William Orr Movies

The second season of F Troop is filmed in color instead of black-and-white, and the ballad and action montage which opened each season-one episode has been replaced by a simpler opening title, featuring caricatures of the cast members rendered by MAD magazine's Mort Drucker. Otherwise, it is business as usual in the 19th century cavalry outpost of Fort Courage, as enterprising Sgt. O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker) and Cpl. Agarn (Larry Storch), in league with peace-loving Hekawi Indian chief Wild Eagle (Frank DeKova), manage a vast array of questionable business concerns right under the nose of Fort Courage's clueless, clumsy commanding officer, Captain Wilton Parmenter (Ken Berry). Meanwhile, curvaceous trading-post operator Wrangler Jane (Melody Patterson) persists in her efforts to arouse Parmenter's romantic nature, to no avail. That F Troop is a comedy rather than a Western is once again made abundantly clear in its choice of guest stars. In the episode "The Great Troop Robbery," Milton Berle appears as intrepid Indian detective Wise Owl. "Where Were You at the Last Massacre" features Phil Harris as 147-year-old Indian warrior Flaming Arrow, who vividly recalls his meeting with the wife of President James Madison ("Hello, Dolly!"). "The Singing Mountie" stars Paul Lynde as the title character, a devastating takeoff of movie tenor Nelson Eddy. "V Is for Vampire" spotlights Vincent Price as a Dracula-like stranger who may or may not have kidnapped Wrangler Jane. "Bye Bye Balloon" finds Harvey Korman as stiff-necked Prussian officer Heinrich Von Zippel, whose attempt at lighter-than-air flight elicits the now-classic line from Wild Eagle, "It...is...balloon!" And "That's Show Biz" is a deliciously anachronistic outing featuring the singing group the Factory Rock Quartet, and highlighted by Melody Patterson's rendition of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- some 90 years before it was written. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Helen Gurley Brown's self-help best-seller was the nominal source for this Hollywood sex romp, directed by Richard Quine, co-scripted by Joseph Heller and David R. Schwartz, and starring Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood. Tony Curtis plays Bob Weston, a writer for the scandal sheet "Dirt," who is working on an article on research psychologist Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood) and her best-selling book Sex and the Single Girl. Bob needs to interview Helen, but she refuses to see him. Bob impersonates one of her neighbors, Frank Broderick (Henry Fonda), as a ruse in order to see her on the pretext of marital counseling. After several meetings, Bob attempts to seduce her; after they fall out of a boat and head back to Helen's apartment to dry out, Bob plies her with martinis. Rip-roarin' drunk, Helen confesses her love for Bob. He assures her it's fine, since he's not legally married, but Helen doesn't believe him and asks to meet his wife, Sylvia (Lauren Bacall). To fill up the breach, Bob mistakenly sends both his secretary, Susan (Leslie Parrish), and his ex-girlfriend Gretchen (Fran Jeffries) to see Helen -- both impersonating Sylvia. When the real Sylvia arrives at Helen's apartment with the two other women, Sylvia has her hapless husband Frank put in jail for bigamy. By this point, Helen has realized Bob's skullduggery and leaves town with her colleague Rudy DeMeyer (Mel Ferrer). Bob chases Helen onto the San Diego Freeway, where they also encounter Frank, who is being followed in a cab by Sylvia. A wild chase ensues as the bickering couples try to make it to their flights at the L.A. airport. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

As the ABC western series Cheyenne entered its seventh season, star Clint Walker was still holding fast to his contractual agreement with Warner Bros., refusing to appear in any more than 14 new episodes per year. Thus, just as it had during the previous two seasons, Cheyenne shared its timeslot with another of studio's western shows, Broncho (though Cheyenne was used as a blanket title for both efforts). However, inasmuch as that only brought the total of new hour-long installments to 16, the remainder of the seventh season was filled out with reruns from earlier Cheyenne and Bronco seasons. The guest-star roster on Cheyenne this year included Denver Pyle of Dukes of Hazzard Fame in the episode "Winchester Quarantine"; a pre-stardom James Coburn and Lee Van Cleef in "Trouble Street, Ellen Burstyn, still billed as Ellen McRae, in Day's Pay; and Susan Seaforth, who would be known by her married named Susan Seaforth Hayes on Days of Our Lives, in "The Bad Penny". Finally, series star Clint Walker was absent from the season finale "A Man Called Ragan", which served as the pilot for the new Warners western weekly The Dakotas and starred Larry Ward, Chad Everett, Jack Elam and Mike Greene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The popular tongue-in-cheek western series Maverick entered its fourth season one "Maverick" shy. James Garner, who'd risen to stardom in the role of self-protective frontier gambler Bret Maverick, had long been complaining about the relative pittance he was being paid for his efforts by home studio Warner Bros.. The proverbial back-breaking straw came in early 1960,when the studio suspended Garner without pay, claiming that a Hollywood writers' strike had prevented Warners from turning out