Talk:Maverick (TV series)

Entitled vs. Titled
Someone really needs look up the words "entitled" and "titled." They do NOT have the same meaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.167.229 (talk) 12:59, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

They don't? Rocketvault (talk) 16:31, 5 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I did look it up and apparently you're right. My whole life I'd heard nothing but "entitled," though, and the work "titled" only recently came to exist, as far as I know.  George Raft Has Risen From the Grave (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Of course I meant "the word 'titled,'" not "the work 'titled.'" I need to take a moment to proofread occasionally. George Raft Has Risen From the Grave (talk) 15:28, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Not sure I agree
playing their slippery young cousin Ben Maverick (son of Beau). Wouldn't that make him their brother?--Filll (talk | wpc ) 03:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

No, this refers to Bret and Bart's first cousin Beau Maverick, played by Roger Moore, not their father Beau Maverick, played by James Garner in the episode "Pappy." That would make Ben Maverick their second cousin.Wastetimer (talk) 03:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

First cousin once removed, not second cousin. 74.104.189.176 (talk) 11:21, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

The two Beau Mavericks is always a source of confusion. It makes one wonder how real non-fictional families cope with the same issue. Noah and Wallace Beery (talk) 16:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Noah and Wallace Beery each named their son after themselves (Junior), one of whom (Noah Beery, Jr.) portrayed James Garner's character's father in a subsequent television series entitled The Rockford Files. Rocketvault (talk) 16:37, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I shot the Maverick
The page says they couldn't get an hour program shot in 6 days. Had they not heard of a shooting schedule? How could they not get it in the can on time? TREKphiler  any time you're ready, Uhura  11:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Basically, writer/producer Roy Huggins took such care in polishing the episodes that it was taking 7 days to keep the level of quality that made the series such a hit initially, while Huggins was with the show during the 1st 2 seasons. Huggins realized that they were going to come up short, which was when the idea of a clone-type brother came up. To speed up production would've meant a sacrifice of the series' stratospheric quality, which has yet to be equaled, I think.  Huggins goes into a lot of detail about this in his Archive of American Television interview, the best single source for "Maverick" information, unsurprisingly enough.  It would've been interesting had they cast Stuart Whitman, who looked like Garner in '57 and tested for the Bart Maverick part.  Upsmiler (talk) 02:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC) Upsmiler (talk) 16:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)


 * And the studio was furious that Huggins was taking so long with the show but they certainly couldn't argue with the results: even they could read the ratings.
 * Upsmiler (talk) 02:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thx. I continue to be confused how an experienced executive producer couldn't keep things under control. It's not like getting behind schedule doesn't occasionally happen, but all the time? It strikes me the line producer (if that's the term; essentially Gene Coon's job on "STTOS") had to be screwing up. Ah, well. Not a forum...  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  06:43, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Nobody was screwing up at all, it was just a matter of the episodes taking 7 days to maintain the quality, largely due to Huggins' meticulous post-production polishing, which made Maverick hang together so perfectly in the first two seasons (after Huggins left at the conclusion of the second season, that quality plummeted and plummeted, then fell off the table, along with the ratings by the end of its run, aside from a few exceptional episodes). The decision was whether to add another production crew simultaneously shooting episodes with a different leading man, cut the quality, or fold down the most comprehensively successful series the studio or the network had. The answer was obvious. At first Warners wanted to use a sidekick but Huggins realized that would kill the ratings for the sidekick's shows and insisted on a clone/brother. Unfortunately, Jack Kelly (movie star Nancy Kelly's brother) couldn't handle comedy at all; as Huggins said, he would drop a funny line "like a load of coal," something no one realized when they cast him. His work with Garner remains blazingly fine, though, and it's impossible to imagine a better onscreen team. It's a shame they didn't bring on Roger Moore much earlier so they could use Garner and Kelly together more often. Upsmiler (talk) 16:30, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * "Nobody was screwing up at all" Fair enough. One other thing crosses my mind (& your mention of a 2d unit plays into it, actually). It's an approach Joss Whedon took on Buffy: use a 2d unit to keep things on schedule. Was Garner in all the shots? Or were there enough without him a 2d unit could've sped things up? Before they added a 2d guy...  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  06:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * No, Garner was in enough shots to make speeding things up with a second unit impossible as far as cutting out a full day's shooting. Unlike many current shows, Maverick was not at all an ensemble series and the lead character generally remained more or less the focus, exactly like Garner's later series The Rockford Files. Upsmiler (talk) 15:30, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't think of a single example of a Maverick episode in which one Maverick or another isn't in almost every scene. This is in contrast to the sequel series, Bret Maverick 20 years later, which had a large ensemble cast to relieve Garner of some of the burden. This didn't serve the series well, though, and it was canceled after one season. Rocketvault (talk) 16:45, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

