Parodies Regained

The marshal's backside hung low and wide, as a marshal's backside shouldn't. Not only that, but it was so close to the TV camera that it blotted out the scenery. Still, he was the marshal, and when he whipped his Colt from its holster and fired at the varmint standing at the other end of the dusty, deserted street, western fans could only suppose that things were back to normal. But on ABC's Maverick this week, nothing returned to normal. The marshal's first shot missed his man, and so did five more. Cried the varmint: "Shall I stand a little closer, Marshal?"

Remarkable Resemblance. With that, Maverick gleefully dropped most of its own identity, loped off on a laconic parody called Gunshy. As played by Ben Gage, tall, broad-beamed Marshal Mort Dooley looked remarkably like Gunsmoke's tall, broad-beamed Marshal Matt Dillon. But unlike Dillon, Dooley is a businessman ("I own 37 1/2% of the Weeping Willow Saloon") and contemplator ("This is Boot Hill--I like to come up here sometimes, to think, and maybe get a grave or two ahead"). With the help of the "finest undertaker west of Dodge City," Doc Stucke (clearly related to Gunsmoke's Doc Adams), and loyal, limping Deputy Clyde Diefendorfer (Gunsmoke's Chester), Marshal Dooley watches hawk-eyed over the welfare of the town's citizens, taking special pains that drunks who wander out of the saloons are courteously guided right back inside.

But there is one kind of hombre that clogs up Dooley's craw so tight he can hardly spit: the professional gambler. When Bret Maverick (James Garner) rides into town in search of buried gold, Deputy Diefendorfer has no trouble spotting him for the cardsharp he really is. "He's wearing a clean white shirt and a black necktie," explains Diefendorfer, "and he's winning, Muster Dooley." Outraged, Marshal Dooley heaves Maverick out of town, has to repeat the performances twice more when Maverick keeps sneaking back. "We're sure getting some strange breeds in Ellwood lately," muses the marshal. "Remember that gunman who came through last week passing out business cards?"

Ingratitude. Gunshy's suet-headed hero was born one night last fall at a party at the home of Bill Orr, a Warner Bros. TV producer. Recalls Maverick Scriptwriter Marion (See Here, Private) Hargrove: "I said it would be fine if the classic opener was carried a step further --the long street, the shot of the marshal entering. The marshal takes a quick draw and fires and fires and misses." By the end of the evening, Hargrove and Orr had worked out a rough plot, chosen their title. Hargrove picked NBC's Gunsmoke as his target, he says, "because it is a tremendously solid show. The characters are sharply defined. It is easier to spoof a good western. A bad western doesn't have anything to get your hands on." Ungrateful Gunsmoke producers, when they got wind of the forthcoming parody, promptly inserted in their show an episode about a lying, cheating heavy named Huggins. Maverick's producer: Roy Huggins.

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As if there were a conspiracy to get all parody over and done with as quickly as possible, CBS chose the same night, same time slot, to run Jack Benny's long-celebrated Autolight, a 15-minute spoof of Gaslight, the 1944 melodrama in which a Victorian villain tries to drive his wife insane. Filmed in 1952, Autolight was impounded by the courts after M-G-M complained that Benny's hoked-up version hewed so closely to the original that it violated copyright laws. Benny fought the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (TIME, March 31), lost all the way, finally had to pay M-G-M a hefty (but undisclosed) price for permission to broadcast it. On the air, it hardly seemed worth all the fuss. Despite a few diverting sight gags--e.g., Benny, in full Victorian rig, standing impassive as ceiling plaster rains down on him--the long-delayed take-off shed more gas than light. One of the rare high spots: when Benny urges his wife (Barbara Stanwyck) to take dinner in bed, she screams hysterically: "I had breakfast in bed, I had lunch in bed. I can't have dinner in bed--it's full of dirty dishes."

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