LITTLE BIG SCREEN - "MAVERICK" AND "EL DUQUE"

Of all the cameo guest stars in the big poker game that dominates the "Maverick" movie, not many of the characters had actual names.  Of course, this is a bonus for ye old Toobmeister because then I could declare them to be characters from some of the old great TV Westerns.

But there were a few with "names" - Bill Henderson was named Hightower, for example, and we'll be coming back to him.  Dan Hedaya played a character called "Twitchy" and Dennis Fimple was referred in the credits as "Stuttering".  (Although as pointed out at some point this month in the blog, he was actually playing his character from 'Alias Smith And Jones', Kyle Murtry.)

Henry Darrow was in the movie as one of the riverboat gamblers, but he was not credited with a name.  However, on a web site promoting his autobiography, Darrow is identified as "El Duque" when you run the cursor over the picture.

For my money, he was returning once again to the role that was perhaps his most famous, that

of Manolito Montoya who worked as a ranch hand for Big John Cannon's 'High Chaparrel' Ranch in the Arizona Territory.  (In a way he was part of the family as Big John had married Manolito's sister.)

So could he be Manolito Montoya as well as "El Duque"?  I don't see why not, especially since "El Duque" is just a title.

But where would Manolito get such an appellation?  It's not like the Montoyas were part of the Spanish nobility.

I think he got the title because of his life after he left the High Chaparral. 

I doubt he would have remained on that ranch forever, living in the shadow of his sister's marriage.  After awhile he may have felt that he needed to prove himself, that he could strike out on his own without being propped up by his brother-in-law.

So where would a name like "El Duque" come into play?  I think it's likely that he hired on with one of those frontier circuses, with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show being the model on which all the others were based.

Manolito Montoya could have been hired to be a trick shooter and used "El Duque" as his stage name.  And eventually he would have saved up enough money to enter the Big Game.

Of the frontier circuses in Toobworld, I'm thinking Cartright's Sensational Congress of Heroism and Courage* would be a nice fit, especially since they lost their last star on the circuit, Daring Dan (also known as Mule Canby), when he perished in a fire just outside of 'Centennial', Colorado.

Happy Trails To You!

* I can't remember if that was the name of the frontier circus in the TV series adaptation, but that's the name of the circus that came into town in James Michener's book.

WEST-VIEW: TAKING STOCK

An ingenious way for the Warner Brothers' TV Westerns from the 1950's to save money and still give their episodes an epic feel was to re-use stock footage from the WB movie library.

Had this been unavailable, a scene in which a stagecoach was being chased by Indians might have been confined to interior shots of the coach and its passengers reacting to back-screen projections only.

Instead, the editor and research team for the productions could expand on the situation to make it richer.

Speaking of that stagecoach chase, here are two examples from 'Maverick':

But it wasn't just the wild, wild West vistas that added to the experience.  Consider this ballroom dancing scene supposedly set in New Orleans (also from 'Maverick'):

The cost of that scene, with the musicians and the extras, would have bankrupted the rest of the season!  The show runner could just as easily have inferred that there was a grand ball being held just off-camera......

SHOWS CITED:

'Maverick' - "The Jeweled Gun"

'Maverick' - "Alias Bart Maverick"

BCnU!

TOOBWORLD TIMELINE - THE BAMBINO, AUGUST 11, 1929

'MISS FISHER'S MURDER MYSTERIES'

"THE GREEN HILL MURDER"

AUGUST 11, 1929 – While investigating the murder of Leonard Stephens, the Police Department calendar marked the date as August 11, a Thursday. As the series takes place in the 1920's, there are only two possible years for the series on the Toobworld timeline: 1921 or 1929. 

Since Charlie Freeman thought for ten years that his brother Victor had died when his plane was shot down in France during the war (WWI), this episode has to take place Aug. 11, 1929. 

You know what else happened that day? Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio. 

As with most televersions of historical figures with multiple portrayals, I ship off the TV movies to other TV dimensions in order to share the wealth. I'm more concerned with his televersion to be found in TV series. 

