Peckinpah on the small screen

The Rifleman

'The Rifleman' ran from 1958 to 1963 and chronicled the adventures of Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors). Although a spin-off from "The Sharpshooter", a one-off episode of 'Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre' written by Sam Peckinpah, and although Peckinpah was the creative driving force behind the first season, the producers only retained him as a story consultant and there was soon a parting of ways. This owed to a (predictable) difference of opinion between Peckinpah and the producers as to the direction they envisaged the show taking. Peckinpah wanted to develop the character of Lucas's son Mark (Johnny Crawford), subsequent seasons charting his growth towards manhood, the series gradually edging into darker, grittier territory as Mark matures and the scales fall from his eyes and he witnesses the realities of life.

If Peckinpah had had his way, the five-year run of 'The Rifleman' might have played out as a cohesive rites-of-passage story plotted against a profound and emotionally honest character arc. The producers, concerned with ratings and sponsorship and advertising, wanted something more suited to family viewing.

A total of 168 'Rifleman' episodes were produced, with a staggering 40 comprising the first season alone. A complete and comprehensive episode guide can be found here. The episodes Peckinpah was directly involved in are as follows (first appearances of actors later cast in the films noted where appropriate):

"The Sharpshooter" (writer) - a slightly re-edited version of the earlier 'Zane Grey Theatre' episode.

"Home Ranch" (writer).

"The Marshal" (writer/director) - featuring Warren Oates, R.G. Armstrong and James Drury.

"The Boarding House" (writer/director) - featuring Katy Jurado.

"The Money Gun" (co-writer/director).

"The Baby Sitter" (co-writer/director) - Peckinpah's only season two contribution.

Other series writers included N.B. Stone (whose screenplay 'Guns in the Afternoon' Peckinpah would significantly overhaul for 'Ride the High Country') and Harry Julian Fink (whose 'And Then Came the Tiger' was the genesis for 'Major Dundee'). Appearing in non-Peckinpah episodes, but destined to work with the director a little further down the line, were Dennis Hopper, Edgar Buchanan, James Coburn (in an episode entitled "The High Country"), L.Q. Jones and John Davis Chandler. Other directors who worked on the show included Arthur Hiller, Richard Donner, James Clavell and Ted Post; season three episode "The Assault" was directed by Ida Lupino, who Peckinpah later cast in 'Junior Bonner'.

The Westerner

'The Westerner' ran for only one season, comprising 13 episodes, between September and December 1960. Again, it developed from a one-off 'Zane Grey Theatre' episode, "Trouble at Tres Cruces". The, ahem, "hero" Dave Blassingame (Brian Keith) was a world-weary saddletramp, a man with a marked predisposition to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Peckinpah went for a more authentic aesthetic than he had been permitted on 'The Rifleman', incorporating story elements such as mob violence, prostitution, attempted rape, alcoholism and anti-heroism. Blassingame makes mistakes, hesitates at the crucial moment. Kind of like a frontier version of 'The Sweeney', full of moral ambiguity and endings that weren't afraid to be untidy and challenging to the audience, 'The Westerner' was something audiences hadn't seen before - and probably weren't prepared for, hence the non-appearance of subsequent seasons. Peckinpah's contributions:

"Jeff" (co-writer/director) - featuring Warren Oates and marking Peckinpah's first collaboration with director of photography Lucien Ballard.

"School Day" (co-writer) - featuring R.G. Armstrong and Dub Taylor.

"Brown" (director).

"Mrs Kennedy" (co-writer).

"The Courting of Libby" (director).

"The Old Man" (writer).

"Hand on the Gun" (director).

"The Painting" (director).

Peckinpah Irregulars Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens make appearances in non-Peckinpah episodes. Other directors included Andre de Toth, Elliot Silverstein and Ted Post.

Noon Wine

Peckinpah was rescued from his spell in the wilderness, following the box office failure of 'Major Dundee' and his firing from 'The Cincinnati Kid', by producer Daniel Melnick. Melnick approached him to adapt and direct Katherine Anne Porter's short novel 'Noon Wine' for the 'ABC Stage 67' drama series. Its critical success, earning Peckinpah Writers' and Directors' Guild nominations, set him on the path back to film directing - and 'The Wild Bunch'.

