Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins and originally starring James Garner as an adroitly articulate poker player plying his trade on riverboats and in saloons while traveling incessantly through the 19th-century American frontier. The show ran for five seasons from September 22, 1957, to July 8, 1962 on ABC.
Overview Maverick was created by Roy Huggins, after he was inspired by a performance of James Garner's as a poker player and hustler in an episode of Conflict called "The Man from 1997". Maverick initially starred Garner as poker player Bret Maverick. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother Bart Maverick, and for the remainder of the first three seasons, Garner and Kelly alternated leads from week to week, sometimes teaming up for the occasional two-brother episode. The Maverick brothers were both poker players from Texas who traveled the American Old West by horseback and stagecoach, and on Mississippi riverboats, constantly getting into and out of life-threatening trouble of one sort or another, usually involving money, women, or both. Though the Mavericks were quick to claim they were motivated by money, and made a point of humorously emphasizing their supposed belief in cowardice and avoiding hard work, in many episodes they would find themselves weighing a financial windfall against a moral dilemma. Their consciences always trumped their wallets since both Mavericks were intrinsically ethical, although they were not above trying to fleece someone who had clearly proven themselves to be fundamentally dishonest or corrupt.
When Garner left the series after the third season due to a legal dispute, after which he enjoyed a successful film career, Roger Moore was added to the cast as cousin Beau Maverick. As before, the two starring Mavericks would generally alternate as series leads, with an occasional "team-up" episode. Partway through the fourth season, Garner look-alike Robert Colbert replaced Moore and played a third Maverick brother, Brent. No more than two series leads (of the four total for the run of the series) ever appeared together in the same episode, and most episodes featured only one. All two-Maverick episodes included Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick. For the fifth and final season, the show returned to a "single Maverick" format as it had been originally in the first seven episodes, with all the remaining new episodes starring Kelly as Bart. The new episodes, however, alternated with reruns from earlier seasons starring Garner as Bret.
Budd Boetticher directed the first three episodes of the first season until sharply disagreeing with Huggins about Maverick's philosophy, which resulted in Boetticher assigning Bret Maverick's scripted lines to supporting characters and filming the result, thereby attempting to change the whole series by making Maverick into a more conventional Western hero as found in the earlier Boetticher-directed series of classic Western theatrical films starring Randolph Scott.
Robert Altman wrote and directed the fourth season episode titled "Bolt from the Blue" starring Roger Moore as Beau Maverick.
The show was part of the Warner Bros. array of TV Westerns, which included Cheyenne with Clint Walker, Colt .45 with Wayde Preston, Lawman with John Russell, Bronco with Ty Hardin, The Alaskans with Roger Moore, and Sugarfoot with Will Hutchins.
Cast James Garner as Bret Maverick
James Garner starred as Bret Maverick, the epitome of a poker-playing rounder, always seeking out high-stakes games and rarely remaining in one place for long. The show is generally cited as Garner's career breakout; his most prominent prior part was a major supporting role in Sayonara (1957) starring Marlon Brando. Maverick shocked the industry by quickly besting the powerful The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show in the television ratings.
Huggins inverted the usual cowboy hero characteristics familiar to television and film viewers of the time. Bret Maverick was vocally reluctant to risk his life, though he typically ended up being courageous in spite of himself. He frequently flimflammed adversaries, but only those who deserved it. Otherwise he was honest almost to a fault, in at least one case insisting on repaying a questionable large debt (in "According to Hoyle").
None of the Mavericks were particularly fast draws with a pistol. Bart Maverick once commented to a lady friend, "My brother Bret can outdraw me any day of the week, and he's known as the Second Slowest Gun in the West." However, it was almost impossible for anyone to beat either of them in any sort of a fistfight, perhaps the one cowboy cliché that Huggins left intact.
Garner appeared in three seasons and a single held-back episode broadcast in the middle of the fourth season. Leaving aside the short introductions of Jack Kelly episodes in the first season meant to acclimate viewers to Kelly, Garner appeared in 52 episodes altogether.
Garner left the series in 1960 over a contract dispute. Warner Brothers had signed him to a 52 week contract at $1,250/week, but stopped paying him during the 1960 Writers Strike. Garner sued for breach of contract, and after winning his suit, he chose to move on rather than resign with Warner.
Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick Though James Garner was originally supposed to be the only Maverick, the studio eventually hired Jack Kelly to play brother Bart, starting with the eighth episode. The producers had realized that it took over a week to shoot a single episode, meaning that at some point the studio would run out of finished episodes to televise during the season, so Kelly was hired to rotate with Garner as the series lead, using two separate crews (while occasionally appearing together). In Bart's first episode, "Hostage," to engender audience empathy for the new character, the script called for him to be tied up and beaten by an evil police officer.
According to series creator Roy Huggins in an interview with the Archive of American Television, the two brothers were purposely written to be virtual clones, with no apparent differences inherent in the scripts whatsoever. This included being traveling poker players, loving money, professing to be cowards (despite voluminous evidence to the contrary), spouting enigmatic words of advice their "Pappy" passed down to them, and carrying a $1,000 bill pinned to the inside of a coat for emergency purposes. There was, however, one distinct—but accidental—difference between the two. Garner's episodes tended to be more comedic due to his obvious talent in that area, while Kelly's were inclined to be more dramatic. Huggins noted in the interview that Kelly, while funnier than Garner off-camera, dropped a funny line while shooting a scene "like a load of coal". To get viewers used to the idea of a second Maverick, Garner filmed a series of brief vignettes that aired at the beginning of the Kelly-only episodes during much of the first season where he would introduce the evening's story. To foster as much parity as possible, Kelly did the same in a Garner-only episode, "Black Fire", by appearing in the opening vignette to introduce the story and narrating the episode itself.
Huggins observed that the ratings for Kelly's episodes were always slightly higher during the first two seasons than Garner's. Huggins stated that he believed that this was a reflection of how well the audience liked Garner's episodes and the consequent word of mouth, so that viewers would be at their sets for the following episode, which would usually feature Kelly instead. The rating jumps for Kelly's episodes were tiny enough that they fell within the margin of error, according to Huggins in this interview, but he maintains that they were remarkable in that they were consistent.
The episodes featuring both Garner and Kelly were audience favorites. Bret and Bart often found themselves competing for women or money, or working together in some elaborate scheme to swindle someone who had just robbed one of them. Bret and Bart technically appeared together in sixteen episodes over the course of the series, but only shared a large amount of screen time in eleven of them ("Hostage," "The Wrecker," "Trail West to Fury," "Seed of Deception," "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres," "Game of Chance," "Two Beggars on Horseback," "Pappy," "Maverick Springs," "Maverick and Juliet," and "The Maverick Line"). All but one of the other two-brother episodes are actually Garner-starring episodes with cameo appearances by Kelly, the exception being "The Jeweled Gun", in which their roles were switched at the last minute due to a schedule conflict and Garner wound up making his single cameo appearance in a Kelly episode.
Though it was never said explicitly, Bret appears to be older, stating once in response to someone mentioning lightning striking twice in the same place, "That's just what my Pappy said when he looked in my brother Bart's crib." (Episode #22 — "A Flock of Trouble") In real life, Kelly was seven months older than Garner. Kelly wound up being the only Maverick to appear in all five seasons of the series in the wake of Garner's contentious departure after the third season.
Roger Moore as Beau Maverick
When Garner quit over a contract dispute with the studio after the series' third year, he was replaced by Roger Moore as cousin Beau, namesake nephew of Beau "Pappy" Maverick. Sean Connery was originally offered the role but turned it down.p.111 Callan, Michael Feeney Sean Connery 2002 Virgin Publishing (Famously, the following decade, Moore would replace Connery as James Bond in the 007-film series.) Moore had earlier played a completely different role in season 2, episode 18, "The Rivals" (loosely based on the 1775 play, "The Rivals"), a drawing room comedy episode with Garner in which Moore's character switched identities with Bret.
Beau's first appearance was in the season four opener, "The Bundle from Britain", in which he returns from an extended stay in England to meet cousin Bart, used to explain Moore's obvious English accent. Moore was almost exactly the same age as Kelly and brought a flair for light comedy fitting the show. Moore noted in his autobiography that the producers told him he was not being brought in to replace Garner. However, when he got to wardrobe, all of his costumes had the name "Jim Garner" scratched out on the tags. Moore also mentioned in the book that he, Garner, Kelly, and their wives would regularly gather at the Kelly home for what they called "poker school".
There was also a dispute between the cast and producers during this time over the long hours they were putting in each day. The producers placed a time clock in the makeup department and required the actors to punch in. Moore brought his own makeup, and refused to punch the clock. Moore wrote in his book that Kelly was "similarly minded, and one day took the time clock and used it as a football."
Moore had already performed Maverick dialogue written for Garner in his earlier series, The Alaskans. The studio had a policy of recycling scripts through their various television series to save money on writers, changing as little dialogue as possible, usually only names and locations. Recycled scripts were often credited to "W. Hermanos" (Spanish for "W. Brothers").
Moore quit after only fourteen episodes due to what he felt was a declining script quality (without having to resort to legal measures as Garner had). Moore stated that if he had gotten the level of writing Garner had enjoyed during the first two years of the show's run, he would have stayed.
Robert Colbert as Brent Maverick