"... over whiskey on 'Sugarfoot,' died on April 21 in Manhasset, N.Y., on the North Shore of Long Island. He was 94.... Mr. Hutchins’s character, Tom Brewster, was the sugarfoot in question: an Eastern law student seeking his fortune as a sheriff who sidles up to the saloon bar to order a sarsaparilla (Wild West root beer) 'with a dash of cherry.' He abhors violence, tries to stop women from throwing themselves at him and lovingly gives up his share of drinking water for his horse. Mr. Hutchins played the role for comedy, following up a villain’s insult with a dramatic pause, only to critique the man for not being 'sociable.'... [H]e was likely to end a fight not with a killing but rather a comment like, 'All right now, how about that apology?'... [Hutchins said] the best advice he had received about comic performance was to act as if you were doing something no less severe than 'Hamlet.' "In order to make people laugh, you have to act seriously,' he said. 'Chaplin was just as sad as he was funny. Buster Keaton never smiled.'"
Here's a snippet that shows the beginning of the second episode, "Reluctant Hero." I like how our law student character is reading what looks like a casebook as he rides his horse into town:
Watch the whole first episode — the pilot — here. Look for Dennis Hopper as Billy the Kid and Slim Pickens as Shorty.
And here's a clip from an episode of "Bronco" where Will Hutchins — as the Sugarfoot character — has a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt!
Lee Van Cleef wanted to kill TR. Was there no end to his villainy? And the actor looks like a youngish TR, but he's too quiet. The real TR would've taken over and done most of the talking.
Brings back a lot of memories of that era. Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, etc. The westerns were more than just entertainment, they developed a whole generation of boys and young men with the "cowboy code". And that created the masculine America that dominated the world for rest of the century and that MAGA seeks to reacquire.
"Sugarfoot," unfortunately, was the "jumping the shark" end of that era.
Hutchins did have some film and TV work after his heyday. TV in the Los Angeles of the 50s wasn't quite as glamorous and unattainable as the Hollywood film world. It was a little more integrated into the community, so Eddie Haskell from "Leave it to Beaver" (Ken Osmond) could go on to become an LA cop without feeling that he'd fallen from some great height.
Root beer flavoring originally came from sassafras or sarsaparilla. Scientists banned sassafras for causing cancer in mice. Now they are finding out that sarsaparilla may fight cancer. Maybe that's why Hutchins lived so long.
My fave "western" was Yancy Derringer and his Indian sidekick where all the episodes took place at night in New Orleans. Minimal production television.
Rendering’s comment about Hutchins’ career ending up as a shipping clerk must have come from the NYT article which I don’t have access to, but his Wikipedia bio says that in the 70’s, “He began appearing in circuses as Patches the Clown”, which seems even more ignominious.
I recognize two of the actors' names in the credits. Both Will Wright and Iris Adrian appeared on the Jack Benny radio show, and in numerous TV roles. Will Wright was the first Ben Weaver on the Andy Griffith Show, and sharp-tongued, brassy Iris was on a lot of 60s sitcoms.
With the advances in technology, I'm hoping someday we can all have dramatic music play when we enter a room. I can probably program my phone to do that now. I'll get to work on it. People will have to take me seriously from now on.
I loved watching the Warner Bros westerns in the 50s and early 60s. "Cheyenne" and "Maverick" were my favorites. It's a wonder that we weren't all corrupted by constant portrayal of gunfighting and saloon drinking scenes. I remember seeing Will Hutchins as Sugarfoot. It seems his character might have been a spinoff of "Maverick," "Cheyenne," or one of the others. Later on, Will Hutchins played a very evil villain in one of the Clint Eastwood "Hang em High" series. Seemed an incongruent role for him after playing the Sugarfoot character.
I like how our law student character is reading what looks like a casebook as he rides his horse into town.
Or Jeff Bridge as Rooster Cockburn. If you wanted to interest someone in becoming a lawyer, why would you start with negotiable instruments?
Well, my second wife Edna, wanted me to be a lawyer. Bought a heavy book called Daniels on Negotiable Instruments and set me to reading it. Never could get a grip on it and I was happy enough to set it aside and leave Texas.
I never saw "Sugarfoot", but I wonder how much the lawyer from the 1953 short story "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" influenced the lawyer-sheriff character that Hutchins played.
That description of Tom Brewster sounds exactly like the narrator. character ‘The Stranger’ played by Sam Elliot in “The Big Lebowski”. He drops by the bowling alley in the movie, looking for a good ‘sarsparilla’ and pointedly objects to the Dudes cussing’.