any new Maverick scripts--though curiously, Garner's costar Jack Kelly remained on the payroll. Bound by his contract to remain on the series despite this cavalier treatment, Garner sued Warners for breach of contract, finally winning his case when it was proven that the studio had actually built up a healthy reserve of scripts during the strike (some of which were retreads of earlier scripts, pseudonymously created to one "W. Hermanos"!) The upshot of all this backstage intrigue was that Maverick began its fourth season with Jack Kelly as the sole star, playing his familiar role of Bart Maverick. During Garner's absence, the studio attempted to create a new star in the person of future "James Bond" Roger Moore, who is introduced in the season opener "A Bundle from Britain". Moore plays Bret and Bart's English cousin Beau Maverick, who is the "White Sheep" of the family because he was actually decorated for heroics in the Civil War! While Moore played his part admirably, he was no James Garner, and was quietly written out of the show in mid-season. And when it was clear that Garner was never coming back, Warners' brought in a hitherto unknown third Maverick brother, Brent Maverick, played by Robert Colbert. Introduced in the episode "The Forbidden City", Brent survived only three more episodes before he, too, was axed. All of this cast-shuffling had a deleterious effect on the series' ratings, which for the first time in two years dropped completely out of the Top Thirty. Even so, Maverick's fourth season still yielded quite a few golden moments, notably the episode "Hadley's Hunters", which contrives to include cameo appearances by virtually the entire Warners TV-western lineup: Clint Walker (Cheyenne), Will Hutchins (Sugarfoot), Ty Hardin (Bronco), and John Russell and Peter Brown (Lawman)--not to mention Edd Byrnes, then playing the comb-wielding "Kookie" on the studio's non-western series 77 Sunset Strip. Also making guest appearances this season are a pre-Beverly Hillbillies Max Baer Jr. in the aforementioned "A Bundle of Britain"; another Beverly Hillbillies stalwart, Buddy Ebsen, atypically cast as a cold-blooded murderer in "Last Stop: Oblivion"; future Addams Family patriarch John Astin in "The Town That Wasn't There"' and Alan Hale Jr., aka "The Skipper" of Gilligan's Island fame, in "Arizona Black Maria". Season Four of Maverick concludes with the series' only two-part episode, "The Devil's Necklace." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most delightful running gags on the tongue-in-cheek western series Maverick was the tendency of frontier gambler Bret Maverick (James Garner) to constantly quote the pearls of wisdom passed down by his dear old Pappy. Generally, these "Pappyisms" came to surface whenever Bret wanted to convince his more adventuresome brother Bart (Jack Kelly) that discretion was the better part of valor--meaning, "Let's hightail it out of town before somebody fills us full of holes!" Inevitably, the elder Maverick would have to make an appearance on his sons' TV series. Thus, the third season of Maverick opens with the appropriately yclept episode "Pappy", with a heavily made up James Garner playing the title role. Evidently to keep peace in the family, costar Jack Kelly was likewise allowed to appear in old-man makeup at the end of this series--one of several vain efforts by the producers to give equal time to both Garner and Kelly, even though Garner was clearly the more popular of the two actors. As in past seasons, Maverick underlined its satirical approach to the western genre by serving up the occasional parody. "Maverick and Juliet", for example, is nothing more nor less than Shakespeare in the Sagebrush, relating the saga of the feud between the Montgomerys and the Cartarets. Even better is the episode "A Cure for Johnny Rain", a dead-on spoof of Dragnet, replete with deadpan offscreen narration ("This is the West. I work here. My name's Maverick.") Also as before, the third season of Maverick is studded with famous or soon-to-be famous names in the supporting casts. Both Troy Donahue and Adam West show up in the aforementioned "Pappy"; Buddy Ebsen of Beverly Hillibillies fame can be seen in "The Cats of Paradise"; a very young Joel Grey is cast as, of all things, Billy the Kid in "Full House"; and yes, that's Robert Redford as a bashful cowpoke in "Devil's Rain." Inasmuch as Maverick ended its third season as the 19th highest-rated show in America, there was no reason that the show shouldn't run forever. Well, actually, there was a reason--and without going into any further detail at this point, it can be noted that the season's final episode, "Greenbacks, Unlimited", also marked the last series appearance by James Garner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fourth season of Maverick gets under way minus the series' popular star James Garner, who'd vacated the role of frontier gambler Bret Maverick after a contract dispute with Warner Bros.. Garner's costar Jack Kelly is still on hand as Bret's brother Bart Maverick, along with a newcomer to these parts: future "James Bond" Roger Moore in the role of Bart's British cousin Beau Maverick, the "white sheep" of the Maverick clan. No sooner has Beau arrived in the American West than he agrees--for a price, of course--to pose as Freddie Bogner (Robert Casper, scion of a wealthy and aristocratic European family. But the $4000 that Beau is to collect for this assignment may not be worth the danger involved when he is kidnapped by an ill-tempered gent with a long-standing grudge against the real Freddie. Featured in the cast is Max Baer Jr., still two years away from TV immortality as Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season Two of the tongue-in-cheek western Maverick marks the introduction of the series' jaunty theme song ("Who is the tall dark stranger there?