Maverick (US TV series)

***Maverick*** is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and initially starred James Garner as Bret Maverick, an adroitly articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother Bart Maverick, and for the next two-and-a-half seasons, Garner and Kelly alternated leads from week to week, sometimes teaming up for the occasional two-brother episode. The Mavericks were poker players from Texas who traveled all over the American Old West and on Mississippi riverboats, constantly getting into and out of life-threatening trouble of one sort or another, usually involving money, women, or both. They would typically find themselves weighing a financial windfall against a moral dilemma. More often than not, their consciences trumped their wallets since both Mavericks were intrinsically ethical.

James Garner as Bret MaverickFrank Kelly as Bart MaverickRoger Moore as Beau MaverickRobert Colbeck as Brent MaverickWhen Garner left the series after the third season due to a legal dispute, Roger Moore was added to the cast as their cousin Beau Maverick. Again, the two starring Mavericks would generally alternate as series leads, with the occasional "team-up" episode. Robert Colbert appeared later in the fourth season as a third Maverick brother, Brent Maverick, replacing Moore. No more than two of the series leads ever appeared together in the same episode, and usually only one.

For the fifth and final season, the show returned to a "single Maverick" format, and all new episodes starred Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick.

The show was part of the Warner Bros. array of Westerns, which included Cheyenne, Colt .45, Lawman, Bronco, The Alaskans, and Sugarfoot.

   In the decades following the cancellation of Maverick, the characters and situations have been revived several times.

On September 3, 1978, ***The New Maverick*** aired, in which a 50-year-old James Garner and Jack Kelly reprised their roles, with Charles Frank playing young Ben Maverick, the son of their cousin Beau. Garner shot the film while on hiatus from The Rockford Files. Kelly only appeared in a few scenes near the end, a frequent practice during Garner episodes in the original series.

The New Maverick was the pilot for a new series, ***Young Maverick***, which ran for a short time from November 28, 1979. Frank's character, Ben Maverick, was the focal point of the show, while Garner only appeared as Bret for a few moments at the beginning of the first episode. It is apparent that Bret does not much care for Ben, and the two part at the nearest crossroads; some critics later noted that the audience couldn't help but think that the camera was following the wrong Maverick. The series ended so quickly that several episodes that had already been filmed were never broadcast.

Two years later, Garner left The Rockford Files and was required by contractual obligations to perform in another series. ***Bret Maverick*** first aired December 1, 1981 and starred the 53-year-old as an older-but-no-wiser Bret. Jack Kelly appeared as Bret's brother Bart in only one episode but was slated to return as a series regular for the following season. NBC unexpectedly canceled the show despite respectable ratings, and Kelly would never officially join the cast. The new series involved Bret Maverick settling down in a small town in Arizona after winning a saloon in a poker game. Bret Maverick ended on a sentimental note, with Bret and Bart embracing during an unexpected encounter, and the theme from the original series playing in the background.

The Kenny Rogers TV movie ***The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw*** (1991) featured Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick for the last time. The film united Kelly with various other Western characters and actors, including Bat Masterson (Gene Barry), Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brian), the Rifleman (Chuck Connors) and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford), Caine from Kung Fu (David Carradine), The Westerner (Brian Keith), a thinly disguised Virginian (James Drury) and Trampas (Doug McClure, who had appeared briefly as a hotel clerk in a first season Maverick episode), and Cheyenne Bodie (Clint Walker). As each hero appears onscreen, a few bars of the theme song from his original series plays in the background.

A lavish film version directed by Richard Donner was released in 1994 entitled ***Maverick*** starring Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick, Jodie Foster as a faux-Southern accented gambler reminiscent of Samantha Crawford, and James Garner as Marshal Zane Cooper, who is later revealed to be Bret's father. Garner maintained in interviews that he was playing exactly the same character as in the television series, with Gibson as his son (which is consistent with the script's and Gibson's notably different interpretation of the character), but the screenplay itself leaves this open to conjecture; some assume that he was actually portraying Bret's father Beau "Pappy" Maverick.