"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" | |
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Maverick episode | |
Episode no. | Season 2 Episode 10 |
Directed by | Leslie H. Martinson |
Story by | Douglas Heyes |
Teleplay by | Roy Huggins |
Original air date | November 23, 1958 |
"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 (James Garner) being swindled by a crooked banker (John Dehner) after depositing the proceeds from a late-night poker game. He then surreptitiously recruits his brother Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and a host of other acquaintances to mount an elaborate sting operation to recover the money.
As Huggins noted during a lengthy discussion of the episode in his Archive of American Television interview, the first half of the 1973 movie The Sting seems based on Huggins' script. [1] While Bart and all of the series' recurring characters join forces to energetically flim-flam the banker ("....if you can't trust your banker, who can you trust?"), Bret sits whittling in a rocking chair across the street from the bank every day, responding to the amused and patronizing queries of the local townspeople curious about how he plans to recover his money, "I'm working on it."
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" was generally the first episode that Garner mentioned in interviews.
The episode is also the only one featuring brief appearances by all five of the series' early semi-regular recurring characters: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Dandy Jim Buckley, Diane Brewster as Samantha Crawford, Leo Gordon as Big Mike McComb, Richard Long as Gentleman Jack Darby, and Arlene Howell as Cindy Lou Brown. It proved to be the final series appearance for both Samantha and Dandy Jim because they were each working full-time on new series, Zimbalist in 77 Sunset Strip and Brewster as the schoolteacher in Leave It to Beaver . Additionally, for Gentleman Jack and Cindy, it was their only appearance in an episode in which Bret also appeared, although they shared not a single scene with Bret—all their dealings on Maverick were with Bart.
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.
Richard McCord Long was an American actor best known for his leading roles in three ABC television series, The Big Valley, Nanny and the Professor, and Bourbon Street Beat. He was also a series regular on ABC's 77 Sunset Strip during the 1961–1962 season.
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John Augustus Kelly Jr., known professionally as Jack Kelly, was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the television series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962.
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When I walked into Universal on the morning "Sting" came out, Max Baer Jr. was...outside my office, and he says, "Roy, are you going to sue?" I didn't know what he was talking about. "What do you mean?" He says, "You didn't see 'Sting'?" I say no; he says, "Well see it, because the first half of it is 'Shady Deal at Sunny Acres'!"