Saturday, January 13, 2018

A Wolff of a Different Color, or the Original Brand X

Trooper mentioned the old tv show Yancy Derringer, or maybe he didn't. And if not, he should have. I watched it when it was first broadcast and now I am watching it again. Ain't technology wonderful?

Yancy returns home after the Civil War and goes to his old home place. His plantation is played by Tara from GWTW -- it is unmistakable. I guess even Desilu liked to pinch pennies.

Ol' Yance has a Pawnee sidekick named Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wa, and they communicate using sign language. Funny, but everything they say to each other looks exactly like every other thing they say to each other. Not very inventive signing.

This is Pahoo:

His character's name allegedly means Wolf Who Stands in Water. This show was made so long ago that they could hire a German and cover him with redface. Try that today, Hollywood!

This show was made so long ago that both Sally Field's mother and Candice Bergen's mother are in the series - they play Yancy's girlfriends. Yep, it was that long ago.

Yancy, of course, went on to play Tarzan, and he has several rope swinging stunts in this show. Perhaps they took "Hollywood and Vine" literally. The usual cast of '50s character actors stop by for a paycheck -- Nick Adams, Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef, heck, even Louise Fletcher has a part. Talk about some Ratched acting!

Wikipedia says that post-war New Orleans was like post-war Berlin. I am not seeing it in this series, but I suppose an occupied city is an occupied city. Damned carpetbaggers!

For those keeping score, it was 71 degrees yesterday, it will be 22 tonight, 17 tomorrow night, and while none of those are a problem, individually, having the temperature riding a roller coaster like that is tough to work around.


Plus, it looks warm over there.

5 comments:

ampersand said...

Jock Mahoney married Sally Field's mother. He was the one who influenced Sally to take up acting. He started out as a stuntman and is in several Shemp 3 Stooges shorts playing various clumsy goofballs and doing his own stunts.

edutcher said...

Before he was Yancy, he was the Range Rider. We're talking early 50s here, so many of you will have no idee.

ricpic said...

Nick Adams. Whether or not he was a good actor I have no idea but the thing that always struck me is just how representative of unnoticed America he was. Unnoticed by Hollywood that is. I've crossed the country too many times, I really wish I had done less of it, and I've seen Nick Adams everywhere, hundreds, thousands of Nick Adams. I hate to use this highfalutin word but he had a quintessentially American face. He really did. On further consideration I think he was a good actor, in the sense of all you gotta do is act naturally.

The Dude said...

Good drumming, but the rest of those guys are terrible. Good thing they were successful!

The Dude said...

Just watched the Louise Fletcher epi - I must say she was quite the looker 60 years ago.