As an addition to my previous post about Doc Holliday played by Peter Breck (“Maverick” TV series) – here are some fun samples of his fine performance:
How about hiring a Doc Holliday?
Pure Holliday
Tag Archives: Peter Breck
John Henry “Doc” Holliday – The Deadly Dentist in the Classic Western Era – part 4: “Maverick” TV series – Peter Breck
Maverick TV series (1957-1962)
This 50s TV series feature two different takes on Doc Holliday – a darker, fatalistic one by Gerald Mohr and a lively, moody, leaning-towards-comedy by Peter Breck.
Peter Breck as “Doc” Holliday
Peter Breck as Doc Holliday – Maverick TV series – ep. “A technical error”
Peter Breck’s Doc Holliday portrayal combines great humor and a sufficient amount of menace expected from the moody gunfighter. He is absolutely charming, yet dangerous and pretty much steals the screen.
The writers played with the canonical image of Doc Holliday as a hard-drinking gambler and gunfighter, blending it into the Maverick TV series comedy tone with money-as-the-main-agenda routine. They gave Doc great lines of dialogue and Breck done brilliantly with bringing them to life.
Maverick “Triple Indemnity”
Bart Maverick:How are you, Doc?
Doc Holliday: Not too drunk to protect my own interests. This is Helen. Keep your hands off her. Helen, this is Bart Maverick. As far as you are concerned he doesn’t exist. I only introduce him to you because I am polite and now just forget it.
Doc here drinks his whiskey, smokes his cigars and switches from a friendly laughter into a menacing heavy gaze in less than a second. He also has delightfully refined ways of humiliating people.
ep. “One of our trains is missing”
A man: Holliday, better get things fixed – a lot depends on it.
Doc: If it’ll take a load of your rather insignificant little mind, I should tell you that I’ve arranged to delay the train for at least 5 hours.
A man: There’s no need to be rude…
Doc: A very bad habbit of mine. But you could help me overcome it. By keeping your revolting person out of my sight.
Notably, his ability with guns is mostly referenced and he only actually gets to use it a bit in the last episode.
Peter Breck’s interpretation of Doc Holliday’s character became one of the two of my favorite Holliday’s portrayals – the other one being Kirk Douglas’s Doc in “the Gunfight at the OK Corral”.
It is a mystery to me why Warner Brothers didn’t bring in Peter Breck as Doc as a regular character to replace an empty spot left for the second central character. Their playing of each other with Jack Kelly is also very enjoyable.
Peter Breck and Jack Kelly
Or they could have made a spin-off about him after Maverick TV series got canceled in the 5th season. Anyways, it’s a pity that they are so few episodes with Peter Breck as Holliday.
John Henry “Doc” Holliday – The Deadly Dentist in the Classic Western Era – links to previous posts:
The Big Valley (1965-1969)
The Big Valley are rather popular 60s TV Series with lots of positive reviews on IMDB, made at the time of the TV westerns craze.
the big valley
After watching the first season, they left me wondering why they were so popular… The writing of the show is very poor, dragging it dangerously close to a soap opera (e.g character ending up with an almost broken back in an overly dramatized way for no other reason, but to add drama).
The show has a lot of generic plot devices and miraculous absolutely predictable happy endings. I don’t mind happy endings as such, just give me a solid plot twist that would turn the things around in a believable way. And believability is something the show definitely lacks.
Peter Breck – an outstanding (and underrated) actor – is limited here by a dreadful script.
Every episode ends up to be a moral tale to teach (preach at) the audience what’s good and what’s bad – one can actually replace the episode titles with something like “generosity tale”, “self-sacrifice tale” etc.
The bad guys usually accept the moral superiority of the Barkleys family (or, rarely, they die).
If you are fan of these TV series – please shed some light in the comments on why they are so great…
P.S.
Considering how big the emphases on the moral of the tale is in this show (and I personally can’t stand preaching), some episodes left me stunned by their ideas of a moral high road. In one of the episodes Nick Barkley ( Peter Breck ) walking with a woman who took care of him while he was sick (with rabbis – don’t even get me started on the believability) gets ambushed from behind by two armed men. All they want is his money which they request him to throw “over your shoulder”.
I never saw in any classic western before a protagonist to be that stupid to engage in a shootout from this position. When you are standing your back to 2 armed guys with their guns already at you (and there is a woman standing right next to him, remember), one thing you don’t do – you don’t turn around to shoot. Because at least one of you will get shot. Yes, he attempts to shoot and at the same time to throw the woman to the side out of the line of fire, but she, predictably, gets shot. And dies hours later.
Now, our highly moral protagonist takes that situation rather well – not much of the remorse of getting her killed there. Not when she dies nor later in the episode, with him being in a pretty jolly mood by the end of the episode.
Classic Western Movie Genre 