Maverick

Although I grew up watching classic television I somehow completely missed Maverick until 2015. Thus while Maverick is an older series it was very new to me. I suppose that is the wonderful thing to realize that there are still great series out there to discover.

I started to watch Maverick specifically because of James Garner. I had recently re-watched the Great Escape (a favorite film of mine) and wanted to see more from Garner. Garner is absolutely wonderful here in his first starring role and it's no surprise that he had a long and very rich career.

However a real surprise for me was Jack Kelly. Before Maverick I had absolutely no idea who Jack Kelly was which is not surprising because while he did a lot of small roles and guest spots, Maverick was definitely the highlight of his career. I am also happy I went into Maverick blind and did not read the many grossly inaccurate reviews that Garner was all there was to Maverick. You will notice that most people who say Kelly did not measure up to Garner admit they "skip the Kelly episodes". Another trend I notice that those who do give Kelly the most credit say they have reevaluated Kelly as an adult and realize they underrated him.

Pretty much with the first 3 seasons whether you watch a Kelly or Garner episode you can't lose. Garner tended to have the best comedy and Western parody scripts while Kelly got the better dramatic and drawing room comedy scripts. It was the contrast between Kelly & Garner that made the series so great along with well written scripts that still stand up as classics today. However the very best episodes had Garner and Kelly together, their chemistry was pure magic and one of the shows biggest mistakes was not giving us more episodes with them together.

Seasons 4 and 5 aren't bad but they definitely don't measure up to the previous 3 seasons (the best of which is season 2). Not only because you have lost Garner at that point but Roy Huggins the producer and creator of the series left at the end of season 2. Most of the best writers also left with him.

For a short time Roger Moore joined the series as cousin Beau. Moore put up a good effort despite weaker scripts but the series would never be the same without Garner. Although if my previous paragraphs were not clear I feel if Kelly had been the one to leave the show he also would have left an irreplaceable hole. Garner of course started the series without Kelly but in those very early episodes the show was still finding itself and is also not the best Maverick has to offer.

However even at its worst, Maverick is still pretty entertaining if not as clever and witty as it once was. You only notice the decline in the later seasons when you have just finished watching the superior earlier seasons.

I still remember as a lad when Maverick made its debut on the ABC network. It was on Sunday nights at 7:30 and with that early half an hour start, it knocked the stuffings out of Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen who had their shows begin at 8:00 in the Nielsen ratings.

Maverick was unlike any western that had been on television before. Previously you had heroes stand tall and tangle with villainy head on. Maverick was no coward, but he never went looking for trouble and he never would look for a face to face confrontation if a little back channel maneuvering would work as well.

The show started the precedent that Law and Order, Criminal Intent is using now to give star Vincent Donofrio some rest with having Chris Noth and another female partner solve crimes on alternate weekends. James Garner was the original Bret Maverick and later Jack Kelly was brought in as brother Bart. Later on we had cousin Beau and another brother Brent played by Roger Moore and Robert Colbert.

Those last two we never even see the episodes with them. James Garner wanted a feature film career and Maverick helped launch him in one. His best efforts have always been when he's played a variation on Maverick and that would include his later hit series, The Rockford Files.

Unfortunately Jack Kelly never got the same break as Garner. But Bart was also pretty good at thinking on his feet as well. Still he was good performer and the Bart episodes do hold their own. And the shows they did together, pure magic.

It's amazing how many "cool"" guys there were in the late '50s playing the heroes in television westerns. There was the "king of cool" Steve McQueen as "Josh Randall" in "Wanted: Dead Or Alive," Richard Boone as "Paladin" in "Have Gun, Will Travel," and more.

That more included James Garner as "Maverick." He was one of those guys the ladies thought was attractive and the men liked, too, a man's man and a ladies' man at the same, time. "Brett Maverick" was hip, cool under pressure, a fast-talker with quick wit, a great poker player, suave and sophisticated but physically tough if all else failed. However, he preferred to use his brains over his brawn.

Maverick's humor, I think, endeared him to the public the most of all his attributes. You can thank James Garner for that, because he was always funny in any movie role that asked for humor. He downgraded his acting ability, but we all know better. Garner made this a very, very popular show.

Eventually, brothers Bart and Beau were introduced in the series but I was disappointed if I saw Garner wasn't going to star that week.

It was appropriate he had a role in the 1990s movie starring Mel Gibson, who did Garner's character proud.

My hope is that some day individual Mavrick seasons will come out on DVD.

This is the role that made James Garner, and as much as I like his later work, for me he would never be this much fun to watch again (exception: Support Your Local Sheriff, but that was unquestionably written to capitalize on his Maverick role).

I remembered liking Maverick when I was a kid, but after 40 odd years I didn't remember a single episode or plot line. I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to find this series resurrected on Good Life (Now American Life) TV. Sadly, after a few years ALTV abandoned the excellent B&W series they had been showing, and began airing very inferior color series from later years. Yep, I'll take Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip over Time Tunnel and Lost in Space .... EVERY time.