An extremely intriguing notion recently occurred to me about evenly splitting the series between Garner and Kelly. I wonder if it might have been feasible to have the second brother appear in the minimal amount of episodes necessary to enable the show to keep to schedule as opposed to cutting the series into equal halves. I'm sure Huggins would counter that few would bother to watch the substitute, and he'd probably be right, but it's a really intriguing idea once you start thinking about it. We might have had many, many more Garner episodes to watch had Huggins taken that route instead, and the ratings would usually have been consistently much higher. Kelly would probably never have taken the job in that situation but somebody would have just for the massive exposure. Whirlspeed (talk) 00:26, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Doc Holliday Mystery
Some say the inspiration of Maverick came from the famous gunfighter Doc Holliday.--74.34.91.138 (talk) 23:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Probably some truth to that when you consider all the movies (including uber-seminal "The Big Trail" and "Stagecoach" and many more) with fictionalized Doc Hollidays in black broadcloth suits. Trocadero Thunder (talk) 22:17, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Two different actors actually played Doc Holliday in the series. The first one, who worked with Garner early in the series, was the best version of Doc Holliday I've ever seen recorded on film, in my opinion. Noah and Wallace Beery (talk) 15:20, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Gerald Mohr. Rocketvault (talk) 16:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

There are some episodes of Maverick which were so good that you literally have to see it to believe it, and they get even better with re-viewings. That's certainly true of the one in which Gerald Mohr played Doc Holliday for the first time. Whirlspeed (talk) 00:12, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

The name of that episode was "The Quick and the Dead" and it featured film noir sensation Marie Windsor as the femme fatale. Whirlspeed (talk) 00:16, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Gerald Mohr also played Doc Holliday again the following year for an episode of a forgotten Western TV series called Tombstone Territory. He portrayed Holliday as exactly the same enthralling character that he was in Maverick and it's fascinating to behold. As I write this, that episode is available on YouTube and if you enjoyed "The Quick and the Dead" as much as I did, you'll want to see the 30-minute episode of Tombstone Territory titled "Doc Holliday in Durango." The Final Edict (talk) 19:53, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Garner billed under Kelly
Original title: Were the Garner episodes included in the billing switch giving Jack Kelly top billing above James Garner in the 5th season?

For the 5th season, Warner Bros. fired Robert Colbert as Brent Maverick (by not calling him back) and only filmed a half season of new episodes with Jack Kelly, alternating them with reruns of Garner episodes from earlier seasons. The series reversed the opening billing with announcer's voice-over to "Starring Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick and James Garner as Bret Maverick" for the 5th season, with a peppier version of the theme song at the end, replete with the riverboat bell ringing. My question is this: did the studio change the beginning and end for the Garner reruns as well as Kelly's new episodes, or did it run the older episodes with the billing as originally presented? For the leftover held-back Bret/Bart episode in the 4th season, they left the beginning as it had been originally filmed during the 3rd season, with no mention of Roger Moore, but at that point the blood from the Garner/Warner lawsuit, freeing Garner from his contract, was still fresh. I believe that they changed the openings for the Garner reruns to conform with the openings for the new episodes, since I vaguely remember seeing an early Garner episode with Kelly billed above Garner in the opening at the Paley Center for Media years ago but I'm not positive about that. Does anyone out there know? Davy Crockett Swings Ol&#39; Betsy (talk) 20:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Gigantic 636-page Jack Kelly website
There's an enormous and lavishly illustrated 636-page website devoted to Jack Kelly, who played Bart Maverick, called "The Tall Dark Stranger There" (it's not mine but if you're interested in the series, you should look at it). The address is http://jackkellytribute.blogspot.com/2012/02/breaking-news-maverick-dvd-cover-art.html Nodios (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Apparently the surreptitious creator of this website, who is now believed to have been Nell Lynn Younge, died at some point at least a year ago. Her voluminous website featured 636 separate pages spanning from 2009 until her death in 2021, with pictures and comments. She had collected ("kellected") an enormous trove of Jack Kelly memorabilia across the decades, much of which appears on the site. After her death, her site dropped out of view when googled so the only way to access it is with direct page links like the one in the previous entry, which continues to work as of this writing; once you click on that one, you can navigate your way through the entire site, and I guarantee you'll learn a lot about Jack Kelly that you didn't previously know, no matter who you are. Take a moment and have a look at it. On the whole, it's one of the most amazing fansites I've ever encountered on the internet. Racing Forward (talk) 11:39, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I've often wondered what Jack Kelly's daughter thought of that gigantic site. I assume that she must know about it. If she happens to see this post, I would love to hear her thoughts about it. Racing Forward (talk) 11:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)