Maverick is a comedy-western television series created by Roy Huggins that ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and featured James Garner, Jack Kelly, Roger Moore, and Robert Colbert as the poker-playing traveling Mavericks (Bret, Bart, Beau, & Brent). Moore and Colbert were later additions, though there were never more than two current Mavericks in the series at any given time, and sometimes only one.

James Garner as Bret Maverick

Maverick presented James Garner as Bret Maverick (1957-1960), an adventurous gambler roaming the Old West, Jack Kelly as his equally skilled brother Bart Maverick (1957-1962), and Roger Moore as English-accented cousin Beau Maverick (1960-1961). James Garner was the only Maverick in the series during the first seven episodes, and the show is credited with launching Garner's career. Maverick often bested both The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show in audience size.

Series creator Roy Huggins inverted the usual screen-cowboy customs familiar in television and movies at the time by dressing his hero in a fancy black broadcloth gambler's suit, an outfit normally reserved in western films for villains, and allowing him to be realistically (and vocally) reluctant to risk his life, though Maverick typically ended up forcing himself to be courageous, usually in spite of himself.

The first broadcast episode of Maverick, "War of the Silver Kings," was based on C.B Glasscock's "The War of the Copper Kings," which relates the real-life adventures of copper mine speculator F. Augustus Heinze. The real-life copper king ultimately went to Wall Street. Huggins recalls in his Archive of American Television interview that this Warners-owned property was selected by the studio as the first episode in order to cheat him out of creator residuals.

Bret Maverick frequently flimflammed adversaries, but only criminals who actually deserved it. Otherwise he was scrupulously honest almost to a fault, in at least one case insisting on repaying a debt that he only arguably owed to begin with (in "According to Hoyle").

Maverick was not a particularly fast draw with a pistol, but like all TV cowboy heroes of the era, it was almost superhumanly impossible for anyone to beat him in any sort of a fistfight (perhaps the one cowboy cliché that Huggins left intact, reportedly at the insistence of the studio).

Critics have repeatedly referred to Bret Maverick as "arguably the first TV anti-hero," and have praised the show for its photography and Garner's charisma and subtly comedic facial expressions.

Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick

Though James Garner was originally supposed to be the only Maverick, the studio eventually hired Jack Kelly (brother of movie actress Nancy Kelly) to play Bret Maverick's brother Bart, starting with the eighth episode. The producers realized that it took over a week to shoot a single episode, so Kelly was recruited to rotate with Garner as the series lead using two separate crews (while occasionally appearing together). In Bart's first episode, in order to engender audience sympathy for the new character, the script called for him to be tied up and beaten by an evil police officer. Garner introduced each of Kelly's solo episodes for a while until the public could get used to another Maverick.

The Bart Maverick character was originally written to be more or less a clone of his brother Bret, dressing similarly and speaking identical dialogue; the only discernible difference was in the ways the two actors played their parts. No separate personalities were ever concocted for subsequent Mavericks by the writing staffs as the cast changed over the years. The names changed but the poker skills and every other attribute remained exactly the same except for the different actors playing Maverick.

Garner as Bret usually wore a black cowboy hat, often changing its placement on his head from one scene to the next, while Kelly as Bart almost always wore a light grey one, and both wore black or grey suit jackets when gambling in saloons (usually black jackets, but occasionally grey; Kelly wore grey suits in his first few episodes but soon switched to black for the rest of the series, always wearing a light grey hat except for one occasion.) Garner at 6'3" was two inches taller than Kelly, leading a character in one episode ("Seed of Deception") to refer to them as "the big one" and "the little one." Garner always generated more attention from the public and the media during the run of the series than Kelly, leading Kelly in later years to cheerfully remark, "Garner was Maverick. I was his brother."

Other actors also considered for the role of Bart Maverick before Kelly was chosen included Rod Taylor and Stuart Whitman (who played Marshal Jim Crown in the western TV series Cimarron Strip a decade later and closely resembled Garner in 1957).