I recall the show. Its reruns were on TV in the summer afternoons one year, right after the Rifleman. At age 9 I was trying to decide between pro football and being a lawyer, so I took a liking to it.
The only clear memory of an episode was the one where the actor also played his evil twin -- something that seemed to happen back then almost as often as running into quicksand. I once tried to figure out the odds of 3 separate evil twins for almost half of the 7 people on Gilligan's Island ending up on the exact same desert island (and then leaving), but the calculators back then were not that sophisticated.
[Hutchins said] the best advice he had received about comic performance was to act as if you were doing something no less severe than 'Hamlet.' "In order to make people laugh, you have to act seriously,' he said. 'Chaplin was just as sad as he was funny. Buster Keaton never smiled.'"
I recall that for Animal House John Vernon (Dean Wormer) kept asking John Landis how he should play the character to be funny, and Landis kept telling him to act seriously because it would be funnier that way. I think Leslie Nielson may have used the same principle on Airplane!
Looks like I was wrong in my earlier comment about Hutchins playing a villain in an Eastwood movie. I was curious to know which one but could not find any confirmation on Wikipedia. I might have been thinking of "good guy" Bruce Dern, who played the lead villain in "Hang em High."
Lee Van Cleef, back when he had all his fingers. I never watched this one, guess it was a few years before my time and didn't make the re-run circuit as much as Maverick and Rawhide and the others.
I might have been thinking of "good guy" Bruce Dern, who played the lead villain in "Hang em High."
There's hardly an appearance of Bruce Dern in film or on television that can be construed a non-villainous role. That's probably because he perfected the "stands out like a sore thumb" psychopath stereotype. By casting Dern, a director could bypass lengthy character development of the antagonist and cut to the chase, as it were -- a very economical step to take when action movies are in production. Bruce Dern is in the cast of Hang 'em High, but he's not the lead villain. That distinction belongs to Ed Begley as Captain Wilson, the leader of the vigilante party that lynches Jedediah Cooper (Clint Eastwood) and nearly murders him.
To me, Bruce Dern's stand out role is the mad as a hatter Vietnam veteran conned into a terrorist plot to attack the Super Bowl with a bomb-laden blimp in the 1977 potboiler Black Sunday His role in The Cowboys is a close second.
I think Leslie Nielson may have used the same principle on Airplane!
No, Leslie Nielson was doing the role deadpan, in other words, without emotion. Let's not confuse seriousness with solemnity. Besides, comedy is serious business.
Google says: 'You think there are a lot of crime dramas and reality shows on today? During the 1958-59 season, in TV universe with only three networks, 31 Westerns were on the air'
It seems he lived a long and happy life, marrying his second wife in 1988, remaining married to her till his death. They lived in Santa Ynez, California. I couldn’t find any mention of being a shipping clerk but his stint as a clown just points to his long varied career. He also wrote for Western Clippings, a western fanzine. WesternClippings.com has more info on him and other western shows from the 50s and 60s.
With the advances in technology, I'm hoping someday we can all have dramatic music play when we enter a room.
We have an Amazon Echo device in each bedroom and in the kitchen, going back to the days when two of the three kids were still home and I didn't want to yell them down for breakfast. Starting in high school and continuing every time he visits from college, our youngest tells the kitchen device (via the one in his bedroom) to play his walk-on music as he starts downstairs. It was especially entertaining during his sea chanty phase.
Looks like I was wrong in my earlier comment about Hutchins playing a villain in an Eastwood movie.
He played a cop in Magnum Force.
He did play a bad guy in a Perry Mason episode. Played against type as a "cool and conniving killer." The Case of the Scarlet Scandal. I have an almost complete collection of Perry Masons so I'm going to try to find it.
Also played in two Elvis movies (Clambake and Spinout), and an episode of Love, American Style. I got a kick out of that show when I was a kid. Red, white and blue, woo hoo!.
Perry Mason is on Amazon Prime. But Will's episode in season 9 is missing. Strange! They've got episodes 1 through 19, and 21 through 30. I wonder why they don't have episode 20?
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Imagine going from a Hollywood star to an NBC shipping clerk towards the end of one's career.
"Imagine going from a Hollywood star to an NBC shipping clerk towards the end of one's career."
Chaplin is mentioned. It makes me think of the Chaplin character in "Limelight" (one of my favorite movies)
Lee Van Cleef wanted to kill TR. Was there no end to his villainy? And the actor looks like a youngish TR, but he's too quiet. The real TR would've taken over and done most of the talking.
Brings back a lot of memories of that era. Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, etc. The westerns were more than just entertainment, they developed a whole generation of boys and young men with the "cowboy code". And that created the masculine America that dominated the world for rest of the century and that MAGA seeks to reacquire.
