Hello!
If you regularly read this blog, you know that I discovered Jack Kelly and started my "Kellection" of memorabilia only this year (2009).
However, there was another Kellection of sorts in my family long before that. In fact, it was in my family before I was.
You see, when my older sister was a teenager in the late 1950's, our step-grandfather gave her an enormous leather-b0und ledger to use as a scrapbook. She covered its lined, white pages with clippings and pictures of her favorite actors.
When my sister grew up and moved away, she left the scrapbook with our family. I remember looking at it as a child and being fascinated mainly by the many horse pictures which decorated the pages. (My sister loved horses, and so do I.)
Earlier this year, I told my sister about my nascent interest in JK. She said she enjoyed watching Maverick as a teenager. However, she admitted that she always liked Bret better than Bart. (I still love her, though. ;->)
After I talked to her, I hauled out the old scrapbook. Yes, there are a lot of Bret/James Garner clippings in there, but JK is also well represented (along with every other TV cowboy of the time). Most of the JK/JG pix were clipped from fan magazines or from the covers of Maverick comic books.
I slid the scrapbook under my computer table and didn't open it again until last night. I wondered if a certain JK pic was in it. But, when I opened the book, I found something else which I hadn't seen before. It was a newspaper clipping, brown with age, tucked right inside the front cover.
There are lots of loose clippings in the scrapbook, because many of them were attached with rubber cement or now-brittle cellophane tape. (I guess those were the days before Elmer's School Glue and invisible tape.) So, that newspaper clipping could have been about any subject.
However, when I picked it up to get a better look, I glimpsed a familiar smile and this headline:
BRET AND BART RUNNING CLOSE RACE
Now, how did I miss this? And--yee haw!--it's primarily about Bart/JK! Anyway, the story is undated, but since there are local movies listings on the back, I can make an educated guess. The films Some Like it Hot and Disney's Sleeping Beauty were among those playing, so I would say this story comes from some time in 1959.
I scanned and enlarged the JK pic from the story and posted it above. That's about as good as I could do with a 50 year-old newspaper photo, but I don't think I've seen that Bart pose before, and you can still see those marvelous eyes and that rougish smile. :)
If you regularly read this blog, you know that I discovered Jack Kelly and started my "Kellection" of memorabilia only this year (2009).
However, there was another Kellection of sorts in my family long before that. In fact, it was in my family before I was.
You see, when my older sister was a teenager in the late 1950's, our step-grandfather gave her an enormous leather-b0und ledger to use as a scrapbook. She covered its lined, white pages with clippings and pictures of her favorite actors.
When my sister grew up and moved away, she left the scrapbook with our family. I remember looking at it as a child and being fascinated mainly by the many horse pictures which decorated the pages. (My sister loved horses, and so do I.)
Earlier this year, I told my sister about my nascent interest in JK. She said she enjoyed watching Maverick as a teenager. However, she admitted that she always liked Bret better than Bart. (I still love her, though. ;->)
After I talked to her, I hauled out the old scrapbook. Yes, there are a lot of Bret/James Garner clippings in there, but JK is also well represented (along with every other TV cowboy of the time). Most of the JK/JG pix were clipped from fan magazines or from the covers of Maverick comic books.
I slid the scrapbook under my computer table and didn't open it again until last night. I wondered if a certain JK pic was in it. But, when I opened the book, I found something else which I hadn't seen before. It was a newspaper clipping, brown with age, tucked right inside the front cover.
There are lots of loose clippings in the scrapbook, because many of them were attached with rubber cement or now-brittle cellophane tape. (I guess those were the days before Elmer's School Glue and invisible tape.) So, that newspaper clipping could have been about any subject.
However, when I picked it up to get a better look, I glimpsed a familiar smile and this headline:
BRET AND BART RUNNING CLOSE RACE
Now, how did I miss this? And--yee haw!--it's primarily about Bart/JK! Anyway, the story is undated, but since there are local movies listings on the back, I can make an educated guess. The films Some Like it Hot and Disney's Sleeping Beauty were among those playing, so I would say this story comes from some time in 1959.
I scanned and enlarged the JK pic from the story and posted it above. That's about as good as I could do with a 50 year-old newspaper photo, but I don't think I've seen that Bart pose before, and you can still see those marvelous eyes and that rougish smile. :)
Now, without further ado, here's Part I of the story, by Phyllis Battelle:
"NEW YORK - The TV brothers, Bret and Bart Maverick, are meant to be as alike as two peas in a shooter. That's the way their writers look at them--as completely interchangeable, with equal humor, agility with cards and women, and a like larceny in their gentle souls.
The viewers don't see them that way at all. Nor does Jack Kelly, the long, lean, likeable actor who plays Bart.
'Basically, both Mavericks are great guys,' Jack says, 'and any week the scripts could be switched on us and it'd come out all right. But there's a subtle element of difference in Jim (Garner) and me. And it's given us a fabulously partisan audience.
'Some viewers are all out for Jim as Bret and wish he were doing the lead every Sunday. Others, thank goodness, like Bart. If there's an edge,' he put in modestly, 'Jim must still have it.'
The reason Garner, as Bret, still has an edge (it's estimated at 1100 fan letters for Garner to 1000 for Kelly) is that he starred in six straight episodes before Warner Brothers hired him a brother. But Kelly is moving up fast, may be the choice before you can say 'Trendex'."
PART II NEXT TIME! :->
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It's interesting to ponder why Kelly's episodes weren't more limited in number compared to Garner's since, if you look at the reason for dropping in another Maverick, they could've gotten away with Kelly only doing a miniscule amount compared to Garner. Huggins did note that had there not been parity between the Mavericks, Bart's episodes would have tanked, and I guess that's right. Plus Kelly himself protested when the original mock-ups for publicity featured his name in smaller print than Garner's. (An artifact of that still exists on the cover of Bart's first comic book appearance, with "James Garner as Maverick" in huge type and a reference to "Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick" in much smaller type.)
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