S*W*W*AT (SPECIAL WESTERN WEAPONS AND TACTICS)

[jdb1]

To backtrack a little and loop in from another Topic the reference that started this one:

They say that Yancy Derringer
Had ruffles at his wrist,
Something in his something,
And iron in his fist...

Yancy (Jock Mahoney) had a derringer in his hat. His Indian friend Pahoo
(X. Brands) had a large-gauge shotgun under his blanket. Between them
they had a real circus act going with the way they could toss around knives, getting them to just the right place when needed, and only the proper people getting hurt. When you were just topping off Junior High, that's what Cool looked like.

I was always a big Jocko fan. Remember "Range Rider?" Loved it.

I think besides the ruffles at his wrist, he had "brocade and silver buckles."

At the end of the song the singer says "in every tale of derring-do they tell of Yancy D." What, I wondered was "daring doo?" Very puzzling - I was embarrassed to ask, because it sounded vaguely naughty.

[nightwalker]

Re Branded and Chuck Connors' broken sabre, I can attest that he did occasionally use it as a weapon. At least once that I can remember, he threw it like a regular knife at a villain, hitting him in the chest and killing him with it. He also occasionally used its handle to club deserving souls.

[jdb1]

Re Branded and Chuck Connors' broken sabre, I can attest that he did occasionally use it as a weapon. At least once that I can remember, he threw it like a regular knife at a villain, hitting him in the chest and killing him with it. He also occasionally used its handle to club deserving souls.

Yeah, well, he did play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, after all.

[ken123]

Re Branded and Chuck Connors' broken sabre, I can attest that he did occasionally use it as a weapon. At least once that I can remember, he threw it like a regular knife at a villain, hitting him in the chest and killing him with it. He also occasionally used its handle to club deserving souls.

Yeah, well, he did play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, after all.

And the Cubs.

[jdb1]

Re Branded and Chuck Connors' broken sabre, I can attest that he did occasionally use it as a weapon. At least once that I can remember, he threw it like a regular knife at a villain, hitting him in the chest and killing him with it. He also occasionally used its handle to club deserving souls.

Yeah, well, he did play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, after all.

And the Cubs.

Really, Ken, could it get any better?
It's hard to see, but it is our Chuck as a Celtic (not sure which Celtics they were). This should bring a tear to your eye:

[ken123]

jdb1,
Thank you for the picture. It was the BOSTON Celtics, of course. Does anyone remember another TV series that Chuck Connors starred in ARREST AND TRIAL ?

[cmvgor]

To: jdb1;
LOL re the Yancy lyrics. I really did forget that internal line.
---I remember 'Range Rider' all right, but I had to see it in the homes of other children. My family got TV in 1956, but I did have nice friends. There may have been some reruns come along, but I don't specifically
remember them.

To: nightwalker;
As with klondike, your observations confirm my prejudice. Symbol of shame, symbol of schmame, no scripter or director was going to let an item like that take up space on the screen without ever putting it to use.
Never happen.

To: ken123 and jdb1;
Re Cubs and Dodgers: Do you have any information on what Minor
League teams or farm teams Conners may have played for? Specfically,
did he ever play for any team that would have played against the old
Atlanta Crackers when Ponce de Leon Park was still there? If he ever played against the Crackers, there's a possibility that I saw him in a Sunday doubleheader when I was about 8. My younger cousin does not
remember the event, and all others with us that day are now deceased.
Closed doors, lost memories.

[ken123]

The only Minor League team that I know that Chuck Connors played for was the L.A. Angels of the Pacific Coast League.

[ken123]

I wonder if Chuck Connors played for the Montreal Royals, of the International League, perhaps with Jackie Robinson. ?The Royals were the Dodgers Tripe A farm team back in the 1940's.

[jdb1]

The only Minor League team that I know that Chuck Connors played for was the L.A. Angels of the Pacific Coast League.

I can't find anything else listed by name but the Pacific Coast League, although Wikipedia says he played for more than one minor league team, without specifying if they were all PCL teams.

And, by the way Ken, it appears that our Chuck was one of "The" Celtics, when the team was new in 1946. One source I saw credits him with making the first backboard shattering shot in the NBA.