The chairman of Kaiser Aluminum, the series' main sponsor at the time, became so perturbed when Kelly was brought in to share the show with Garner (saying, "I paid for red apples and I get green apples!") that ABC had to cut a new deal that cost the network a small fortune.

Oddly, only one script was actually written with Jack Kelly in mind during the first three years of the series, since the writers were instructed to picture James Garner as the lead regardless of which actor would actually wind up playing it. Kelly lacked Garner's deftly light touch with comedic facial expressions, which has led to widespread belief that Bart was meant to be the more "serious" brother. Since only one script was actually written for Kelly, however, the difference was mainly in the acting rather than the writing, even though Garner probably did actually wind up with more of the comedy scripts; Huggins noted in his videotaped Archive of American Television interview that Kelly dropped a funny line "like a load of coal."

The scripts with both brothers were written with the Mavericks designated as "Maverick 1" and "Maverick 2," and Garner chose which part he'd play in these two-brother episodes, since he had seniority; this guaranteed that Garner always enjoyed the better half of the story.

Garner and Kelly made an effective team and the episodes featuring them both were audience favorites, with critics frequently citing the chemistry between the Maverick brothers. Bret and Bart often found themselves competing with each other for women or money, or working together in some elaborate scheme to snooker someone who'd just robbed one of them.

Which Maverick brother happened to be the older was purposely left ambiguous, with both Bret and Bart emphatically claiming to be the younger whenever the topic came up in conversation with a woman. Jack Kelly was a year older than James Garner in real life.

Kelly's episodes consistently drew slightly higher ratings than Garner's during the first two seasons (the difference always slight enough to be within the margin of error), but after writer/producer Roy Huggins left the show and there was a gradual decline in ratings, Garner's shows scored higher than Kelly's. Huggins speculated in his Archive of American Television reminiscences that the audience was bigger for Kelly's shows because of enthusiasm engendered by the previous week's Garner broadcast.

Roger Moore as Beau Maverick

Though very popular, James Garner left over a contract dispute with the studio after the series' third year and was replaced by Roger Moore as cousin Beau Maverick, nephew of the original Beau "Pappy" Maverick. Interestingly, Moore had earlier played a completely different role in a Maverick installment called "The Rivals," a drawing room comedy episode with Garner in which Moore's character switched identities with Bret as part of the plot; the physical resemblance between the two young actors remains surprising.

Roger Moore as Beau Maverick generally wore a grey suit (that had actually previously been worn by Garner) with a light grey cowboy hat, and his self-described "slight English accent" (actually quite heavy) was explained by his having spent the last few years in England. Moore was exactly the same age as Jack Kelly and brought a flair for light comedy and a physical similarity to Garner that fit Maverick perfectly--Moore even looked as much like the profile drawing of the card player at the beginning of each show, even though the profile was based upon Garner's likeness.

Moore quit due to declining script quality (without having to resort to legal measures as Garner had); Moore insisted that if he'd had the level of superb writing that Garner had enjoyed during the first two years of the show's run, he would have stayed. Some of Moore's shows are quite good, however, particularly an episode written and directed by Robert Altman, and critics noted that Moore and Kelly worked well together in their several two-Maverick episodes. Moore would later replace another cultural icon when he took over the James Bond role in movies after Sean Connery's departure.

Oddly, in a TV series called The Alaskans, Moore had previously spoken Garner's lines. Warner Brothers had a policy of recycling the scripts through each of their television series to save money on writers, literally changing only the names and the locales while leaving the rest of the dialogue more or less intact, and Moore had acted in several recycled Maverick scripts, a kind of peculiar accidental audition to play Maverick.

Robert Colbert as Brent Maverick

As ratings continued to slide following the addition of Roger Moore, James Garner lookalike Robert Colbert was cast as yet another brother, Brent Maverick, duplicating Garner's costume exactly. Aware of his physical similarity to Garner and wary of the comparisons that would inevitably result, Colbert famously pleaded with Warner Brothers not to cast him, saying, "Put me in a dress and call me Brenda but don't do this to me!"