/Maverick is his name. . .") written by David Buttolph. It is also the season in which all pretentions of presenting a "straight" western were dropped, and the emphasize was on comedy and satire, thanks largely to the input of series stars James Garner as frontier gambler Bart Maverick. Though the writers made a brave effort to afford equal time to Garner's costar Jack Kelly as Bret's brother Bart Maverick, it was clear who the viewers had picked as their favorite (no slight to the talented Kelly, who held his own admirably in the handful of "serious" stories offered this season). That Maverick was essentially a spoof of the whole TV western genre is never more clear than in its first "parody" episode, Season Three's Gunshy, a hilarious takeoff of Gunsmoke featuring Ben Gage as the usurious Marshal Mort Dooley (the "Kitty" counterpart in this episode does nothing but stand by bravely and warn "Be careful, Mort!") Later this season, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th century drawing room comedy The Rivals is reconfigured as a western tale, with Roger Moore in the renamed "Anthony Absolute" role; two years later, Moore would join the regular Maverick cast as Bret and Bart's English cousin Beau Maverick. Among the other notables making guest appearances during Season Three are Richard Long, introducing the recurring character of genteel con artist Gentleman Jack Darby in "Alias Bret Maverick"; future Oscar winners Martin Landau in "High Card Hangs" and Louise Fletcher in "Two Tickets to Ten Strike" (which also features early appearances by Connie Stevens and Adam West; Dan Blocker of Bonanza fame in "The Jail at Junction Flats"; The Wild Wild West's Robert Conrad in "Yellow River"; and, best of all, Clint Eastwood as a thickheaded gunslinger in "Duel at Sundown". Despite the stiff competion of CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show and NBC's The Steve Allen Show, Maverick managed to close out its second season as America's sixth highest-rated program--and also garnered (no pun intended) an Emmy nomination for star James Garner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season Three of the rugged ABC western series Cheyenne was also the first season in which the series' familiar theme song ("Cheyenne, Cheyenne/Where will you be campin' tonight?), written by William Lava,was heard as a vocal over the opening and closing credits. Tall, broad-shouldered Clint Walker continues to deploy a minimum of talking and a maximum of muscle as versatile frontier drifter Cheyenne Bodie in the 19 episodes comprising Cheyenne's third season. As in previous years, the show was not originally offered on a weekly basis, but instead in rotation with another Warner Bros. produced. This time around, Cheyenne shared its familiar Tuesday night timeslot with a new western series, Sugarfoot, based on the 1954 Will Rogers Jr. movie vehicle The Boy From Oklahoma and starring Will Hutchins as gangly cowboy lawyer Tom "Sugarfoot" Brewster. Getting back to Cheyenne, its third season begins with "Incident at Indian Springs", directed by Thomas Carr of The Adventures of Superman fame. Later episodes of note include "Border Affair", in which Cheyenne saves a beautiful foreign princess from an arranged marriage with a would-be French despot living in Mexico; "Renegades", wherein the strong, silent hero tries to negotiate a tready between the Cavalry and the Comanches without stirring up old animosities; "White Warrior", which finds Cheyenne matching wits with a duplicitous wagonmaster who is leading a group of settlers into a trap; "Ghost of the Cimarron", with Cheyenne doing his best to dissuade a wounded outlaw leader from exacting a vengeance that will take the lives of countless innocent bystanders; and the season finale The Angry Sky", one of the few TV western episodes in which the protagonist faces death in a snowstorm. Among the prominent guest stars this season are Sebastian Cabot (Family Affair, Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island), Edward Byrnes ("Kookie" on 77 Sunset Strip) and Michael Landon (Bonanza). Inasmuch as the series was the 12th highest-rated American TV show during the 1957-58 season, there was no question that Cheyenne would return in the fall. The question was whether Clint Walker would return as Cheyenne. