Bat, Paladin and Steed

I watched this show as a youth and could always hum the theme from it in the decades hense. I also enjoyed Gene Barry in "Burke's Law" and "Name of the Game". I recently got a collection of episodes from the series in an 11 DVD set. It has 5 episodes per tape so it has 55 of the 108 episodes. I've watched the first 8 of them.

My reaction is mixed. The scripts are good for a half-hour show and they have the best villans in the business, (Robert Middleton, Broderick Crawford, who had done "Highway Patrol" for the same company, William Conrad, who was still playing Matt Dillon on the radio, James Westerfield, Leo Gordon, etc.). Gene Barry is a very handsome hero and he's always been one of my favorite actors.

But there's something slightly phony about the show. I realize Bat Masterson was something of a dandy in real life and that he was famous for his cane but from what I've read , this was mostly from later in his life. He was a considerably rougher character early in life and grew into his role as a dapper "gentleman" lawman. In the series he is already a fashion plate and the ever grinning Barry often seems like a man posing for an advertisment, rather than an authentic westerner. Even when on the trail, his clothes look as if they were bought in the big city and are being worn for the first time. Yet Masterson is feared by the grungier-looking bad guys. Much is made of his profiency with his rather flimsy looking cane, which renders bad guys unconsious with a single tap. I recall reading that Bat's cane was presented to him by the citizens of Dodge City when he'd finished his tenure as Sheriff of Ford County. It was keepsake, not a weapon.

I contrast this with Paladin, who was a dandy when living in San Francisco and who enjoyed the same pleasures as Bat: gambling and women. But when he's on the trail, his clothes look very lived-in and he has the haggard look of a man whose been on the trail for a while.

I must acknowledge a stroke of genius involving Barry's portrayal of Masterson. He, along with many western stars of the 50's and 60's, appeared in Kenny Roger's TV movie, "The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw" from 1991. Barry as Masterson appeared in a scene showing a poker game that includes Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick. That's interesting enough but a another player in the game is an equally dapper Patrick Macnee as "Sir Colin". It's hard to imagine two movie characters more closely alike than Barry's Masterson and Macnee's John Steed from "The Avengers". Barry's series was about as realistic a western as Macnee's show was a spy show. But both shows can be enjoyed if you take them for the light entertainments they are intended to be, (something hard to do these days where we take everything apart critically). Both Bat and Steed are classy but eccentric dressers, (down to the derbys), who preferred dispatching the bad guys with an unlikely weapon, (Steed had an umbrella with a sword in it and a bowler hat with a metal lining). Both actors stated that they preferred to avoid gunplay and liked that quality in their characters. And yet the characters were devised independently of eachother in different countries. Putting them togther, even briefly, was brilliant.