"Sugarfoot," unfortunately, was the "jumping the shark" end of that era.
I remember him from "Hey Landlord!", one of the funniest sitcoms of the late 60s.
Hutchins did have some film and TV work after his heyday. TV in the Los Angeles of the 50s wasn't quite as glamorous and unattainable as the Hollywood film world. It was a little more integrated into the community, so Eddie Haskell from "Leave it to Beaver" (Ken Osmond) could go on to become an LA cop without feeling that he'd fallen from some great height.
Root beer flavoring originally came from sassafras or sarsaparilla. Scientists banned sassafras for causing cancer in mice. Now they are finding out that sarsaparilla may fight cancer. Maybe that's why Hutchins lived so long.
Sugarfoot is a great nickname.
My fave "western" was Yancy Derringer and his Indian sidekick where all the episodes took place at night in New Orleans. Minimal production television.
Rendering’s comment about Hutchins’ career ending up as a shipping clerk must have come from the NYT article which I don’t have access to, but his Wikipedia bio says that in the 70’s, “He began appearing in circuses as Patches the Clown”, which seems even more ignominious.
It wasn't exactly a craze. Just cheap content B films. The craze was when they were made.
I recognize two of the actors' names in the credits. Both Will Wright and Iris Adrian appeared on the Jack Benny radio show, and in numerous TV roles. Will Wright was the first Ben Weaver on the Andy Griffith Show, and sharp-tongued, brassy Iris was on a lot of 60s sitcoms.
With the advances in technology, I'm hoping someday we can all have dramatic music play when we enter a room. I can probably program my phone to do that now. I'll get to work on it. People will have to take me seriously from now on.
That old prospector guy who dissipates the confrontation was in his late 60's my entire life.
Gotta watch the first 16 seconds, at least. That is DJT level promotion there (WB Warner Brothers).
You missed the one where he's framed for murder and tells his pal, Cheyenne, the legal way to bring the bad guys out in the open.
rhhardin said...
It wasn't exactly a craze. Just cheap content B films. The craze was when they were made.
It went about 80 years, starting with dime novels and including a lot of big budget movies like Shane and True Grit, and many TV Westerns.
I loved watching the Warner Bros westerns in the 50s and early 60s. "Cheyenne" and "Maverick" were my favorites. It's a wonder that we weren't all corrupted by constant portrayal of gunfighting and saloon drinking scenes.
I remember seeing Will Hutchins as Sugarfoot. It seems his character might have been a spinoff of "Maverick," "Cheyenne," or one of the others. Later on, Will Hutchins played a very evil villain in one of the Clint Eastwood "Hang em High" series. Seemed an incongruent role for him after playing the Sugarfoot character.
I like how our law student character is reading what looks like a casebook as he rides his horse into town.
Or Jeff Bridge as Rooster Cockburn. If you wanted to interest someone in becoming a lawyer, why would you start with negotiable instruments?
Well, my second wife Edna, wanted me to be a lawyer. Bought a heavy book called Daniels on Negotiable Instruments and set me to reading it. Never could get a grip on it and I was happy enough to set it aside and leave Texas.
https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-story/0bd68d9c-b14c-400d-b418-7a9cb88da1ce
I never saw "Sugarfoot", but I wonder how much the lawyer from the 1953 short story "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" influenced the lawyer-sheriff character that Hutchins played.
My older sister loved watching "Sugarfoot." I prefered "Bat Masterson" staring Gene Barry. As life worked out, I now carry a cain.
That description of Tom Brewster sounds exactly like the narrator. character ‘The Stranger’ played by Sam Elliot in “The Big Lebowski”. He drops by the bowling alley in the movie, looking for a good ‘sarsparilla’ and pointedly objects to the Dudes cussing’.
I recall the show. Its reruns were on TV in the summer afternoons one year, right after the Rifleman. At age 9 I was trying to decide between pro football and being a lawyer, so I took a liking to it.
The only clear memory of an episode was the one where the actor also played his evil twin -- something that seemed to happen back then almost as often as running into quicksand. I once tried to figure out the odds of 3 separate evil twins for almost half of the 7 people on Gilligan's Island ending up on the exact same desert island (and then leaving), but the calculators back then were not that sophisticated.
I think Dennis Hopper played a bad guy in just about every Old West TV series made in the 50s and early 60s.
[Hutchins said] the best advice he had received about comic performance was to act as if you were doing something no less severe than 'Hamlet.' "In order to make people laugh, you have to act seriously,' he said. 'Chaplin was just as sad as he was funny. Buster Keaton never smiled.'"