That still leaves four portrayals: 

• "Touched by an Angel" - The Perfect Game (2001)
  Played by Michael Patrick McGill 
• "A.J.'s Time Travelers" - Babe Ruth (1995)
  Played by Art LaFleur (who was also Babe Ruth in the Cineverse)

With these first two televersions of Babe Ruth, they are depicted as others see them. In 'Touched By An Angel', he is filtered through the memory of a flashback.  (And even with an angel, that can be unreliable.)

• "Voyagers!" - Cleo and the Babe (1982) Played by William Lucking 

Although Phineas and Jeffrey operate from Earth Prime-Time as their dimensional base, when they travel through Time they wind up in alternate dimensions. So this Babe Ruth is from another world (But not from "Another World".)

• "Wizards of Waverly Place" - Art Museum Piece (2008)
  Played by Britt Prentice 

In this story, Babe Ruth is a simulacrum taken from a photograph. So technically he's not even alive. However, he's based on a photo of the real Bambino, unaffected by others. 

From the Jalex Episode Guide:
Alex and Max are in the lair, chatting up Babe Ruth--Alex cast a spell on an old Babe Ruth picture to bring him to life. Justin does not approve.

Justin: Alex, put him back in the picture before Dad gets here!
Alex: Lighten up! If he was Obi Wan Kenobi, you'd be all into it.
Justin: A lifesize Obi Wan? I'll be right back.

Before Justin can leave, Jerry shows up and orders Alex to put Babe Ruth back in the picture.

Alex starts to chant the spell but then can't remember the rest of it.

Jerry: You need to know the exact time and place to finish the spell.
Alex: I need to know stuff? Justin's department!!
Justin [smugly]: Yankee Stadium, 1929.
Alex: Wow. You even make sports not sound cool.

So any portrayal of Babe Ruth by this same actor should be the official televersion. And we have the perfect candidate: 

• "Amazing Sports Stories" - The Girl Who Struck Out Babe Ruth (2008)
  Played by Britt Prentice 

BCnU!

LITTLE BIG SCREEN (HAT SQUAD EDITION) - WISHBONE/JELLY HOSKINS/COOKIE

When making these connections between the riverboat poker players of "Maverick" to characters to be found in other TV Westerns, it's all fun and games until somebody gets killed.

It is the Wild, Wild West, after all.

When it comes to death in the movie, many might only remember the big shoot-out on board the Lauren Belle, in which Angel and his two henchmen were gunned down by Maverick and Son.  But there was another death earlier in the movie, one that brought an end to the life of a beloved old character - George Washington Wishbone of 'Rawhide'.

Wishbone was the trail cook on the cattle drives run by Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates back in the 1860s.  But at some point soon after 'Rawhide' ended its run on TV (on the Toobworld timeline it would be 1869.), Wishbone had to go on the run and so he left his life on the cattle drive behind.  (Perhaps he killed a man on the drive at some point?) 

Taking the alias of Jellifer B. Hoskins, Wishbone had a streak of bad luck: he took money that was stolen by bank robbers, he stole food from the Lancer family, as well as the pearls belonging to one of my televersion's distant relatives, Teresa O'Brien.  The Lancers quickly tracked him down, but then found out he was only doing it to help the orphans he was taking care of.

Taking pity on him, the Lancers hired him on at their cattle ranch.  Wishbone never disabused the Lancers that his name wasn't Jelly Hoskins and he stayed on the job for several decades.  

As an elderly man, "Jelly" was insulted when the Lancer brothers (their own father long since dead) offered him a pension and the chance to retire and live out his years in comfort on the ranch.  Instead, he struck off again to prove that he was still capable of working for a living.

By 1906, Wishbone was back on the trail again, working as a trail cook under the alias of "Cookie", and he was not too pleased about it (as seen in "Gambler Four: Luck Of The Draw".)  He was probably so pissed off by the experience that he quit to take up a new occupation - that of a stagecoach driver.  He worked the route that led from Crystal River to somewhere in the East, although I don't think it would take the Mavericks and Mrs. Bransford all the way to St. Louis from where the Lauren Belle would set sail.