The studio had intended for Jack Kelly, Roger Moore, and Robert Colbert to be on the series at the same time, and a publicity photo exists of Bart, Beau, and Brent standing together on a street with their pistols pointed, as well as a color shot of Bart and Beau admiring the thousand dollar bill pinned to the inside of Brent's jacket (a recurring Maverick plot device), but Moore had already left the show when the first of Colbert's two episodes aired in 1961.

For the final season in 1962, the studio dropped Colbert and alternated new Kelly episodes with Garner reruns before canceling the series, and viewers could readily discern the script quality decline in the newer shows. The studio reversed the actors' billing at the beginning of the show for that last season and billed Kelly over Garner, who'd been long absent from the lot by then.

Supporting players and recurring roles

Recurring supporting roles included Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Dandy Jim Buckley (1957-1958; sophisticated con artist Buckley was a version of Maverick without the ethics), Diane Brewster as Samantha Crawford (1957-1958), Richard Long as Gentleman Jack Darby (1958-1959; Darby filled in for Buckley's character when Zimbalist moved to his own TV detective series), Arlene Howell as Cindy Lou Brown (1958-1959), Leo Gordon as two-fisted Irish ally Big Mike McComb (1957-1959), both Gerald Mohr and Peter Breck as Doc Holliday, both John Dehner and Andrew Duggan as Big Ed Murphy, and Kathleen Crowley in multiple appearances as several different romantic interests for Bret, Bart, and Beau (Melanie Blake, Modesty Blaine, etc.). Mona Freeman also portrayed Modesty Blaine twice, but played the character as borderline homicidal and almost psychotic, with a disturbingly wild look in her eyes, which was quite different from Crowley's interpretation.

Character actors from the era enhanced every episode, some of them appearing seven or eight times over the course of the series in various roles. A very young Joel Grey played Billy the Kid in an unusual episode that featured a bravura pistol-twirling exhibition by Garner, and a chubby, acne-scarred Robert Redford joined Kelly on a desperate cattle drive. Stacy Keach, Sr. played a sheriff in "Ghost Rider." (The resemblance to his son, actor Stacy Keach, is strong enough that it has confused modern viewers). Lee Van Cleef, John Carradine, Tol Avery, Buddy Ebsen, Chubby Johnson, Hans Conried, Alan Hale, Jr., Jim Backus, Patric Knowles, and dozens of other character actors appeared at least once if not several times during the run of the series, and attractive supporting actresses included Mala Powers, Catherine McLeod, Coleen Gray, Marie Windsor, Erin O'Brien, Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn, Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher, Ruta Lee, Joi Lansing, Karen Steele, Roxane Berard, Abby Dalton, Dawn Wells, Joanna Barnes, Pat Crowley, Connie Stevens, Julie Adams, Saundra Edwards, Whitney Blake, Merry Anders, Kaye Elhardt, Jean Willes, Suzanne Lloyd, Paula Raymond, Fay Spain, and Adele Mara.

The program's stentorian-voiced announcer ("Maverick! Starring Jack Kelly and Robert Colbert!") was character actor Ed Reimers.

Famous episodes

Arguably the five most famous individual episodes of the series remain "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" (in which Bret spends most of the acclaimed episode apparently relaxing in a rocking chair, calmly whittling and offhandedly assuring the inquisitive and derisively amused townspeople that he's "working on it" while Bart runs a complex sting operation to swindle a crooked banker who'd blithely pocketed Bret's deposit of $15,000), "According to Hoyle" (the first appearance of Diane Brewster as roguish Samantha Crawford, a role she'd played earlier in an episode of another western TV series called Cheyenne), "The Saga of Waco Williams" (which also drew the largest viewership of the series), "Gun-Shy" (a spoof of Gunsmoke), and "Duel at Sundown" (with Clint Eastwood as a fist-fighting villain).

Jack Kelly's favorite episode was "Two Beggars On Horseback," a sweeping adventure that depicted a frenzied race between Bret and Bart to cash a check, the only time in the series that Kelly also wore a black hat.