'Noon Wine' is the only one of Peckinpah's features I haven't seen, by dint of it being basically unavailable. In his biography of Peckinpah, published in 1994, David Weddle highlighted the problem: "By the mid-1970s ABC had destroyed all the master tapes for the 'Stage 67' series to make room for storage space in its vaults ... Today it's possible to see mint-condition copies of the show, in colour, in only three places: the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City, and Jason Robards' house in Connecticut." (Since Robards' death in 2000, I wonder what's happened to that third copy.)

Robards starred alongside OIivia de Havilland, Per Oscarsson, Ben Johnson and L.Q. Jones. Evocative analyses of the production are offered in Weddle and Seydor's books, neither of which I can read without gnashing my teeth that 'Noon Wine' isn't available on video or DVD. There's also a lovely piece on Moon in the Gutter, Jeremy describing 'Noon Wine' as "Peckinpah's forgotten masterpiece".

The Deadly Companions

"You don't know me well enough to hate me."


Background
When Brian Keith, star of Peckinpah's ground-breaking TV series 'The Westerner', was offered the lead role in 'The Deadly Companions' by producer Charles B. Fitzsimons, he accepted on the condition that Peckinpah be attached to the project as director. FitzSimons proved the first in a career-long coterie of producers with whom Peckinpah would clash. FitzSimons had cast his sister, Maureen O'Hara, as the romantic lead, and refused to let Peckinpah give her direction. He also insisted on final say regarding set-ups and vetoed Peckinpah's suggestion that the script was based on gimmicks and badly needed rewriting. Quite why FitzSimons didn't just direct the film himself is a mystery. Still, for all the compromises, 'The Deadly Companions' marked Peckinpah's move from the small screen to Cinemascope, so let's saddle up and see how auspicious or otherwise his much-maligned debut is.




Synopsis
Yellowleg (Brian Keith) has spent years tracking down Turk (Chill Wills), the Confederate soldier who tried to take his scalp on a battlefield. Still conscious of the scars, Yellowleg refuses to take off his hat. Finding Turk on the verge of being hanged for a card cheat, Yellowleg rescues him and decides to bide his time before settling the score. In doing so, he finds himself riding along with Turk and his partner Billy (Steve Cochran) as they head to the town of Gila to pull off a bank robbery. They're not the only gang with designs on making an unscheduled withdrawal and in the ensuing exchange of shots, the son of local saloon hostess Kit (Maureen O'Hara) is mortally wounded. Kit, a pariah with the other townswomen who see her as no better than a whore and believe her son was born out of wedlock, determines to transport the boy's coffin over hostile, Apache-ridden territory to the ghost town of Serengo, where her husband is buried, and lay him to rest there. Overcome with guilt, Yellowleg accompanies her (to her initial chagrin). Turk and Billy tag along - Turk for no reason that makes any real sense, Billy with the intent of forcing himself on Kit. Yellowleg defends her honour and sends Billy packing. Turk soon departs, as well. Kit's feelings towards Yellowleg soften, but they still have a vindictive Apache warrior and the reappearance of Yellowleg's nemesis to contend with.