By the time the Mavericks met up with him, G.W. Wishbone aka Jelly Hoskins aka Cookie was about 95 years old... and still too stubborn to retire.

That trip proved to be Wishbone/Jelly's last one as he died with his boots on as the stagecoach hurtled along towards certain doom over a cliff.  Bret Junior was able to halt the horses in time and they buried Wishbone there at the edge of the cliff, not knowing what his name actually was.  (Mrs. Bransford found that his wallet contained nothing but the calling cards for whorehouses throughout the West - good for you, Wishbone!)

This year the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.  As such, the motto is the same as when I celebrated a milestone birthday - "What I say, goes."

So even though none of these connections for Paul Brinegar's Western avatar are not official, I am declaring them to be so for Toobworld purposes.

• 'Rawhide'
• 'Lancer'
• "The Gambler IV: Luck Of The Draw"
• "Maverick"

For all of those productions, no matter what his name was in each, Paul Brinegar was playing George Washington Wishbone.  And so we are inducting him into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame along with Sam Buckhart.

Rest in peace, George Washington Wishbone aka Jelly Hoskins.  As Red Skelton would say:

"Good night and may God bless....."

LITTLE BIG SCREEN - "MAVERICK" & "WAGON TRAIN"

With the various connections I'm making to old TV Westerns via the various poker players in the movie "Maverick", I don't always want to take the easy path.  Sure, I'm going to claim Doug McClure was playing Trampas, and Henry Darrow was playing Manolito, But there were a few actors on board who had a variety of options from which to choose.  (And then there's Denver Pyle, who had a plethora of Western characters who could have been thrown off that riverboat.)

With this post, I'm taking a look at the role played by Robert Fuller.  His character made it to the penultimate round, the last to be trumped by Mrs. Annabelle Bransford.  He was magnanimous about the loss, unlike a few of his rival players, and was very courtly to the woman who vanquished him.  His only regret was that he played out his entire bank and thus had nothing left to tip the dealer.  

Now, the O'Bvious choices would have been to claim that Fuller was playing either Jess Harper of 'Laramie' or Cooper Smith from 'Wagon Train'.  Perhaps he might even have been Kenyon Drummond from two episodes of 'The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.'.  (Drummond was certainly rich enough to have joined the Big Game.)

Some TV Western aficionados may not remember this, but Robert Fuller played two other roles on 'Wagon Train' before he joined the team as Coop.  And one of those two roles just might fit the bill....

From Wikipedia:

On May 6, 1959, just four months before he joined the new series 'Laramie' on NBC, later 'Wagon Train' costar Robert Fuller appears with Ruta Lee as a happily married young couple in the episode "The Kate Parker Story", with Virginia Grey in the starring role. Fuller as Chris Finley seeks to turn from gambling and become a responsible husband. Evvie, his wife, is seriously injured in a wagon accident. The Finleys contrast strikingly with an older couple on the wagon train, Kate Parker and her husband, Jonas, played by Warren Stevens, who have a loveless marriage. Trapped in snow in the mountains, presumably the Sierra Nevadas, the greedy Jonas leaves the Finleys behind to wait for reinforcements, and he forces the unwilling Kate to drive their wagon. Kate wrecks the wagon and Jonas leaves on foot with her money. Kate is given essential shelter by illiterate mountain man Boone Caulder, played by Royal Dano, whom she finds wise despite his lack of education.

So I'm going to claim that Fuller was playing Chris Finley in "Maverick".  And I don't think it violates the premise promised in the 'Wagon Train' episode.  While Evvie Finley lived, her husband Chris was a man of his word - he foreswore gambling and became a responsible husband, perhaps making his money in retail dry goods out West.

But after she died, Chris Finley had no reason not to resuscitate his old gambling skills, making enough to qualify for entry into the Big Game......

I have to admit, however, I don't really know how that episode of 'Wagon Train' ended for Mr. & Mrs. Finley......

BCnU!

