Jack Kelly: Oh, the Cowboy and the Funnyman Should Be Friends... :)

Howdy!

Our guest post is coming in the near future. In the meantime, I have another exciting Jack Kelly treat to share with you: screen captures from a TV special that we've all been "Hope"-ing to see: The Shoot-In at NBC.

Yup, it's the 1967 Bob Hope show which pits TV comics against TV cowboys.

The premise: The funnymen (everyone from Don Adams to Danny Thomas) are fuming because westerns are taking over TV and taking away their jobs. So, they declare war on the cowboys.

Which really doesn't make much sense, because I checked, and at the time the special aired there were actually 23 comedy series on TV and only 12 westerns. (Or 14, if you count Daniel Boone and Cowboy in Africa.) It would have been more logical to do this show in 1957. But, since this is a comedy special, I guess it doesn't need to make much sense.

Before all the feudin' commences, though, there's the intro, where all the comics and cowboys are announced. Here's JK:

After the intro, we have Bob Hope's monologue. It's full of then-topical jokes about Governor Ronald Reagan, smog ("It's exhaust from politicians"), and even Zsa Zsa Gabor (who's still in the news today).

And, about every five minutes, this mod chick in a white mini-dress pops up in commercials where people are suddenly struck by "Dodge Fever". This terrifying illness causes its victims to become mesmerized by ugly station wagons and drop whatever they're doing so they can go buy one. (I hope surgeons and airline pilots are immune.)

Then, there's Bobbie Gentry. She's neither a comic nor a cowboy, but she'd just had a monster hit with Ode to Billy Joe, and she appears throughout the show to comment on the action by crooning a parody of the High Noon theme song. She also sings a tune called Lazy Willie which sounds almost exactly like Billy Joe.

Okay, finally, JK shows up with Phil Carey, whose brother he'd played earlier that year on Laredo. Thankfully, JK is wearing a much nicer jacket than the drab brown number he wore in "Enemies and Brothers" and that dreadful ruffled shirt is nowhere in sight:

JK and PC appear in a silly segment with Bob Hope and Steve Allen, who are in a bar commiserating about the comics' (alleged) unemployment problem. (And I bet ol' Steverino was thrilled to see one of the Maverick brothers who used to outgun him in the ratings. ;->)

Although Maverick had been off the air for five years and JK was now an itinerant cowboy guest star, he brags to the bartender (Bill Dana), "My show just got a 60 rating--30 for me, 30 for my horse!" And, although Laredo had been canceled, PC boasts, "And my show just got picked up for another 20 years!" (Maybe he meant One Life to Live, although it hadn't actually started yet. ;->).

JK is still wearing his pinky ring, too:

....To be continued! :)

NEXT TIME: See how JK uses his head as more than just a place to wear his hat!