Mission: Impossible'.  (Evers played five different characters in 'Mannix' alone!)

O'Bviously, characters like Atar in 'Fantastic Journey' and Rael from a 'Star Trek' episode are right out of consideration!

* Lloyd Kohler may have been descended from a character in 'The Wild, Wild West' named Christopher Kohner.  Somewhere along that family tree, the surname was changed to "Kohler" in order to break ties with the Past......