ALL SHOOK UP: THE FATE OF BART MAVERICK

As I mentioned in an ealier post, I believe the movie adaptation of "Maverick" belongs in the TV Universe.  It's not a remake; a continuation.  Mel Gibson was playing Bret Maverick Jr. and James Garner was back in the saddle again as the original Bret.

What would have helped sell this argument would have been the appearance of Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick at some point.  But of course, that might have undermined the big reveal at the end, because Garner was supposed to be playing Sheriff Zane Cooper.  (But honestly, I would think any true 'Maverick' fan would have figured out he had to be the one and only Bret Maverick, Sr.!)

The fact that Bart Maverick wasn't at that big poker competition, looking at it from within the reality of the main TV dimension, fills me with dread.  (And I have to look at it from that perspective because the answer is known to me if looking at it from the P.O.V. of the Trueniverse - Jack Kelly, who played Brother Bart, passed away in 1992.)

One would think Bart Maverick would have answered the siren call of that marathon riverboat game.  So the only conclusion would have to be that by that time in the Toobworld timeline, he was dead, sad to say.

Bret Maverick was born April 7, 1847.  I'm not sure it was ever established, but I've always believed Bart was his older brother. 

If Bret's age wsa in comparison to that of Garner's, then the movie "Maverick" must have taken place at some point between 1903 and 1913.  (I have no problem fudging a few years, but the actor has to look like he could pull it off.  In Garner's case, I think he could have.)

I'm going to say that the movie takes place after 1907.  (I'm favoring 1913.)  Why?  In 1906, Bart Maverick took part in a very high stakes poker game in San Francisco, playing with the likes of Brady Hawkes, Bat Masterson, the grandfather of John Steed, and even President Teddy Roosevelt.  Bart was one of the first who had to drop out, admittng that he wasn't the best poker player in the Maverick family.

After the game ended (with Brady Hawkes winning the pot, natch!), the Hotel Carlton was rocked by the massive earthquake that practically leveled San Francisco in April of 1906.  And even though he left the game early, I'm afraid that there was no way Bart Maverick could have left San Francisco before the earthquake struck.

Hellz!  I doubt he even left the Carlton Hotel!  He was probably still downstairs commisserating with the other losers in the hotel bar!

I'm afraid there's no other splainin that would work as well as to why Bart Maverick never made that poker game on the Commodore's riverboat.  I'm afraid he died in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

BCnU!

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - CLAN CANABY

The Mavericks were related to the Canaby family on their mother's side.  (This is not to say her maiden name was Canaby, just that she was related to them.)  The Canabys were an old Southern family who owned slaves before the Civil War.  Many of the descendents of those slaves carried the Canaby name after their emancipation and some of them were of the same bloodline as their owners.  

As some of their children migrated north after gaining their freedom, the family name was corrupted to becoming "Canby".  (This would make Archie Bunker's housekeeper Ellen Canby a distant relative to the tall dark strangers known as the Mavericks.)

One of Bart Maverick's older cousins on that side of the family was Fenton Canaby, who gained notoriety near the end of the Civil War for leading a disasterous wagon train in which everybody else died.  (Tired of his Captain Bligh-like rules, the families on that train knocked him out and left him behind.  Then they struck out in the direction he told them would lead to catastrophe.)  Although about a decade older than Bart, he could still be considered Bart's "identical cousin".  Had they been the same age, one would be hard-pressed to tell them apart.

Rescued from life as a near-savage desert rat by a wagon train led by Chris Hale in the early 1870s, Fenton fell in love with a passenger making the trip West, Lucy Garrison.  (Lucy's great-nephew, Patrick Garrison, would work as a reporter for the New York Daily Record during the "Roaring" 1920's.)

The family tree begun by Fenton and Lucy would lead to the birth of Cinnamon Carter in 1932.  And she would have a daughter given up for adoption named Helena.  (Helena would die in 1999 during an atomic fuel dump explosion at one of the secret lunar colonies.)

So through Fenton and Lucy Canaby, I'm declaring this a theory of relateeveety that links one episode of 'Wagon Train' to 'Maverick', 'Mission: Impossible', 'Space: 1999', 'The Roaring 20's', and 'Archie Bunker's Place'.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Wagon Train' - "The Fenton Canaby Story"
• 'Maverick'
• 'Mission: Impossible'
• 'Space: 1999'
• 'The Roaring 20's'
• 'Archie Bunker's Place'

BCnU!