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When it first aired on ABC in the fall of 1955, the western series Cheyenne was not seen on a weekly basis, but instead in rotation with two other series based on prior Warner Bros. theatrical features: Casablanca, starring Charles McGraw in the Humphrey Bogart role; and King's Row, with Jack Kelly and Robert Horton in the parts originated by Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan. All three series were part of a quasi-anthology titled Warner Bros. Presents, represented the studio's first foray into TV production. As seen on TV, Cheyenne bears little resemblance to the 1947 film on which it was purportedly bases. The title character, played by Clint Walker, is Cheyenne Bodie, a taciturn frontier jack-of-all-trades who spent much of his childhood living with a Native American tribe. With this background, Cheyenne has little trouble finding work as an Indian interpreter, trail guide, ranch hand and trapper in the years following the Civil War. Also, thanks to his impressive physique and towering height (between 6'5" and 6'8", according to various studio press releases), Cheyenne is a handy man to have around whenever a bad guy has to be beaten up or a pretty gal has to be rescued. This is a far cry from the protagonist played by Dennis Morgan in the 1947 Cheyenne movie, who was a professional gambler who tended to cagily play both sides down the middle until ultimately choosing to champion the "right" side. The first season's worth of Cheyenne episodes run 45 minutes each, rather than 60; this was done to accommodate the weekly 10-minute "plug" for upcoming Warners feature films that originally concluded each telecast of Warner Bros. Presents (the most famous of these plugs was of course the one in which James Dean appeared to promote his upcoming feature Giant--and, ironically, to advise his fellow hot-rod enthusiasts to drive safely!) Beginning with "Mountain Fortress", the initial 15 Cheyennes find the leading character going on a map-making expedition with his pal Smitty (L.Q. Jones, who appeared this season on a semi-regular basis), protecting stagecoach and train passengers from outlaws and Indians, rescuing a family of Mexican aristocrats from marauding bandidos, and sinking up to his neck in quicksand in a test of courage with a Comanche chief. The most fascinating of the early Cheyenne installments is "West of the River", which is nothing more nor less than a remake (with ample doses of stock footage) of the classic 3-D western movie Charge at Feather River (1953). Guest stars appearing in the "first 15" include Rod Taylor, Dennis Hopper, Barton MacLane, and in the final episode of the season, "The Last Train West", a young James Garner, cast as a deceptive mild-mannered minister. Warner Bros. had assumed that the most popular attractions of Warner Bros. Presents would be Casablanca and King's Row; westerns had not yet become all the rage on network TV, so Cheyenne was tossed in as almost an afterthought. But by the time the anthology came to the end of the 1955-1956 season, only Cheyenne had "clicked" with viewers--and, accordingly, only Cheyenne was renewed for a second season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this grim melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck plays the eldest of three wealthy sisters who become orphans when their father dies in France. Threatened with the danger of losing the opulent family home, Big Sister makes a grand sacrifice and secretly marries a real estate developer so she can inherit her aunt's fortune. A few years later, she learns that he is after the family estate and wants to tear it down so she leaves him and tries to stop him. More time passes and the husband ends up taking her to court when he learns that she has borne him a son without telling him. The part of "Gig Young" was played by actor Byron Barr who later assumed the name before he became famous. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a grandmother decides to help her naive grandson get the money he needs to marry his girl by allowing him to get his inheritance, a mattress factory, before she dies. She suggests that he use it as collateral on a loan, but instead the young man sells the business to a crook who ends up charging another interested buyer an exorbitant interest rate for it. The angry buyer then tries to force the lad's father to buy back the factory. That doesn't work, so he ends up kidnapping the grandmother. This is not a wise move as the grandmother is far more clever than her captor and quickly turns the situation around to her advantage. Soon the kidnapper hands the factory back and gets nothing in return. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This Buck Privates knockoff concerns the misadventures of the three Patterson brothers: Charley (Wayne Morris), Eddie (Tom Brown) and Kenneth (William T. Orr). Pampered by their pacifistic mother Margaret (Irene Rich), the Patterson boys do everything they can to avoid being drafted into the Army. Once they've donned unifom, however, our heroes calmly and courageously do their patriotic duty, while their mother at last realizes it's all for the best. Before this happens, however, the audience is subjected to all manner of goofy slapstick setpieces, including a trained-seal bit right out of the Mack Sennett era. Incidentally, Three Sons O' Guns costar William T. Orr was the son-in-law of Jack L. Warner, whose studio produced the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1940 peacetime draft spawned a whole slew of military and naval comedies, the most successful of which was Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates. In this vein, Warners' Navy Blues features several studio contractees (including Ann Sheridan and Jack Carson), a few borrowed comedians (Jack Oakie, Jack Haley, Martha Raye) and a plethora of forgettable musical numbers. The plot: A ship's crew goes on leave in Honolulu, has a high old time, meets a few pretty girls, and heads back to sea. That's all. Modern viewers will get a kick out of spotting Navy Blues supporting actor Jackie Gleason, who must have relished the opportunity of working with his idol Jack Oakie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide