The Californians “One Ton of Peppercorn”

 

Let’s take a look at a single episode from this NBC series that ran its first season in 1957 and its second in 1959.

The first season followed Dion Patrick [Adam Kennedy] an Irishman news reporter in Gold Rush era San Francisco.

The second season switched protagonists and followed Sherriff Matthew Wayne [Richard Coogan] in the same setting.

Our episode choice is from the 1959 Coogan season.

The story is brisk, the narrative a bit simplistic, and Coogan is a bit, well, bland. Serviceable but bland.

The interest here is in the pre-fame guest star, James Coburn playing Coogan’s country cousin.

Coburn is exuberant and of interest, to me at least due to my day job, of using the unusual fighting technique of “Ramming.”

It is portrayed for laughs but t ’was indeed a real specialty of some fighting men.

Coburn and brevity made the time pass, but not much to really prod further viewing based on this single episode.

Dutch Uncle by Marilyn Durham

 

For my grandmother,

who always liked a good clean story

But mostly for my mother,

who doesn't—

[The book’s epigraph.]

And now our offered excerpt.

“What do you do now?” It was Carrie asking.

Jake turned in surprise. Several sharp answers sprang to his mind, but he put them away. “I play poker,” he said simply.

She gave a ladylike sniff of disapproval. “That isn't an occupation; It's a vice.”

 He smiled. “Miss Hand, you’re right, as far as most people are concerned. Many are called and few are chosen, the preachers say. I'm one of the few. I get by, and I don't take anything from people except what they want to give me-- like those preachers.” He touched his hat brim turned and finished the motion with an imperious gesture.

As you read the above exchange one can envision the rascally charm of Jim Garner delivering it with a twinkle in his eye.

Our protagonist, Jake Hollander, seems molded on the faux cynical yet reluctantly good-hearted Maverick character.

The author plays this game well.

This 1973 novel is Durham’s follow-up to her debut Western The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.

This is a less serious novel than that affair, but it is well-written with an easy gregariousness that is not afraid to allow a tragic moment or two to leaven the proceedings.

All in all, a strong novel, well worth the serious Western reader’s attention.

The Dakotas: The Episode That Led to Immediate Cancellation

 

Disclosure: I was not aware of this single-season 1963 series until I read about the controversy over this single episode.

This ABC adult Western dealt with Marshall Frank Ragan [Larry Ward] an actor unfamiliar to me till this show—he’s quite good, a laid-back Bogart vibe.

Ragan is accompanied by his deputies, Vance Porter [played by an amiable Michael Green], Del Stark [a young energetic Chad Everett], and J.D. Smith—played by Jack Elam. Elam is a revelation; I had only known him for his semi-comic sidekick work. Here he is damned effective as a laconic lawman who can stare a man down without giggle or smile proffered. He’s very very good here.

On to the episode and the controversy.

The episode in question is titled, “Sanctuary at Crystal Springs.” It was written by Cy Chermak and directed by Richard Sarafian.

The script and the staging are the stars here. We open directly into a siege followed by unexpected outcomes with hostages—I won’t spoil it, I will just say that I was surprised at how far the margins were pushed for a 1963 series airing at 7:30 PM.

We wind up inside a church for further incident.

The story is one of violence, faith [the word “atheist” is bandied about a good bit], and the necessity of “what must be done.”

Whether it was the violence or the faith-issues that led to the outcry, or a bit of both is debatable.

Needless to say, only one additional episode was aired, with another already in the can left unseen.

So, the show itself—Is it any good?

In a word-Yes.

In more words—It is excellent!

I will seek further episodes and lament the loss of what may very well have been a classic.

It is mature, well-played, and quite well-staged. [Sarafian would go on to lens the iconic 70’s film Vanishing Point.]

This single episode stands head and shoulders above most predictable fare of the time [and ours.]

A Western by Jules Verne?

 

The tar on the roof of the railway station at Sierra Blanca was molten in a July sun at noonday. It had been a mistake to swab the surface with stuff that would melt at a temperature of 100 unshaded. Alternation of liquefaction and congealment had let the layers of pebbles ultimately slip and stop, slip and stop until half of them had slid off the steep eaves into the tin gutter, which had also caught the drippings of tar until it was full of the mixture. Not much is done in this lazy town on the Mexican border of the United States, and what is done once is hardly ever done over again, even by the railroad people, who are all activity as contrast with the local stagnation.

This story, titled Two Alike and a Lady, is attributed to Jules Verne, the Father Hard Science Fiction.

A quick check shows that Verne wrote 36 short stories along with his sundry novels and plays. This story is not listed among that tally.

His son, Michel, picked up his father’s pen upon his death and contributed more under his father’s name, at least three of the Michel penned stories under the name of Jules have been discovered.

Whether this is an actual Jules Verne tale or one of his son’s continuations we don’t know for certain.

It originally appeared in serial form in The Delphos Daily Herald newspaper of Delphos, Ohio. The story began on July 30, 1895.

The author is most definitely listed as Jules Verne.

We must note that Mr. Verne was still alive and producing at the time but…

As far as I can tell and as far as anthologist John Richard Stephens can tell the story appeared nowhere else.

It would seem odd that at this esteemed point in his career that Mr. Verne could only get a story published in a newspaper in Ohio as opposed to his native France.

We must keep in mind this was also a time of newspaper hoaxing and exceptionally loose copyright laws.

The odds are stacked in the favor of a local writer assuming the nom de plume and picking up the check.

Provenance aside, how is this Western tale?

In a word, slight.

It starts promisingly enough with good character and local flavor, then heads into an odd bit of identical twin flummery and an escape from “Wild Indians” using a meteor-magneto hand railway car—which one would assume was the purported Verne-element.

