"Tough Guy Takes Off"

Well, that was odd. 

A patch of personal history passing before my eyes, watching a random episode of Lawman. 

(We’ll make this the last one about westerns.  For a while.  But the event was so striking I just had to tell you about it.  I had to, I tell you!  I had to!)  (Actually, I didn’t have to, and my apologies for the dramatics.  I’m just doing it because it’s there.)

So tighten you cinches, and let’s ride!

The episode of Lawman featured a standard storyline:

A notorious gunman shoots down a wet-nosed kid, itchin’ to make a name for himself.  (Writer’s Opinion:  If you ask me, the kid asked for it.)  The kid’s Pa and  three obedient offspring – “seein’ things different ” – vow to wreak vengeance on the murderin’ gunslick.  So they hightail it for Laramie, ruinin’ the tranquility of marshal Dan Troop, on a day set aside for cleanin’ his carbine.

(That has nothing to do with this story.  I just like flashin’ the lingo.)

Here – admittedly tangentially – is where I fit in.

Playing the role of the vengeance-filled Pa in this episode is Lee Van Cleef.

Eminently “looking the part”, Lee Van Cleef played numerous “bad-lookin’ hombres” in films and on television, most notably in Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where he engaged in a two-minute, squinting build-up before drawing against Clint Eastwood, with cuts to an anxious Eli Wallach thrown in, making the sequence run longer.  (To me, this showdown hangs somewhere between “tension” and “parody.”  You think, “They’ll draw now”, but they don’t.  They draw slightly after, “Aw, come on!”)

Anyway, there was an episode of Best of the West (1981, created by Earl Pomerantz), calling for a “bad-lookin’ hombre”, vowing to wreak vengeance on the “polecat” who stole his girlfriend, while he was locked in the calaboose, but now suddenly released.

It takes little imagination to see Lee Van Cleef in that role.

So there he is at the table reading, with me too scared to introduce myself, fearing I might say the wrong thing and be angrily “squinted” to death.   (Note:  With these responsibilities handled elsewhere, I was unaware who’d been cast in that role.  Though when I saw him, I wholeheartedly concurred.) 

The table reading went well. 

That’s not exactly correct.  Not that the table reading went badly.  I just don’t remember how it went.  Not lying, exactly.  Call it recalling, with the benefit of the doubt.

Though there is evidence I may have actually lied accurately.

I do recall returning to the office for rewrites with the buoyant impression that we were in pretty good shape.  (Meaning I do not recall throwing up.)  Some reparative “nips and tucks”, and we were off to the races.

It was in this ebullient context that I saw Lee Van Cleef, standing at the office door, looking paler and, somehow, shorter than I had recently seen him only several minutes before. 

After a brief one-way conversation with my boss (overseeing the production, as the network astutely had no faith in my leadership abilities), we were informed that Van Cleef had abruptly left the production, and gone home. 

Apparently, Van Cleef, who had stared down many an owlhoot on both big screen and small, was terrified of facing a live studio audience (in front of whom Best of the West would ultimately be filmed.)  It would seem he’d been informed – or strategically misinformed – that would not be the case, making me fear immediately for his agent.  

Van Cleef was replaced by Chuck “The Rifleman” Connors, and the show went off smoothly.  (Meaning I do not recall that it didn’t.)

It somehow tickled me that alleged “Tough Guys” are terrified of something.  (Gloating Inference:  Something, if they let me, I felt I could do.)

Though you’d be wrong, believing such trepidation was reliably “across the board.”

Remember that episode of Lawman I was talking about?  Well, to my surprise and excitement – because it generated this post – the man aptly cast as the “notorious gunman” who shot down the kid itchin’ to make a name for himself was Jack Elam.

“So what?” you are asking.

So this.

Years before, I had written an episode of Phyllis, where, cast (again, not by me) as a “bum in the park” against “Phyllis’s” demure Cloris Leachman was none other than…

Jack Elam.

Is that crazy, or what?  Two “bad-lookin’ hombres”, cast in sitcom episodes I wrote, both appearing, in the same episode of Lawman?

What the heck are the odds?

The distinguishing difference, in my personal experience, was

Jack Elam came through.

Demonstrating that some “Tough Guys” can face live studios audiences and some “Tough Guys” cannot.

Jack Elam performed manfully.

Lee Van Cleef, it pains me to say it,

Turned tail and ran.

I guess that’s how it is.

You just never know,

Till the final showdown.