Analysis

When Peckinpah didn't like a script, a project or the source material thereof, he made no bones about it. He famously referred to Robert Ludlum's novel 'The Osterman Weekend' (the basis of his final film) as "a fifth-rate piece of shit" and declared that it was all he could do to give it some life. You could say exactly the same of 'The Deadly Companions', A.S. Fleischman's adaptation of his own novel.That the protagonist is called Yellowleg (after the army stripe on his trousers) is indication enough that the script deals in cyphers, not characters. Turk's name is no less gimmicky: it's short for Turkey, on account of the feather-like outfit he wears. Billy is the wiseacre faux tough guy straight out of central casting in a costume that borders on camp (I kept thinking about The Cat in his Riviera Kid persona in the 'Red Dwarf' episode "Horsemen of the Apocalypse"). The same tendency to cliche informs the film's narrative structure: Yellowleg's aim is affected by an old war wound (cliche alert!), resulting in the stray bullet that kills Kit's son - which is, in itself, nothing more than a crassly cynical plot device to send Yellowleg and Kit out into the desert together. It goes without saying, then, that the romantic subplot is cringe-worthy, particularly in its insistence that the audience accept that Kit, after much antagony towards Yellowleg ("you don't know me well enough to hate me," he retorts in the film's only memorable line), suddenly feels love for him - the man who, accidently or not, caused her child's death. Did I use the word "crass" a few sentences ago? Make that crass plus VAT. I've read that 'The Deadly Companions' impresses visually and shows Peckinpah's confident employment of Cinemascope and natural eye for compositions. Unfortunately, I watched it on the Weston-Wegram DVD release, a truly freakin' awful print that looks like a transfer from an old VHS copy taped off a badly-tuned TV that got fed through a meat grinder before being used as a doormat by the Coldstream Guards after a 50-mile route march through extremely muddy terrain. The colour depletion is so bad during the nocturnal scenes that it's borderline black-and-white. It's panned and scanned, too, which royally fucks any evidence of compositional brilliance.

The performances vary: Keith and Wills are good. Cochran isn't bad given how little he has to work with. O'Hara is terrible. Gone, the fiesty likeability she brought to so many other roles. In its place, an inconsistent vacillation between the sullen and the histrionic. Which is a damn shame, since Kit is the only potentially interesting character that Fleishman's leaden prose even begins to conjure. Oh, and the saccharine ballad she contributes to the opening and closing credits is just as irksome.

All told, 'The Deadly Companions' has little to commend it. The film would be remembered solely as Peckinpah's first and otherwise dismissed as a routine western with a patchwork script and cardboard cut-out characters ... except for three scenes which, in hindsight, prove quintessentially Peckinpahesque and suggest Fitzsimons had let his guard drop (or sloped off for an extended comfort break) and ol' Sam had quickly taken advantage of the opportunity. The first is one of those barbed satirical moments that pepper much of the director's work. Arriving at Gila, Yellowleg and co. head straight for the saloon: it's nicely positioned so they can case out the bank, and they can slake their thirst. Briefly anyway. One shot of whisky later, the bartender's calling time and covering up the tastefully rendered nude painting behind the bar as the local preacher swans in and sets about declaiming the word of the Lord in the erstwhile house of vice. Kit attends the service and bristles at the barely-concealed outrage of her fellow parishioners; apparently they're unhappy that a saloon girl is present at a church service held in a saloon. Here we have the seeds of Knudsen's religious mania in 'Ride the High Country' and the sanctimonious citizenry who beleaguer Hildy in 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue'.

The second has Yellowleg and Kit witness what they think is an attack by Apaches on a stagecoach. Keeping out of sight and stealthily drawing nearer, they discover that the stage is one that has already been captured and stripped bare of fixings and luggage. The "passengers" are Apaches dressed in appropriated westerners clothes. They are drinking and whooping it up in a bizarre ritual that is both celebration of a successful robbery and re-enactment of same. Peckinpah's staging is brilliant, revealing elements of the scene by degrees in keeping with Yellowleg and Kit's perception as they get closer and closer to the action. As Paul Seydor points out in his book 'The Western Films: A Reconsideration', one of Peckinpah's directorial abilities was to "expand the scale and enrich the texture of his films, often introducing dizzyingly discordant elements, without breaking the continuity or violating the tone" - the stagecoach sequence is the first exegesis of this.

Finally, there is a scene where Yellowleg recounts to Kit the story of "a friend of mine" who spent five years tracking down a man he wanted to kill; only, when he found his enemy, to experience emptiness instead of catharsis - his five-year odyssey of hatred and animosity complete, he had nothing left to live for. (It becomes quickly and blatantly obvious that Yellowleg is talking about himself, but the scene loses no power for its metaphorical obviousness.) Peckinpah's direction of Keith achieves a regretful world-weariness that immediately establishes him as a precursor of Steve Judd, Pike Bishop and Pat Garrett - the first of Peckinpah's definitive, almost philosophical anti-heroes: a man who's outlived his time, looking back at the scarred life and bad decisions that have brought him this far and made him who he is.