{"id":13335,"date":"2020-02-06T17:41:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T22:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13335"},"modified":"2020-02-06T17:41:48","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T22:41:48","slug":"amazon-plus-video-review-yancy-derringer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13335","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Plus Video Review: ‘Yancy Derringer’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s a rare experience<\/strong> for one of my gray hairs and reverence to watch a beloved childhood TV show and discover that it\u2019s actually better than remembered. But such is the case for me with Yancy Derringer,<\/a><\/em> a 1958-59 show that\u2019s technically classed as a Western. It\u2019s not really, though, because it\u2019s set in New Orleans and the action is mostly urban. You could make a case that it\u2019s really historical Noir <\/em>(of course, I see Noir <\/em>under every bed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eponymous hero, Yancy (played by stunt man and actor Jock Mahoney), is a scion of New Orleans\u2019 elite society, a Confederate veteran, who returns from a sojourn in the Wild West to find that his riverboat is in someone else\u2019s possession, along with the old family plantation, and his mansion (the same one they used in Gone With the Wind<\/em>, by the way) has been turned into a casino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burning with anger at the local criminal element, Yancy gets\nan offer that you\u2019d think anyone could refuse, from the federal administrator\nof New Orleans, currently under martial law. This man is John Colton, played by\na Scandinavian-American actor named Kevin Hagen. He wants Yancy to be his (unpaid)\n\u201cunderground agent,\u201d keeping tabs on the illegal side of life in the\npost-bellum Big Easy. Yancy, who like most 1950s TV heroes can apparently subsist\non danger alone, agrees, because he cares about his city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perilous life is made safer by the fact that he comes\nequipped with full-time personal security. This is in the person of Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah,\na Pawnee chief who (according to the story line) once saved Yancy\u2019s life, and\nis now obligated by tribal tradition to protect him forever. Pahoo, though he\nnever speaks and communicates only through sign language, is one of the\nhighlights of the show. Immobile and impassive as a cigar store Indian much of\nthe time, he still manages to command our attention, and when he springs into\naction he\u2019s silent and deadly. He\u2019s played by X Brands (his real name), a\nGerman-American actor who played a lot of Native Americans. But his costume is\nfar more authentic (to my eyes) than anything we generally saw in old Westerns (I\nwonder if it wasn\u2019t copied from a George Catlin portrait or some such), and, at\nleast according to TV lore, his sign language is correct. Real Native Americans\npraised his performance. It\u2019s particularly fun to watch Brands and Mahoney work\ntogether in action scenes \u2013 they\u2019re a smooth tag team, perfectly in synch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first episodes, Yancy is the archetypal\nimpoverished aristocrat, subsisting on gambling winnings, skipping meals\nsometimes, but always impeccably dressed, usually in a white suit. He\u2019s as\nsmooth with the ladies as James Bond, and there\u2019s a fresh flirtation in every\nepisode. His chief companion, however, is Madame Francine, played by Frances\nBergen (wife of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and mother of Candice). Madame\nFrancine\u2019s business is ostensibly a gambling house, but it\u2019s full of beautiful\ngirls, and this is New Orleans, so we all know what was going on. But you didn\u2019t\nmention such things on TV in the \u201850s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The series was created and partly owned by a husband and wife team, Richard Sale and Mary Loos. Sale had an amazing career, starting as a pulp writer and eventually becoming a Hollywood script writer and director. Mary was the niece of legendary screenwriter Anita Loos, but had a formidable career herself. Their sensibilities are visible all through the series \u2013 minorities are treated with unusual respect for the time, and women play strong parts. The scripts are generally sharp and clever, considering the limitations of the medium and the time constraints of the half-hour format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A nice feature is that Yancy Derringer<\/em> anticipated today\u2019s miniseries. The show kept continuity between episodes \u2013 if Yancy mentions in one episode that he\u2019s taking the train to Nevada soon, the next installment will show him on the train. Several minor characters return more than once. Previous events do not disappear, but are recalled and remarked on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yancy Derringer was a ratings success, and was on track to\nbe renewed for a second season. Then, according to legend, the network tried to\nget a piece of the ownership, the owners refused, and negotiations collapsed.\nHowever, in those days one season meant 34 episodes. So you can have a pretty nice\nmarathon by streaming it on Amazon Plus \u2013 though they omit one episode because\n(apparently) a good print of it no longer exists. You can see them all if you buy\nthe DVD set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished streaming it today. And had a very good time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, the first time I heard the expression \u201cI\u2019m your huckleberry,\u201d popularized by Val Kilmer in Tombstone, was in the pilot episode of Yancy Derringer<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a rare experience for one of my gray hairs and reverence to watch a beloved childhood TV show and discover that it\u2019s actually better than remembered. But such is the case for me with Yancy Derringer, a 1958-59 show that\u2019s technically classed as a Western. It\u2019s not really, though, because it\u2019s set in New … Continue reading Amazon Plus Video Review: ‘Yancy Derringer’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[1006,1444,1795,2371,3325,3403,3406],"class_list":["post-13335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-frances-bergen","tag-jock-mahoney","tag-mary-loos","tag-richard-sale","tag-westerns","tag-x-brands","tag-yancy-derringer"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}