I thought it would be rather easy to throw something together for James Garner. Not so !! Just the Maverick stuff itself seemed like a small industry – with TV Series, spin-offs, Movies, Mini Series … etc.
Let’s get started:
Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend with Randolph Scott / 1957
Garner’s first Western. Pretty well any Western with Randolph Scott is either very watchable or Classic.
Scott and Garner ______________________________________________
Maverick / TV Show
“Who is the tall dark stranger there … ??”
Why it’s Maverick of course ! Most likely Bret Maverick (James Garner)
Mavericks: Bret (James Garner) and Bart (Jack Kelly)Maverick TV Show – Opening BannerJack Kelly, Beau Maverick (Roger Moore) and Garner
After Garner left the show during the 3rd Season …
It just wasn’t the same. Maverick – in Film and TV – went through a few permutations and convolutions over the years and will need to be covered in more depth later.
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Garner made a cameo appearance in the Bob Hope Western Comedy Alias Jesse James.
Couldn’t find any pics of James so I’m inserting Gloria Talbott instead. Yeah.
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Was this a Western ? I believe I spot a car in there. Garner as legendary lawman Wyatt Earp (again) and Bruce Willis as legendary Western actor Tom Mix, but I’m not sure.
Maverick – the movie / 1994 Garner, Gibson and Jodie Foster and James Coburn and Graham Greene and others … Garner appears as the much rumoured “Pappy” … Gibson reprises Bret.
A fun movie – good cast
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Then …
Streets of Laredo – 3 part mini-series … also a Great Cast:
Garner, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Ned Beatty, Randy Quaid,
Wes Studi, Charles Martin Smith … and Alexis Cruz does a good job as the villain.
______________________Shepard, Garner, Spacek_____________________
will cover this better – later.
Whew !!!
Upcoming:
Maverick: The TV Show Hour of the Gun Streets of Laredo
Robert Ryan was already a grizzled veteran of the screen when I was a kid – and I missed most of his earlier work of the 40’s and 50’s. And to me he always seemed to be one of those actors that somehow were never young – even in his early movies – with a presence, stature and persona that moved past his years and youth.
Rugged and somewhat gruff in his portrayals – even his smile was often more like a sardonic smirk – he often played the heavy – a villain. Yet he surely played strong and well along side the likes of:
Gary Cooper (North West Mounted Police / 1940 Rock Hudson (Horizons West / 1952 James Stewart and Janet Leigh (TheNaked Spur / 1953 Clark Gable and Jane Russell (The Tall Men / 1955 Burl Ivesand Tina Louise (Day of the Outlaw /1959 John Dehner and Torin Thatcher (The Canadians / 1961, Lancaster, Marvin, Palance, Strode, Bellamy and Cardinale (The Professionals / 1966 James Garner and Jason Robards (Hour of the Gun / 1967 Robert Shaw (Custer of the West /1968 Arthur Kennedy (A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die / 1968 William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson … (The Wild Bunch / 1969 Burt Lancaster, Lee J. Cobb (Lawman / 1971 …
and more …
A heck of an actor. And these are just his Westerns!
But what Westerns they were ! At least 3 easily rising into the heights of Western Classics: The Wild Bunch, The Professionals, Naked Spur, Hour of the Gun … plus others of worthy note.
A true Western Star.
Robert RyanRobert Ryan / The Wild BunchRobert Ryan / The ProfessionalsRyan slappin’ leather inThe Hour of the GunRyan (Center Back) with mostly unidentified cast cohorts of The Wild Bunch – except Strother Martin (Back left)Ryan – The Naked Gun
Epic! The famous ‘Walk’ to the climactic gunfight at OK Corral
Gunfight at the OK Corral– Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, John Hudson, DeForest KelleyHour of the Gun Frank Converse, Sam Melville, Jason Robards, James Garner
Tombstone Val Kilmer, Sam Shapard, Kirk Russel, Bill PaxtonWyatt Earp Dennis Quaid, Michael Madsen, Kevin Costner, Linden Ashby
‘The Wild Bunch’ … doing ‘the Walk’? You betcha!
The Wild Bunch Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, William Holden, Ernest Borgnine
Intentional – or not (and I surely believe it was)
Pekinpah’s Wild Bunch do ‘The Walk’
Sometimes the answers to seemingly complex social problems are hidden in plain sight. Social engineers, lawmakers and “experts” from all around spout off an endless stream of statistics to support or rationalize their position one side or the other of the “gun control” issue. Now I don’t like the term “gun control” for it is ambiguous and usually used to mask the real intent of those advocating it so for the purpose of this discussion let us just say “more restrictive guns laws”. One might think that this is a relatively new idea, it is not! You can go back to the Roman Empire and find the existence of cross bow control, you can look to England and find attempts to disarm the various colonists under their imperial thumb – the American colonists come to mind as an unsuccessful attempt to debar the use of arms to an indigent population. There are many examples of the failure of laws which attempt to disarm the violent in our society but none are more graphic as examples or easier to measure in effect than those in the “wild west” of America circa 1870-1900.
Reporting from Tombstone, Ariz. — A billboard just outside this Old West town promises “Gunfights Daily!” and tourists line up each afternoon to watch costumed cowboys and lawmen reenact the bloody gunfight at the OK Corral with blazing six-shooters.
But as with much of the Wild West, myth has replaced history. The 1881 shootout took place in a narrow alley, not at the corral. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday weren’t seen as heroic until later; they were initially charged with murder.
And one fact is usually ignored: Back then, Tombstone had far stricter gun control than it does today. In fact, the American West’s most infamous gun battle erupted when the marshal tried to enforce a local ordinance that barred carrying firearms in public. A judge had fined one of the victims $25 earlier that day for packing a pistol.
LANCASTER in ‘VERA CRUZ’ and “GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL’
In rebuilding my ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral‘ page I got to thinking about Lancaster’s portrayal of Wyatt Earp. In earlier films Lancaster had become famous for his trademark smile – which he is said to have referred to as “the grin” – most obvious in ‘Vera Cruz’ (one of My Favorite Westerns). Therefore his stoic and stern portrayal of Wyatt Earp in ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ is a stark and deliberate contrast. Was Earp really like this? Because this same humorless image of Earp is carried on through most of the other popular Earp Films: ‘Hour of the Gun‘; ‘Tomestone’ and ‘Wyatt Earp’. Only Henry Fonda‘s portrait of Earp in ‘My Darling Clementine‘ (1946) seems to put a more human face on Earp. Director John Sturges (‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’) continued with this strict image of Earp in ‘Hour of the Gun’ (1968) which starred James Garner as Earp. Garner’s ruthless portrayal of Earp is even more striking because of Garner’s usual soft and often comedic persona from the ‘Maverick’ TV series. It is safe to say however, that Sturges wasn’t very concerned with a historical portrayal of Earp (Lancaster doesn’t even sport a mustache) or the gunfight at the OK Corral. But it seems ironic that the film that makes the greatest effort to paint a historical document of Earp (Lawrence Kasdan‘s ‘Wyatt Earp’ starring Kevin Costner as Earp) is probably the least popular of five films.
