JK on Screen - Around the World With Jack Kelly II

Hello Everybody!

And, welcome to The Tall Dark Stranger There--deemed a "link to avoid" by Wikipedia!* Oh well, who needs Wikipedia, when Jack Kelly already has some of the most knowledgeble (and nicest) fans around! :->

Anyway, it's time to continue our travels with JK. Since I was awakened by the roar of snow blowers this morning (yep, we received quite a few inches of the white stuff overnight), I thought we should journey somewhere warm and sunny.

How about Southern California? Er, actually, it's pretty rainy there right now, so let's set the Wayback Machine to May 1960. The place: the Yorba Linda Country Club. 

As we know, JK loved to play golf. He was good enough to compete in tournaments, often for charities. One of these charity games was "The World Entertainment Golf Championship", which benefited the Motion Picture Relief Fund. JK was joined on the green by scores of other celebrity golfers, including James Garner, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. Here's a peek at JK and JG from a TV Guide story about the tournament:

A closer look at JK: Although JK came in 14th, that's really not bad, considering there were 120 players in the tournament. And speaking of "bad", the winner of the tournament was an actor named Robert "Bob" Wilke, who almost always played the villain in films and TV shows--including Maverick! In fact, Wilke had just filmed the episode "Hadley's Hunters", where the menacing character he portrayed ("McCabe") memorably received his comeuppance from Bart Maverick.

Now, the tables were turned, as reporter Harold Heffernan wrote in the Ottawa Citizen: "'There must be a moral here somewhere,' grumbled Jack [Kelly], who had shot an 82, the best round of his life. 'Only last week, I gave this fellow Wilke the worst whipping of his life--on screen. And now he humiliates me before all my fellow golfers!'" Well, I'm sure there were no hard feelings between JK and RW. They went on to do another Maverick episode, "Epitaph for a Gambler", where Wilke portrayed a more sympathetic character ("Malone").

Hmm...I wonder if JK used his mink golf club covers when he played in this tournament?

Keep watchin'--more travels with JK comin' up! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Wikipedia won't accept most blogs or fansites as "external links" anymore, calling them "links to avoid". Apparently these personal sites aren't "accurate" enough and just anyone is allowed to write them. (And, this is different from Wikipedia how?) :0