James Scott Garner was an American actor. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, which included The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen; Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews; Cash McCall (1960) with Natalie Wood; The Wheeler Dealers (1963) with Lee Remick; Darby's Rangers (1958) with Stuart Whitman; Roald Dahl's 36 Hours (1965) with Eva Marie Saint; Raymond Chandler's Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Lee; Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) with Walter Brennan; Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria (1982) with Julie Andrews; and Murphy's Romance (1985) with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He also starred in several television series, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the ABC 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the NBC 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files.
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.
Bronco is a Western television series on ABC from 1958 through 1962. It was shown by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The program starred Ty Hardin as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate officer who wandered the Old West, meeting such well-known individuals as Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Theodore Roosevelt, Belle Starr, Cole Younger, and John Wesley Hardin.
Norman Eugene "Clint" Walker was an American actor. He played cowboy Cheyenne Bodie in the ABC/Warner Bros. western series Cheyenne from 1955 to 1963.
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp is the first Western television series written for adults. It premiered four days before Gunsmoke on September 6, 1955. Two weeks later came the Clint Walker western Cheyenne. The series is loosely based on the life of frontier marshal Wyatt Earp. The half-hour, black-and-white program aired for six seasons on ABC from 1955 to 1961, with Hugh O'Brian in the title role.
Sugarfoot is an American Western television series that aired for 69 episodes on ABC from 1957-1961 on Tuesday nights on a "shared" slot basis – rotating with Cheyenne ; Cheyenne and Bronco ; and Bronco. The Warner Bros. production stars Will Hutchins as Tom Brewster, an Easterner who comes to the Oklahoma Territory to become a lawyer. Brewster was a correspondence-school student whose apparent lack of cowboy skills earned him the nickname "Sugarfoot", a designation even below that of a tenderfoot.
The Dakotas is an ABC/Warner Bros. Western television series starring Larry Ward and featuring Jack Elam, Chad Everett, and Michael Greene, broadcast during 1963. The short-lived program is considered a spin-off of Clint Walker's Cheyenne.
Diane Brewster was an American television actress most noted for playing three distinctively different roles in television series of the 1950s and 1960s: confidence trickster Samantha Crawford in the Western Maverick with James Garner; pretty young second-grade teacher Miss Canfield in Leave It to Beaver; and doomed wife Helen Kimble in The Fugitive. Brewster was a direct descendant of William Brewster, a Pilgrim and Governor of the Plymouth Colony.
Robert Colbert is an American actor best-known for his leading role as Dr. Doug Phillips on the ABC television series The Time Tunnel and his two appearances as Brent Maverick, a third Maverick brother in the ABC/Warner Brothers western Maverick.
Cheyenne is an American Western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1962. The show was the first hour-long Western, and was the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season. It was also the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Bros. original series produced by William T. Orr.
The Alaskans is a 1959–1960 ABC/Warner Bros. Western television series set during the late 1890s in the port of Skagway, Alaska. The show features Roger Moore as "Silky Harris" and Jeff York as "Reno McKee", a pair of adventurers intent on swindling travelers bound for the Yukon Territories during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Their plans are inevitably complicated by the presence of singer "Rocky Shaw", "an entertainer with a taste for the finer things in life".
Colt .45 is an American Western television series, originally starring Wayde Preston, which aired on ABC between October 1957 and September 1960.
Charles Randolph "Chubby" Johnson was an American film and television supporting character actor with a genial demeanor and warm, country-accented voice.
Lawman is an American Western television series originally telecast on ABC from 1958 to 1962, starring John Russell as Marshal Dan Troop and Peter Brown as Deputy Marshal Johnny McKay. The series was set in Laramie, Wyoming, during 1879 and the 1880s. Warner Bros. already had several Western series on the air at the time.
Warner Bros. Presents is the umbrella title for three series that were telecast as part of the 1955-56 season on ABC: Cheyenne, a new Western series that originated on Presents, and two based on classic Warner Bros motion picture properties, becoming Casablanca and Kings Row. The series ran from September 13, 1955, until September 4, 1956, or September 11, 1956.
Conflict is a 1956 to 1957 American ABC television series that was a successor to the earlier Warner Bros. Presents. Although Conflict assumed the same time slot as its predecessor, the two do not share the same format. Where Warner Bros. Presents had been a wheel series, Conflict was fully an anthological series. However, since Cheyenne and Conflict alternated the Tuesday 7:30 P.M. time slot, the net effect was that of a proper wheel series—even though Cheyenne and Conflict were not under the same umbrella title.
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", starring James Garner and Jack Kelly, remains one of the most famous and widely discussed episodes of the Western comedy television series Maverick. Written by series creator Roy Huggins (teleplay) and Douglas Heyes (story) and directed by Leslie H. Martinson, this 1958 second season episode depicts gambler Bret Maverick being swindled by a crooked banker after depositing the proceeds from a late-night poker game. He then surreptitiously recruits his brother Bart Maverick and a host of other acquaintances to mount an elaborate sting operation to recover the money.
Daniel Marvin Sheridan was an Irish-American actor who appeared in more than thirty-five television series between 1957 and his death at the age of forty-six in 1963. He was cast in forty-one episodes of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Lawman, usually as the bartender, Jake Summers.
Kings Row is an hour-long American television period drama starring Jack Kelly, Nan Leslie and Robert Horton which was broadcast on ABC between September 13, 1955 and January 17, 1956 as part of the wheel series Warner Bros. Presents. It was the first of 20 filmed shows produced for ABC between 1955 and 1963 by Warner Bros Television, under the supervision of executive producer William T. Orr, Kings Row is also the only straight drama among those shows, whereas Westerns and detective/adventure series comprised 14 of the 20 productions.