A man of many parts, to be sure.

[cmvgor]

To: ken123 & jdb1;
Thanks for the memories. If this very minor itch ever needs a real scratching, I'll go to official records.

[cmvgor]

In contemplating this subject of the Golden Age Weapons Gimmicks, I am sometimes beset with the following mental image. Whimpering TV scriptwriters cower in their cubicals while a whip-wielding executive paces
up and down snarling, "Get me a gimmick! Find me a weapons gimmick that the viewers will like, or you'll never work in this town again!" How
else, pray tell, does one explain the following?

Earl Holliman's character "Sundance" in Hotel De Paree used the
hatband of his Stetson(!) as a weapon. It was made of polished silver
discs, and supposedly he could manouver it to reflect sunlight into an adversary's eyes, blinding him at the critical moment. This one-season
series (Oct.'59-Sept.'60) was aired when TV was strictly holiday fare for
me. I saw it maybe twice. Am I mature enough yet to cope with
learning what happened to him after sundown, with only moonlight or lamplight to protect him? I'll let my curiosity rest.

A user posting on a TMC thread writes favorably of this series as a showcase for the talents of character actor Strother Martin. On that point,
(and also regarding Mr. Holliman, Jeanette Nolan, et al) much praise and
credit. But I still theorize that producers and "creators' were thinking that
weapons gimmick = viewer hook. And sometime they made very silly
choices.

[jdb1]

I think you're onto something. The gimmick weapon seems to have become more important than the content of the western at some point.

I had the impression several times when I was young that there were nothing but westerns on in network primetime, and too many of them weren't very interesting and didn't last. The low-budget shows really couldn't succeed without a dynamic star, and most didn't even have that much.

TV took a wrong direction there, somewhere. Movies didn't seem to need any such gimmicks to stay true to the ethic of the genre. I think most of the western shows on TV were not really very good, and were shown merely because if network X had a western, then network Y had to have one too. A lot of the fondness we feel for the older western TV shows comes from nostalgia, not because they were any good.

I think a reaction to that "bells and whistles" approach to the western was a show like "Maverick," which was a sort of anti-western, mocking the old values of the previous shows.

[cmvgor]

jdb1,
Thank you for the picture. It was the BOSTON Celtics, of course. Does anyone remember another TV series that Chuck Connors starred in ARREST AND TRIAL ?

ARREST AND TRIAL lasted one season, 1963-64. It was a 90-minute show
that operated like the contempary LAW AND ORDER -- the first half devoted to a crime, investigation and arrest. Ben Gazzara was usually
the investigating officer. In the TRIAL part, Chuck Conners was a Defense
attorney, trying to get the arrestee off. I remember Gazzara better than
Conners, and, if asked, I would have said that Conners was a prisecutor.
I remember only one of Conners' scenes clearly: Bags packed, departing
for vacation, he instructs his secretary, "Don't let anybody call me unless
they're asking me to run for Governor." I remember enjoying the series,
but I remember very few details.

[cmvgor]

There have been several references to the Yancy Derringer series
both on the 'Western Sidekicks' Topic and on this one. Dewey 1960 and SHolmes both wrote favorably of the show, and ken123 remembered it.
On this Topic, jbd1 also remembered it with some affection. It turns out that the show may not have died a natural, low-ratings death as one might think. There may have been darker forces at work.

The IMDb Site for the series gives the basic info, some of which we've
mentioned, where appropriate, on these two Topics. Then some dozen or
so contributers commented on it. (I left one myself when I was through.)
But one of them came up with the payload. It indicates that the series was popular, and ratings were good. This commentator asserts that
the cancellation was caused "...by corprate greed. Financed and owned by
the writers and Jock Mahoney, it was so successful in it's initial season that
the network insisted on buying it. Jock Mahoney and the others refused;
the network responded by cancelling it. End of Yancy Derringer."

That Network was CBS. The producing studio was DESILU. One hears occasionally of people such as Robert Blake, Don Johnson and Jack Kluggman muttering unfriendly imprecations against network "suits".
One wonders occasionally if perhaps their attitude is justified.