So went the memorable theme song to Maverick, the popular television series from the late 1950s and early 1960s starring James Garner as Bret Maverick, a rambling, gambling cowboy traveling through the Old West in search of action and adventure.
Maverick was one of very few long-running TV series — and likely the most popular — to feature a poker-playing character in the lead role. As such the show, along with subsequent iterations of the Maverick character and story, would exert some influence on poker’s place in American culture, introducing the game to many via its engaging mix of witty humor and western-themed morality tales.
A Mini-Boom in Poker
Maverick debuted on ABC on Sunday, September 22, 1957 and was an immediate hit, successfully luring viewers away from other popular Sunday night shows like The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS and The Steve Allen Show on NBC.
The show was created by Roy Huggins. After writing a few novels, then working as a screenwriter and director, Huggins had become a television producer for Warner Brothers a couple of years before. Following Maverick, Huggins would go on to have a hand in several successful series, including The Fugitive, The Rockford Files (also starring Garner) and Baretta.
The very first episode, titled “War of the Silver Kings,” had a plot that revolved around a poker game. Soon after arriving in the town of Echo Springs, Maverick finds himself playing poker with a silver baron named Phineas King. He wins the game, successfully bluffing King out of a big pot.
“You’re a very smart poker player,” says King to Maverick. “Lookin’ right down my throat, weren’t you?” “I could almost see what you had for lunch, Mr. King,” quips Maverick.
King then attempts to run Maverick out of town, eventually scheming to have him killed, although Maverick manages to escape unscathed.
The third episode, “According to Hoyle,” has Maverick playing poker on a riverboat. In the seventh, “Relic of Fort Tejon,” Maverick actually wins a camel in a poker game.
The following episode introduced Bart Maverick, Bret’s brother, played by Jack Kelly. By the fourth season, after Garner had left the series, two more Maverick brothers would occasionally be featured, Beau Maverick, a cousin played by future James Bond Roger Moore, and another brother, Brent Maverick, played by Robert Colbert.
During a time when westerns were especially popular both on television and in the theater, Maverick actually played as a kind of spoof of the genre, poking fun at Gunsmoke and other “straight” westerns with a humorous hero who was decidedly unlike the standard rough-hewn model of masculinity typically featured.
So went the memorable theme song to Maverick, the popular television series from the late 1950s and early 1960s starring James Garner as Bret Maverick, a rambling, gambling cowboy traveling through the Old West in search of action and adventure.
Maverick was one of very few long-running TV series — and likely the most popular — to feature a poker-playing character in the lead role. As such the show, along with subsequent iterations of the Maverick character and story, would exert some influence on poker’s place in American culture, introducing the game to many via its engaging mix of witty humor and western-themed morality tales.
A Mini-Boom in Poker
Maverick debuted on ABC on Sunday, September 22, 1957 and was an immediate hit, successfully luring viewers away from other popular Sunday night shows like The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS and The Steve Allen Show on NBC.
The show was created by Roy Huggins. After writing a few novels, then working as a screenwriter and director, Huggins had become a television producer for Warner Brothers a couple of years before. Following Maverick, Huggins would go on to have a hand in several successful series, including The Fugitive, The Rockford Files (also starring Garner) and Baretta.
The very first episode, titled “War of the Silver Kings,” had a plot that revolved around a poker game. Soon after arriving in the town of Echo Springs, Maverick finds himself playing poker with a silver baron named Phineas King. He wins the game, successfully bluffing King out of a big pot.
“You’re a very smart poker player,” says King to Maverick. “Lookin’ right down my throat, weren’t you?” “I could almost see what you had for lunch, Mr. King,” quips Maverick.
King then attempts to run Maverick out of town, eventually scheming to have him killed, although Maverick manages to escape unscathed.
The third episode, “According to Hoyle,” has Maverick playing poker on a riverboat. In the seventh, “Relic of Fort Tejon,” Maverick actually wins a camel in a poker game.
The following episode introduced Bart Maverick, Bret’s brother, played by Jack Kelly. By the fourth season, after Garner had left the series, two more Maverick brothers would occasionally be featured, Beau Maverick, a cousin played by future James Bond Roger Moore, and another brother, Brent Maverick, played by Rober..
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