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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 7:15 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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Well Neo and Jim, since you have kindly given this most neglected (on my part) of Yum threads a needed bump, it's only proper that I return to it with a new spotlight! And we go back to S1 (among the episodes released commercially).
Featuring a lady who would be no stranger to this genre, with her greater stardom in "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" three years off.
The story is one of those wonderfully complex dramas the series did best (even if sadly, it was among the first of many "Barkley brothers so unlucky in love" episodes).
Katharine is Maria, whose father Don Alfredo (Henry Wilcoxon) is a landowner engaged in a litigation with the Barkleys over an area of land which Tom Barkley had years earlier on his own sold to some homesteaders. The homesteaders, led by Mr. Hadley, are contemptuous of the Spanish family and fear the loss of their land. Thus when Maria, returning from studies in the East (which is the explanation for why she has no Spanish accent)crosses this land, they refuse to let her pass, so Nick and Heath must smooth things over and naturally both brothers become smitten with her.
However, Heath gets the upper hand over Nick when both ride out to Don Alfredo's the next day to smooth things over!
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 7:23 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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Pt. 2 of the Katharine Ross spotlight.
At a July 4th town picnic, Maria and Heath become closer, and Don Alfredo is not approving of this at all. Soon, events take a new turn when (1) Don Alfredo wins the legal dispute giving him title to the land Tom Barkley had sold to the homesteaders and (2) he takes note of Heath and Maria enjoying each other's company on the Northridge.
Armed with legal clout, Don Alfredo decides to play some hardball of his own so he can stop the blossoming relationship between Maria and Heath, whom he dislikes because of his illegitimate background. He decides to evict the homesteaders unless Victoria agrees to an arranged marriage between Maria....and Nick. Since Victoria won't allow this, he decides to press with the eviction.
There's an amusing inside joke when Don Alfredo boasts of how Maria's Spanish blood has 800 years of nobility that includes the blood of those who fought in the Crusades. Henry Wilcoxon of course, starred in DeMille's "The Crusades" in 1935!
When Mr. Hadley decides to burn the land before Don Alfredo can claim it, it nearly results in an ugly standoff with Nick and Heath. Finally, a chastened Don Alfredo arrives and tells the homesteaders they can stay. But Don Alfredo's heavy-handed tactics basically mean he must leave the area altogether to keep the peace, and Maria, despite being in love with Heath, goes with him.
In a tearful goodbye, Maria begs Heath to show his love for her by promising to forget her.
And the final shot shows Heath, alone watching her coach disappear from view.
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Another "unlucky in love" episode for Nick Barkley this time out in "The Velvet Trap", courtesy of Laura Devon, the soon-to-be Mrs. Maurice Jarre (as noted in her recent "Invaders" spotlight).
As the story opens, Laura as Sabrina Lynn, gets off a wrecked stagecoach during a storm when she notices a sinister looking man on horseback that she's trying to elude.
Nick finds her wandering through the woods and takes her home, where the family is happy to put her up for the night before she moves over to a hotel.
Sabrina has gently resisted Nick's advances, but when she notices the man who'd been following her arriving in town, and then sees Nick show his shooting prowess in a contest, a new idea pops into her head.
And she is all too happy to charm and romance Nick at a quiet picnic in the country.
Later that day, Sabrina reveals to Nick that she's being pursued by a wanted killer named Jack Floyd. Nick promises to give her protection from him.
But when a stage arrives and Sabrina happily greets a man she calls "Jack" we then of course realize that all is not as it has seemed, and that Sabrina is one treacherous woman setting Nick up. The man she's been eluding in fact is man out to kill Jack Floyd, her boyfriend, for the murder of his brother.
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Sabrina goes to see Pierce, the man who is chasing Jack, and tells him that she's ready to let him have Jack. All he has to do is come to the stables in an hour....where she has in fact told Nick to meet her.
When Pierce shows up and sees Sabrina with a man, he thinks it's Jack, and so he opens fire, necessitating Nick to fire back in self-defense, thinking it's Jack who's beeen terrorizing Sabrina.
But Pierce lives long enough to tell the sheriff the truth, and when Sabrina skips town with a man identified as the real Jack, Nick realizes he's been set up. Angry that he's killed an innocent man, even in self-defense, he sets out after the couple determined to finish the job Pierce had planned.
The sound of bells from a nearby house leads Nick to the couple, who have hoped to settle down to a life of isolated marital bliss, their dirty work all done for them.
Nick is not going to let them get away with it. He chases Jack into a barn. When Sabrina enters with a shotgun to aid her husband, Jack, thinking it's Nick, shoots her in the shoulder. Her screams bring him out into the open, enabling Nick to shoot Jack dead.
A grief-stricken Sabrina asks why it couldn't have been her instead. Nick, with no sympathy at all for being used, and for her treachery, tells her coldly that it's going to be tougher for her because, "You'll have to live."
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It probably is, since the "Gunsmoke" and "Big Valley" sets also turned up on "Wild, Wild West" as well, even though they were done by different production companies. The rental fees must have been reasonable for them to all go that kind of route instead of constructing their own sets for their own purposes.
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Posted: |
Dec 20, 2009 - 10:14 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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Long-time for this thread, but as a Christmas present to you Neo, it's time for an update!
Episode #9, Season 2.
Jarrod is on his way to settle a land dispute between ranchers and a homesteader who refuses to leave. The land commission has ruled that the homesteader will have to vacate, but on his way Jarrod is shot at and then injures himself resulting in amnesia.
Sheree North, the homesteader, all alone with her son (who shot at Jarrod when he approached, thinking he was one of the ranchers) and mother-in-law because her husband has been absent for two years (supposedly to put in a claim for gold that might be on the land), takes the amnesiac Jarrod in.
Because Jarrod has traveled a long ways from Stockton, no one in the nearby town (where the doctor has the same office as Doc Adams' one in Dodge City BTW!) can help him on who he is. Thus, when he returns to Sheree's home, he finds himself growing attached to her and her plight, and Sheree becomes determined to keep "Dakota" as she's now calling him, forever since she's convinced her absent husband is now dead.
As a result, when Jarrod's papers are found, she's determined to not tell him who he is.
Things start to really race out of control when first, the ranchers try to burn out her home and Jarrod helps to defend her (even though if he were aware of who he is, he'd be evicting her now!). Then, Heath and Nick arrive in town to find out what happened to Jarrod and when directed to the home, Sheree decides to threaten them off at gunpoint.
In a tense climax, Jarrod is soon firing at his own brothers, but when Heath breaks in through the back and Jarrod sees his revolver, his memory finally comes back, and he collapses in sobs as he realizes how close he came to killing his brothers.
In the final scene, Jarrod bids goodbye to a remorseful Sheree, though we never see full resolution on the matter of whether she had to vacate or not (the episode's one glaring weakness).
Sheree, whose career began with her award winning performance in the Broadway musical "Hazel Flagg", and then as a would-be replacement for Marilyn Monroe when the star proved problematic at Fox, showed very good acting versatility in this episode. It was certainly a long ways removed from her last appearance in a Four-Star production, just three years earlier on "Burke's Law"! (in the previously spotlighted "Who Killed The Good Doctor?")
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).
