What's Up, Doc Holliday? :)

Howdy!

A number of TV westerns wove historical personages into fictional plots. For instance, Paladin of Have Gun--Will Travel swapped epigrams with Oscar Wilde; the Cartwrights of Bonanza encountered Mark Twain and Charles Dickens; Secret Service agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon reported to President Ulysses S. Grant on The Wild Wild West.

Even Maverick got into the act. Real-life westerners John Wesley Hardin and Wyatt Earp appeared fleetingly, but John Henry "Doc" Holliday made several appearances, first played by Gerald Mohr and then most memorably by Peter Breck, who guest-starred opposite Jack Kelly's Bart Maverick in six episodes as the consumptive dentist turned gambling gunfighter. 

Breck's Holliday is a darkly comic figure who gets his "friend" Bart into some hair-raising situations. In the excellent "Triple Indemnity" episode, Bart comes this close to being done in by Doc, who's mixed up in an unsavory insurance scheme. Bart is spared at the last second, but Doc wasn't really trying to kill him--right? (Bart, and the viewer, are left to wonder.)

Below are some photos of this odd couple from the Kellection. I found the two behind-the-scenes stills in, of all places, a Goodwill store not far from my home, which just goes to show you never know where JK will pop up. Enjoy! :)

I love this still, taken during the filming of "Triple Indemnity".

Dig the extras and crew members in sunglasses!

 

A screen cap from the scene shown being filmed in the still above.
 

A great candid still from "A Technical Error". I thought this was a regular scene shot until I noticed the cigarette in JK's right hand. (Actor Stephen Coit is on the left side of the sign.)

 

Screen cap from this hilarious episode

 

BONUS PHOTO! No Doc Holliday here, but this marvelous pic is from "The Maverick Report", an episode in which he appeared. That's lovely Jo Morrow with JK. I'd searched for this pic for some time and was recently able to add it to the Kellection. I first saw this image in a 1962 Cleveland Press TV log purchased several years ago (note the painted out background):

 

 

It's a pity JK and PB didn't get to do more episodes as Bart and Doc before Maverick ended in 1962. But, a few years later, a very different version of Doc Holliday appeared in an episode of The High Chapparal--played by Jack Kelly! :)

 





The Maverick Report - "The Deadly Image"

 

Hi! Here's a publicity still from "The Deadly Image". Now, if the girl pictured with Jack Kelly looks familiar, it's because, yes, she's Dawn Wells, who later came to fame as "Mary Ann" in Gilligan's Island.

And, if JK looks like he's out of his usual Bart Maverick uniform, that's because he's actually dressed up as the bad guy.

"The Deadly Image" takes the old "outlaw who looks like the hero" plot and pits Bart against a dastardly doppelganger named "Rod Claxton". Of course, everyone thinks Bart is Claxton, including the Army and even Claxton's girlfriend Caprice (played by Ms. Wells). Caprice does wonder, though, when she busses Bart and notices that his kiss is gentler than what she's used to!

The only person who isn't fooled is Caprice's elderly grandfather. He is blind and isn't misled by appearances. He discerns Bart's true character without seeing him.

Bart also encounters a former member of Claxton's gang, a wounded desperado (Gerald Mohr) with his own connection to Caprice.

The big "reveal" where Bart finally comes face-to-face with his lawless lookalike comes near the end of the episode, and it's a doozy.

Claxton looks at Bart and is astonished by their resemblance.

"My own father wouldn't know the difference!" he exclaims.

"Mine would," Bart answers coldly.

Thankfully, the writers didn't go overboard with "evil twin" cliches. Claxton is dressed in black. However, Jack Kelly plays him with smoldering menace rather than with over-the-top villainy.

A reviewer in the Cincinnati Post newspaper noted, “Director John Ainsworth was particularly pleased with the way Kelly handled the [dual] roles. If you concentrate on his eyes, you'll see how he mastered the character differences. Thanks to technical magic, there's an interesting scene in which Dawn Wells is 'thrown' back and forth between the two Kellys".

The rest of the cast is great, too, especially frequent Maverick guest-star Mohr and Abraham Sofaer, the character actor who portrays Caprice's grandfather. I first saw Sofaer in an episode of Four Star Playhouse that showed up on our local PBS station some years ago. He played a Native American chief in a story called "The Collar" which starred David Niven as an imprisoned priest. It was literally one of the best things I've ever seen on television.

And, speaking of character actors, "The Deadly Image" was co-written by Leo Gordon, who guest-starred on five Maverick episodes as "Big Mike McComb".