"He who plays and runs away..." - The frontier members of the Maverick
family Bret (James Garner); Bart (Jack Kelly), Brent (Robert Colbert), Ben
(Charles Frank) and Cousin Beauregard Maverick (Roger Moore) often extolled the
familial philosophies of patriarch, Beauregard "Pappy" Maverick on weekly
installments of the western adventure MAVERICK/ABC/1957-62 and YOUNG
MAVERICK/CBS/1979-80. Pappy's most revered proverb was: "He who plays and runs
away lives to play another day." Other sage observations included:
- "Hell hath no fury like a man who loses with four of a kind"
- "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of
the people all the time and those aren't bad odds!"
- "No use crying over spilled milk, it could have been whiskey"
- "Work is right for killing time, but it's a shaky way to make
a living"
- "You can tell more about a town by looking at its gambling
emporium than any other building"
- "Never hold a kicker and never draw to an inside straight"
- "Never play in a rigged game, unless you rig it yourself.."
So determined was Pappy to keep his gambling offspring's from the straight and
narrow that when his sons went fighting for the Confederate Army, Pappy
admonished them "If you either one gets back with a medal, I'll beat you to
death." In addition to Pappy's wisdom, he also left each of his boys a $1000
bill for security against bad times which they tucked inside their traveling
clothes.
TRIVIA NOTE: Many of the script ideas for this
western were based on stories of a famous turn of the century Chicago conman
whose life was recorded in the book Yellow Kid Weil. On the adventure NATIONAL
VELVET/NBC/1960-62 James McCallion appeared as Irish born ex-jockey who helped a
young girl Velvet Brown (Lori Martin) train her horse for the Grand National
Steeplechase. When playing chess with Velvet he liked to espouse the philosophy
of his grandmother (for example, "As me wise grandmother used to say, the wise
man laughs at himself, and the fool laughs at everything else."
"Honor Before Honesty" - Credo of the Fleming and St. Clair families, a
group of con-artist with members spread throughout the world on the comedy drama
THE ROGUES/NBC/1964-65.
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