However, when it aired on ALTV, discovering each episode's charm brought my wife and I months of entertainment, and expectation for the next week.

Among some classic episodes to look for are:

* "War of the Silver Kings", this is the first episode and unquestionably one of the best

* "Gun Shy", an absolutely hilarious take off on Gun Smoke

* "A Fellow's Brother", an entertaining story throughout that made me fall out of my chair laughing when presented with the twist that resolved the crises

* "Shady Day at Sunny Acres", in which Bret Maverick spends the majority of the episode in a rocking chair on the town's boardwalk, whittling and uttering the line, "I'm workin' on it"

* "Pappy", wherein you meet the originator of all of Bret's "My old Pappy used to say ..." lines. Garner of course plays dual roles in the episode and does a great job. (So the movie is only the 2nd time he got to play Bret's father!)

"Maverick" ran for only five seasons. Early on, it was decided that the series would be best served by having two Mavericks, Bart, played by James Garner and Bret, played by Jack Kelly. By alternating the two leads, the productions for each's scripts could be shot at the same time. This led to the show's technical peculiarity. It had only one supervising producer and script supervisor, Roy Huggins, who was its creator; and he used four female assistants as script supervisors. Also, he employed 36 directors, 39 different writers, 17 cinematographers, 40 film editors, 8 art directors and 7 property masters all under Perry Ferguson as chief art director, 20 set decorators, 10 makeup personnel and 31 second-unit directors. This classic B/W show featured satires, dramas, adventures and comedies. It was inexpensively made sometimes, but offered attractive costumes and good actors, utilizing narration by the leads and clips from the Warner Brothers film library to avoid having to stage elaborate scenes. The Maverick brothers were designed by Roy Huggins to violate the Code of the West. While they could fight, and shoot, very bravely and effectively, they preferred not to fight, not to save people at great risk, not to do foolish things on a dare and not to keep up appearances. The show's creator also innovatively employed sidekicks for his leads, unusually frequently, and hired talented lead guest actors plus developing a stock company of continuing characters including Diane Brewster as larcenous and lovely Samantha Crawford, Kathleen Crowley as Melanie Blaine, Mike Road as Pearly Gates, Leo Gordon as Big Mike, and Gerald Mohr as Johnny Balero. Later, in 1960, Roger Moore played Beau Maverick, and Robert Colbert was added as cousin Brent in 1961, when Garner left the series. The leads played Texas men, a maverick being a name given to unbranded cattle in that part of the country. They gambled professionally, and continually sought after a large-enough prize to satisfy their hopes--which always eluded them somehow. Because of budgetary constraint, the writing and directing for the show were its hallmarks of quality, plus its fine guest stars. Memorable among these to me, who saw the original series, were Julie Adams, Mona Freeman, Buddy Ebsen, Abby Dalton, Ben Gage, Ruta Lee, Arthur Shields, Tol Avery, Gage Clark and many others. The ranks of the series' writers included TV stalwarts Ron Bishop, Carey Wilber, George Slavin, Gerald Drayson Adams, Wells Root, James O'Hanlon, Irene Winston, Marion Hargrove and Leo Townsend. The episode each week might be light-hearted or a dangerous mystery; frequently one Maverick or another sought a monetary prize at some risk or was cheated, kidnapped or involved in a hazardous business. Garner, with his touch for comedy, was usually given more laughs per hour. In his scripts; he fought, romanced, played cards, observed, commented and was misused. But the narrative lines of Jack Kelly's scripts were every bit as good or better, although he avoided the physical with more dexterity. The hallmark of the series I suggest was that it was about objectivists--purposive men who dealt with reality as they found it, without employing denial, wishful thinking or conventional or religious self-delusions. "My 'ol Pappy used to say," one of the brothers would drawl, and then he would proceed to state the truth, setting wisdom against the usual way men looked at things. The show is was pure Roy Huggins; he employed noted directors and talented producers such as Coles Trapnell, William P. D'Angelo, Howie Horwitz, Arthur W. Silver, William L. Stuart plus fine actors to get the result he wanted. Without him, "Maverick" would not be the "legend of the West" it has become; along with "Cheyenne", "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke", the program was a towering hit and a trend-setting show at a time when the character-based western was deservedly eclipsing all other genres. The series was adult,American and a delight, at a time when individualism was still a desirable philosophical goal to U.S. citizens and not a buzzword for its opponents to misuse while they attacked the concept. The man who lives by his own standards is only dangerous to the bad guys; the Maverick outsmarted the honest and cheated only criminals. They went "riding the trail to who knows where" as their theme song said, with luck as a companion and an intelligent gamble as their way of life. We loved them in 1957; we who enjoyed their adventures then miss them today. They and their self-assertive sort.