Wish for Maverick Season Sets (1 Viewer)

[Garysb]

I taped the Maverick marathon that Encore westerns ran on July 4. The later season episodes included the Warner Bros. fanfare with the shot of the Warner Bros. studio. I would say they didn't use the fanfare in during the first season.
The last season of Maverick, Season 5, was really half a season as they alternated between new Jack Kelly episodes and reruns with James Garner.
I am guessing that some of the old James Garner episodes may have been changed to include Warner fanfare and perhaps the theme song with lyrics when shown during the fifth season.

 

[Elena S]

Dumbasses are in charge?

 

[Carabimero]

There must be a reason, valid or not. But if they wait much longer their target audience will be dead.

 

[BobSchneider]

Yes sad but true, which is why all the studios need to get off their collective asses and release the great classic tv shows they have in there valuts so they can start making $$$$$$$.

 

[Dan McW]

The comments of Peter, Tom, and others got me to check a couple of copies I have of the show with nearly all of the bumpers, etc. It would appear that later Maverick episodes are longer. I didn't tape the July 4 marathon on Encore, but I noticed in their online schedule that the later-season episodes aired that day had run times in the 50:00-51:00 range. My Columbia House tapes of the early episodes run less than 50:00, IIRC.

My nearly uncut copy of season one's "The Naked Gallows" runs 50:19 and has the following: a teaser (0:47); the title card with the silhouetted card player at right (and a "Maverick" voice-over); a card that says "starring James Garner and Jack Kelly" (no v-o); a WB shield with the "produced by Warner Brothers" v-o; a shot of the WB studios with the v-o "from the entertainment capital of the world, produced for television by Warner Brothers"; and the title card again with the theme song.

I think the teaser and the second title card are all that appear at the opening of the Encore episodes. Then (on my copy) there's a dissolve into the episode as Garner introduces the Bart Maverick plot that follows, with the episode title and another Kelly credit appearing. I flipped through the episode and saw only two end-of-the-act bumpers, so I think its run time really should be 50:25 or more. Each act ended with the silhouetted-card-player (sans "Maverick" title) and a brief music cue. One new act began with a slightly different cue and a shot of the end-credit card (a noose), showing the episode's title and with the v-o, "now, for the next act of Maverick." A later bumper was the same, except the v-o was "now, back to Maverick." The end-title theme was an instrumental.

Strip away all of that extra stuff, and you've got a run time in the 49:40 range.

My copy of a Robert Colbert episode from season four, "Benefit of Doubt," runs 52:05. The teaser is only 25 seconds long. Most of the elements are the same as above, except the "entertainment capital" bit is shortened to "a Warner Brothers television production." There were three end-of-the-act bumpers, all like the shorter version described above. The end theme had lyrics.

Another note: Encore once aired time-sped but likely uncut episodes of Combat!, but usually there are no problems with their prints. They can only air what the studio gives them, such as the same main title plastered on all five seasons of The Rifleman.

 

[Stephen Bowie]

My thinking is, no time-compression on the Encore broadcasts. (Even though, having just digested the first season of "The Rockford Files," I found the younger James Garner's voice suspiciously high-pitched.)

I didn't record any of the July 4 marathon episodes, but so far the first season shows have all come in within a few seconds of 49:20. The three episodes on the WB TV Favorites DVD, which are also stripped of all bumpers, promos, etc., all time out around 49:15. Yes, those 3 episodes are from seasons 2-3 and theoretically could've had shorter original runtimes, but I'm going with Occam's razor here: the almost-matching times suggests no cuts or speedup.

I didn't record "Maverick" when it was on the Goodlife/American Life Channel (naively assuming that DVD sets HAD to be forthcoming at some point), but every other hourlong WB show from the 50s-60s came in between about 46:30 and 47:45, and the time-compression had a noticeable bounce effect. So if any tinkering has been done with the masters Encore is using, it's extremely slight by comparison.

49:20 does seem pretty short for a 1957 show, but WB was all about self-promotion and $$$ even then, so perhaps their hours had more time given over to ads & trailers than some of their competition. You'd have to find a film print with the original commercials to check that, I guess. Where's "Hank Dearborn" when you need him?

 

[Elena S]

Hank is no longer here, unfortunately.

The comparisons I've seen on this thread are between the Encore airings and the Columbia House videos. But does anyone know for sure that the CH videos are uncut? Every hour long show I've ever seen from the 50s had four 1-minute breaks. Remember, commercials between shows were very short at that time, too. Commercials didn't begin to overtake television shows until the 70s.

Not trying to be argumentative; I just have a nagging feeling that we're not getting complete -- or possibly regular speed -- episodes here. They seem to be already cut for syndication.

 

[Dan McW]

Upon further review, I've noticed that the "entertainment capital" spiel appeared on Encore's copy of the fifth episode, "The Long Hunt." Maybe this was used periodically when the show was first broadcast, or perhaps it doesn't survive on all prints.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I haven't seen Maverick on Encore Westerns yet, though I'm going to check it out today. I am old enough to remember the original series, though.