LA TRIVIATA: A TOOBWORLD PAPER OF RECORD

'WAGON TRAIN'

"THE FENTON CANABY STORY"

Fenton Canaby was an infamous wagon train master whose last party proved to be a disaster on a par with the Donner Party.  Thanks to a journal kept by the doomed Byron Lowe, Canaby's story was told in newspapers all across the country.

One of those newspapers was the New York Record, which was also featured in 'The Roaring Twenties' as the paper for which Scott Norris and Pat Garrison worked back in the 1920's.  By that time, the name of the paper was changed to The Daily Record.  

(Sorry about that imprint on the screencap, Chief!)

BCnU!

TUESDAY NEWS DAY - WESTERN EDITION

From Deadline.com:

Turn co-star Angus Macfadyen is set for one of the lead roles in The Pinkertons, Canadian companies Rosetta Media and Buffalo Gal Pictures’ upcoming 22-episode action-adventure detective series that is set to premiere in first-run syndication in the U.S. this fall. It has been cleared in more than 85% of the country by Rohrs Media Group on station groups including Tribune, Weigel, Hearst, LIN, Meredith, Cox and the CW PLUS.

Drawing on the real cases of Pinkerton Detective Agency, The Pinkertons follows founder Allan Pinkerton (Macfadyen), his son, William, and America’s first female detective, Kate Warne, as they solve crimes throughout the “Wild West” of the 1860s (Pinkerton is known for revolutionizing detective work by developing use of surveillance, undercover work and the mug shot). In part because of his commitment to AMC drama Turn, on which he is a regular, Macfadyen is will be a recurring guest star on The Pinkertons, not appearing in all episodes. Turn was renewed in June for a 10-episode second season to air in the spring.

BCnU!

SUPER SIX LIST - WORLD WAR ONE

August 4, 1914 - Great Britain declares war on Germany. The declaration is binding on all Dominions within the British Empire including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa.

August 4, 1914 - The United States declares its neutrality.

August 4-16, 1914 - The Siege of Liege occurs as Germans attack the Belgian fortress city but meet resistance from Belgian troops inside the Liege Forts. The twelve forts surrounding the city are then bombarded into submission by German and Austrian howitzers using high explosive shells. Remaining Belgian troops then retreat northward toward Antwerp as the German westward advance continues.

WORLD WAR ONE

IN THE TV UNIVERSE

1)  'Blackadder Goes Forth'
The fourth series in this sitcom about the Blackadders of History ended in a freeze-frame as Captain Blackadder led his men in a suicide charge into No Man's Land.

2)  'Downton Abbey'
Downton heir Matthew Crawley and two of the servants - Thomas Barrows and William Mason - serve in the trenches.  All three were wounded, but only William eventually succumbed to his.

3)  'M*A*S*H'
"Old Soldiers"
The last of Colonel Potter's friends from his WWI unit in France has died. They created a tontine--a pledge--involving a bottle of French wine, to be drunk by the last surviving member.

4)  'Tales From The Crypt'
"Yellow"
A General must deal with his own son who fled during battle and now faces execution.

5)  'Warehouse 13'
"Secret Santa"
An artifact created from a shell casing present at the Christmas Truce of 1914 is imbued with the harmony of good will from that moment in time.

6)  "Pipes Of Peace"
Paul McCartney's music video about the Christmas truce of 1914.

http://touch.dailymotion.com/video/x22w1v_paul-mccartney-pipes-of-peace_music

Toobworld theory: Sweet the Demon was present during the truce.

SKITLANDIA BONUS

'Monty Python's Flying Circus'
 "Ypres 1914"

http://youtu.be/2_SddMc3Vik

http://www.montypython.net/scripts/ypres.php

I could also have cited 'Beacon Hill', 'Upstairs, Downstairs', 'James Garner As Nichols', and several others......

BCnU!