As a fan of Mr. Verne, this story proves doubtful. Where Verne, like his modern correlate Michael Crichton, always took pains to explain how his “future tech” would operate in a way that led to believability, I never quite got a handle on the meteor-dynamo mechanism despite long passages explaining its operation.

The story is a curiosity, I’m not sorry I read it, but I wouldn’t necessarily direct others to seek it out.

Whiplash “The Solid Gold Brigade”

 

What do you get if you take a Western created by future Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry, cast Mission: Impossible’s Mr. Phelps [Peter Graves] and set it during Australia’s Gold Rush of the 1850s and actually shoot it Down Under?

Well, you get this intriguing 1960 series.

Graves plays Christopher Cobb, loosely based on the real-life Freeman Cobb of the Cobb and Co. stagecoach line.

This episode is of the formulary variety, it moves at a brisk pace and has surprisingly cold-blooded villains.

The actual locations are a plus with Western tropes appearing with kangaroos and much action taking plus along beach coast adding to the watchability.

What is a little less is, Mr. Graves. Never a compelling actor, here his presence adds little to the proceedings.

One can’t help but think, a stronger lead would put this unusual concoction over the top and be far better remembered today.

Not essential, but well worth viewing at least a single episode for Western television aficionados.

The Fastest Gun in the Pulpit by Jack Ehrlich

 

I've known fear all my life. But I always knew how bad it made a man stink if you let it have sway.

This 1972 novel from Ehrlich was his first Western. Prior to this effort he dabbled in courtroom novels and like fare dealing with the criminal justice system. These are good works, and he knows that world. He combined both successfully with his Western The Chatham Killing [also reviewed on this blog.]

Here we have a gunman who is preternaturally fast with a gun stumble into the gig of assuming the identity of a pastor for a besieged town.

The novel is a fast-paced curious affair. Curious in the sense that the gunplay is a bit on the “Too good to be true” side of things and yet handled with a light touch that makes it go down fine.

What prevents it from being an unkillable loner knockoff is Ehrlich’s humor living inside the amiable mind of our Pretended Pastor Protagonist and the occasional marks of deeper maturity that come to the fore.

This is a fine Western with something to say, disguised as a formulary knock-off.

I enjoyed it a good deal, as I did our “Pastor’s” newly won view of the world.

It's peculiar how things you do every day you do so much more slow and calculated when you figure it may be the last time.

Fine advice for all.

Fistful of Dollars

 

Marisol: Why do you do this for us?

Stranger: Why? Because I knew someone like you once and there was no one there to help.

This, this is where IT started.

What is the IT of that sentence?

Well, try this on for size.

The beginnings of Clint Eastwood as icon and not mere, “Didn’t he used to be on Rawhide?”

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when nobody really knew the name.

Clint was the tenth choice. Tenth!

First in the roster was Henry Fonda, then Charles Bronson, then Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel, Steve Reeves, Ty Hardin and then James Coburn. These far better known [at the time] American actors all said, “No, thanks.”

Leone turned next to Richard Harrison, who also took a pass but Harrison, who was also not impressed with the script, suggested little known Clint Eastwood who could at least “Look convincingly cowboy.”

Leone, pressed for time, took a chance.

Watch that opening scene, hell, watch the entire film, does this look like a tenth choice performance?

Laconic swaggering cool never had it so good.

Bonus: Watch Clint’s gun-handling, from drawing, good wrist, and holster return. He’s doin’ it all. No less an authority than Nicole “Fastdraw” Franks gives Mr. Eastwood high marks for pistolry depiction.

Eastwood bit at the script, recognizing it as a take on the chambara film, Yojimbo, with a bit of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest thrown in.

He picked up his own costume in a Hollywood thrift store and flew to Europe for this low-budget production by a no-name director, with this non-marquee star.

This film is also the beginning of Sergio Leone as a visual stylist that would go on to shape how action is framed.

Consider this, Leone had only directed a single film before this one, the not well received peplum The Colossus of Rhodes. There is nothing in that film, nothing, that says “Greatness is to come.”

He directed a mere handful after this film but each of these from unusual framing, to tracking action with a fluid camera in the days before Figg Rigs, drones, and light handhelds, in the days when such camera gymnastics were H-A-R-D—he did it anyway.

The static drawn out calm before the storm action pieces that have been cribbed by anyone and everyone including Mr. Tarantino who sings the praises of this film and its two follow-ups as The Only Perfect Film Trilogy in cinematic history.

The visual cribbing goes way beyond the screen. There is not a comic book, film poster, or graphic novel that does not owe a tremendous debt to Mr. Leone’s framing.

This film is really where the soundtrack and film score as part of the film moves to the fore.

Sure, we have memorable film music prior to this—Bernard Herrman’s work in Hitchcock’s Psycho being a memorable high point.

But it was composer Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone who began something that had not been done before, they made the score a character in the film.

The score introduces characters. The score dictates the pace of the scene. The score matches film editing in syncopation—such as it had not been done before.

This film began anti-hero cool. This film launched a genre.

This film inspired thousands of films, books, TV shows, comic books, graphic novels, film scores, fashion trends etc. whether they were overtly Western or not.

The film viewed in isolation with no context holds up damn well.

But…if one goes in with an informed eye, an eye that really looks at everything that is on the screen [I mean everything] an ear that listens to all.

Then, and only then do we see not something of mere historic significance in the arts. We see something that is still crafted far better than much of what we see today that has far better budgets, far better gear, and far better tech.

What the present imitators don’t have are the maverick “Let’s go for broke and make our own thing” brio of the trio of Leone, Eastwood, and Morricone.

And to think this is merely the first film of an ever ascending trilogy.

Remarkable.