"Pappy" stands out as a unique episode, with James Garner playing Bret and Bart's father Beau, an important but previously unseen character always referred to throughout the run of the series as "Pappy." Bret and Bart were both constantly saying, "As my Pappy used to say" then reeling off some intriguing aphorism like "Work is fine for killing time but it's a shaky way to make a living." In this particular episode, Pappy was brought to life for the only time in the series by Garner, and Bret also winds up disguising himself as his own grey-haired, mustachioed father as part of the plotline. The split screen sequences with two Garners in the same shot were singled out by critics as especially interesting. Kelly also plays a dual role, briefly portraying old Beau's brother Bentley, or "Uncle Bent," as Bret calls him.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.'s charming character Dandy Jim Buckley (Maverick minus the meticulous scruples) appears to especially superb effect in the epic "Stampede" and comedy of treachery "The Jail at Junction Flats." The latter episode features a memorable conclusion that offended many 1958 viewers. (Zimbalist went on to play the lead in his own series, 77 Sunset Strip, after five appearances as Buckley. Huggins recruited Richard Long to fill the void as a similar character named "Gentleman Jack Darby," and both Buckley and Darby appear in "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres," although not in the same scenes.)

Many episodes are humorous while others are deadly serious, and in addition to purely original scripts, producer Roy Huggins drew upon works by writers as disparate as Louis Lamour and Robert Louis Stevenson to give the series breadth and scope. The Maverick brothers never stopped traveling, and the show was as likely to be set on a riverboat or in New Orleans as in a western desert or frontier saloon.

Theme Song

The memorable theme song was penned by prolific composers David Buttolph (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics). Webster's lyrics:

Who is the tall dark stranger there?

Maverick is the name.

Riding the trail to who-knows-where

Luck is his companion

Gamblin' is his game.

Smooth as the handle on a gun.

Maverick is the name.

Wild as the wind in Oregon

Blowin' up a canyon

Easier to tame.

Riverboat ring your bell.

Fare-thee-well Annabelle.

Luck is the lady that he loves the best.

Natchez to New Orleans.

Livin' on jacks and queens.

Maverick is a legend of the west.

Spin-Offs

In the decades following the cancellation of Maverick, the characters and situations have been revived several times. In 1978 a TV-movie called The New Maverick aired, with 50-year-old James Garner and Jack Kelly reprising their roles as the Maverick brothers and Charles Frank playing their slippery young cousin Ben Maverick (son of Bret and Bart's cousin Beau). Garner shot this TV-movie while on hiatus from The Rockford Files. Kelly only appeared in a few scenes near the end of the film. The New Maverick was the pilot for a new series, Young Maverick, which ran for a short time in 1979. Frank's character, Ben Maverick, was the focal point of the show, and James Garner only appeared as Bret for a few moments at the very beginning of the first episode, driving a buckboard he'd won in a poker game. It was apparent that Bret didn't much care for his young cousin Ben (an inauspicious but amusing way to launch the new series), and when the two parted at the nearest crossroads, some critics later noted that the audience couldn't help but think that the camera was following the wrong Maverick. The series ended so quickly that several episodes that had already been filmed never made it to broadcast.

Two years later, another attempt to revive the show would occur after James Garner left The Rockford Files and needed to perform in another series to fulfill his contractual obligations. Bret Maverick (1981-82) starred the 53-year-old Garner as an older-but-no-wiser Bret. Jack Kelly appeared as Bret's brother Bart in only one episode but was slated to return as a series regular for the following season. NBC unexpectedly canceled the show despite respectable ratings and Kelly would never officially join the cast. The new series involved Bret Maverick settling down in a small town in Arizona after winning a saloon in a poker game: the 2-hour first episode was eventually trimmed and repackaged as a TV-movie under the title Bret Maverick: The Lazy Ace. Critics lacked enthusiasm for the show, saying the scripts more closely resembled the inferior ones from the latter part of the original Maverick series than the classic ones from the first years of the show. Bret Maverick ended on a sentimental note, with Bret and Bart embracing during an unexpected encounter and the theme from the original series playing in the background.