My recollection is that the principal advertisers were Kaiser Aluminum and Willys Motor Company (which manufactured the Jeep until Willys was sold to American Motors in 1970). In fact, there was a Jeep model called the "Maverick Special." There were fewer commercials in those days but they tended to run longer than today's commercials.

YouTube - Maverick TV Commercial

Also, I believe that most episodes included a preview of the following week's episode. And when the show returned from a commercial break, the announcer would say something along the lines of "Now we return to Maverick," or there was a musical transition from the commercial to the show.

 

[Mary_P]

I second that. Encore ran "Alias Smith & Jones" a few years ago, and the prints were beautiful, uncut, and not sped up. They had the correct opening segments for each season; they even had the original Universal logo at the end, which the season 1 DVDs do not have. (The only thing they didn't have were the two 90-minute episodes.) I will definitely have to check into getting a DVR going on "Maverick," if Warners isn't going to give us a proper release on DVD.

BTW, in the book Alias Smith & Jones: The Story of Two Pretty Good Bad Men, there's a nice little section detailing various bits of "Maverick" plots that wound up being repurposed in AS&J scripts. Roy Huggins commented that he was constantly plagiarizing from himself!

 

[Carabimero]

Approx how many episodes feature Jim Garner...I'm only around episode 10 and already Brother Bart is replacing him full-time.

 

[FanCollector]

For the first three seasons, they mostly alternate, with 10 or 11 shows in which both are important and 7 or 8 Garner shows in which Kelly makes a brief, often surprise appearance. The fourth season contains one show featuring both, left over from the prior year's filming. I counted once, and over the course of the whole series, Garner stars in about 52 and Kelly in about 70, giving credit to each actor for the shows in which they team up.

The issue was that the shows were being filmed too slowly, losing about one day's shooting per episode. After filming seven shows, the production was behind by an entire show, so they came up with the idea of alternating stars, allowing two crews to be shooting two shows simultaneously. Thereafter, the scripts simply referred to "Maverick", and would simply be assigned to one or the other, based on availability or, when possible, Garner's choice.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I really believe that Warner would have no problem at all "garnering" interest in -- at least -- the first four seasons of Maverick. The first three prominently feature James Garner; and I think Roger Moore shows up in 15 episodes in Season Four.

Of all the Western series that were produced in the late fifties / early sixties, this is the one that holds up the best. It had "Sting" episodes *before* the Sting. It satirized other popular series of the day *way* before "Moonlighting" made that popular. And it still found time for some "hard core" Western stories.

With the enduring popularity of James Garner and Roger Moore; and the sturdy work from the affable Jack Kelly -- all combined with the attributes mentioned above -- it's more than baffling that this series is not available on DVD!

 

[Garysb]

Roger Moore appeared once with James Garner but played a different character than Beau Maverick. Interestingly enough he changes identities with and pretends to be Bret Maverick as part of the story. Roger Moore essentially replaced James Garner in the fourth season and then quit himself because he thought the scripts he was asked to do were weak. Robert Colbert playing Brent Maverick finished the fourth season and appeared as Maverick only twice. Once with Jack Kelly and one solo episode. Before Roger Moore quit I believe Moore, Kelly, and Colbert were all going to rotate as Maverick as there is a picture of the three of them together. After Moore quit
it was decided to just use new Kelly and Garner reruns for the fifth season.

 

[Carabimero]

Just watched THE QUICK AND THE DEAD and COMSTOCK CONSPIRACY. Really liked THE QUICK AND THE DEAD a lot.

 

[GlennH]

I smiled seeing a younger Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer) in COMSTOCK CONSPIRACY.

 

[FrosteyV]

I am recording the Encore's Maverick series now, and have noted that the WB fanfare is present in some of the Season one episodes and absent in others, plus the opening credits seemed to change not only season to season, but usually episode to episode. Still almost every episode that I've recorded the total time still is tightly between 49:40-49:50. I wonder if WB just added and subtracted bumpers, intros, fanfare etc, just so they could consistently tailor the episodes to that time frame?

 

[Richard Gallagher]

Beginning on August 1 Encore Westerns will be airing Maverick twice each weekday. At 9:00 a.m. eastern time they will start the series over again, meaning that "War of the Silver Kings" will air on August 1, "Point Blank" on August 4, etc. In the meantime, at 6:00 p.m. they they will continue showing season one in chronological order. So on August 1 "Silver Kings" will be on at 9:00 a.m., and "The Savage Hills" will be on at 6:00 p.m.

This will give fans who missed some episodes a chance to catch up.

 

[Stephen Bowie]

Every episode I've checked so far (#s 5-15) has come in between 49:18 and 49:20, so I'm not sure how you're getting that figure.

 

[FrosteyV]

Actually I went back and checked and you are right. Not sure why I initially said that.