I recall that for Animal House John Vernon (Dean Wormer) kept asking John Landis how he should play the character to be funny, and Landis kept telling him to act seriously because it would be funnier that way. I think Leslie Nielson may have used the same principle on Airplane!
Sugarfoot was before my time. I'm watching it now, and like it. Brewster is clever at talking his way out of a jam.
Looks like I was wrong in my earlier comment about Hutchins playing a villain in an Eastwood movie. I was curious to know which one but could not find any confirmation on Wikipedia. I might have been thinking of "good guy" Bruce Dern, who played the lead villain in "Hang em High."
Lee Van Cleef, back when he had all his fingers. I never watched this one, guess it was a few years before my time and didn't make the re-run circuit as much as Maverick and Rawhide and the others.
I don't recall this show at all, nor any of the actors. And I watched as much TV as any other Boomerboy back then.
I might have been thinking of "good guy" Bruce Dern, who played the lead villain in "Hang em High."
There's hardly an appearance of Bruce Dern in film or on television that can be construed a non-villainous role. That's probably because he perfected the "stands out like a sore thumb" psychopath stereotype. By casting Dern, a director could bypass lengthy character development of the antagonist and cut to the chase, as it were -- a very economical step to take when action movies are in production. Bruce Dern is in the cast of Hang 'em High, but he's not the lead villain. That distinction belongs to Ed Begley as Captain Wilson, the leader of the vigilante party that lynches Jedediah Cooper (Clint Eastwood) and nearly murders him.
To me, Bruce Dern's stand out role is the mad as a hatter Vietnam veteran conned into a terrorist plot to attack the Super Bowl with a bomb-laden blimp in the 1977 potboiler Black Sunday His role in The Cowboys is a close second.
Lee Van Cleef, back when he had all his fingers.
Brownie points to the first to recall Lee Van Cleef's first speaking role.
No peeking.
I think Leslie Nielson may have used the same principle on Airplane!
No, Leslie Nielson was doing the role deadpan, in other words, without emotion. Let's not confuse seriousness with solemnity. Besides, comedy is serious business.
Google says:
'You think there are a lot of crime dramas and reality shows on today? During the 1958-59 season, in TV universe with only three networks, 31 Westerns were on the air'
Hutchins' first wife was Carol Burnett's sister, Chrissie.
It seems he lived a long and happy life, marrying his second wife in 1988, remaining married to her till his death. They lived in Santa Ynez, California. I couldn’t find any mention of being a shipping clerk but his stint as a clown just points to his long varied career. He also wrote for Western Clippings, a western fanzine. WesternClippings.com has more info on him and other western shows from the 50s and 60s.
With the advances in technology, I'm hoping someday we can all have dramatic music play when we enter a room.
We have an Amazon Echo device in each bedroom and in the kitchen, going back to the days when two of the three kids were still home and I didn't want to yell them down for breakfast. Starting in high school and continuing every time he visits from college, our youngest tells the kitchen device (via the one in his bedroom) to play his walk-on music as he starts downstairs. It was especially entertaining during his sea chanty phase.
Roku has "TVs Western Heroes" with forty clips of '50s and '60s tv westerns westerns .
Funny stuff! Jamie @7:25PM…
"Are ya hurt bad, Tony?"
"Maybe, but it's a good kinda hurt."
https://img.ifunny.co/images/a9096f2a4dff4f72c1a59467c38b8fd187b7d4c9a501e816db935b7fa7dbfa57_1.jpg
Looks like I was wrong in my earlier comment about Hutchins playing a villain in an Eastwood movie.
He played a cop in Magnum Force.
He did play a bad guy in a Perry Mason episode. Played against type as a "cool and conniving killer." The Case of the Scarlet Scandal. I have an almost complete collection of Perry Masons so I'm going to try to find it.
Also played in two Elvis movies (Clambake and Spinout), and an episode of Love, American Style. I got a kick out of that show when I was a kid. Red, white and blue, woo hoo!.
Found it: Love and the Single Sister.
He also played Dagwood Bumstead in the one season of Blondie.
And he didn't act with Charlie Chaplin, but he was in a W.C. Fields movie, back when he was a kid.
He had a crossover where Sugarfoot appeared in a Maverick episode.
Perry Mason is on Amazon Prime. But Will's episode in season 9 is missing. Strange! They've got episodes 1 through 19, and 21 through 30. I wonder why they don't have episode 20?
They've also missing episode 22.
This is why you buy DVDs!
Episode 20 is free on Pluto TV
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Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.