The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) featured Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick for the last time. The film united Kelly with various other Western characters and actors, including Bat Masterson (Gene Barry), Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brien), the Rifleman (Chuck Connors) and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford), Caine from Kung Fu (David Carradine), The Westerner (Brian Keith), a thinly disguised Virginian and Trampas (James Drury and Doug McClure who had appearred briefly as a hotel clerk in a first season episode), and Cheyenne Bodie (Clint Walker). Kenny Rogers played the lead as part of his TV-movie series based on his hit song ("...know when to fold 'em..."), with the others (including Maverick) more or less relegated to brief appearances. Garner had made a similar appearance as Bret Maverick years before, in a 1959 Bob Hope movie called Alias Jesse James that also featured Hugh O'Brien as Wyatt Earp, along with Fess Parker (dressed as Davy Crockett), Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Jay Silverheels (Tonto from The Lone Ranger), Gail Davis (Annie Oakley), James Arness (Marshal Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke), and Ward Bond (Seth Adams of Wagon Train), not to mention Hope's frequent screen partner Bing Crosby. Garner's appearance in the film is frequently absent from television presentations of the movie due to legal problems with the rights to the character.

Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick

In 1994, a lavish film version of Maverick starred Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick, Jodie Foster, and James Garner in a significant supporting role as Bret Maverick's father. Garner maintained in later interviews that he was playing exactly the same character as in the television series, with Gibson as his son, but this remains open to conjecture. A "Making of" mini-documentary was broadcast on cable stations prior to the film's release that included no footage of Garner from the original series.

Comic books

During the height of the TV show's popularity, the Maverick brothers starred in a comic book drawn by Dan Spiegle. Spiegle met Garner at the studio before the first Maverick comic was drawn because no publicity photos were available yet. Spiegle explained in an interview about comic books he'd drawn: "I would say my favorite was Maverick, which ran about three years----fairly successful, considering the run of other western strips published then. I was assigned this strip even before they had stills available for the show, so I was sent down to Warner Bros. to see it in production----where I met James Garner, which is perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much. Having met the star, I was extra careful to make the drawings I did look as parallel to the real person as possible. I put my all into that strip, having fun all the way."

Writers

Writers for Maverick included Roy Huggins ("Shady Deal at Sunny Acres"), Russell S. Hughes ("According to Hoyle"), Gerald Drayson Adams ("Stampede"), Montgomery Pittman ("The Saga of Waco Williams"), Douglas Heyes ("The Quick and the Dead"), Marion Hargrove ("The Jail at Junction Flats"), Howard Browne ("Duel at Sundown"), Leo Townsend ("The Misfortune Teller"), Gene Levitt ("The Comstock Conspiracy"), Leo Gordon (who also acted on the series), and George Waggner, among many others.

Bret Maverick statue

On April 21, 2006, a ten-foot tall bronze statue of James Garner as Bret Maverick was unveiled in Garner's hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, with Garner present at the ceremony.

List of Maverick episodes

For a complete list of every episode in the series with comments and notations of which recurring characters appeared, see the comprehensive List of Maverick episodes.

Sources

Two different books on the Maverick TV series were published in 1994, one by Burl Barer and the other by Ed Robertson, and serve as the main sources for the background information in this article, together with various magazine pieces from TV Guide, Life Magazine, and numerous others, along with viewings of the original series episodes, many of which remain available to the public at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City and Los Angeles.

References

External links

• Roy Huggins' Archive of American Television Interview
• Stephen J. Cannell's Archive of American Television explanation of Huggins' approach
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: Maverick
• James Garner's Archive of American Television Interview
• Tim's TV Showcase: Maverick
• TV Tome - Maverick
• James Garner Interview on the Charlie Rose Show
• James Garner as Bret Maverick
• James Garner and Roxane Berard in the episode "Game of Chance"
• Roger Moore Episode Guide