Yancy Derringer

Yancy Derringer is an American action/adventure series that was broadcast on CBS from October 2, 1958, to September 24, 1959, with Jock Mahoney in the title role. It was broadcast from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursdays.

Background

The show was produced by Derringer Productions and filmed in Hollywood by Desilu Productions. Derringer Productions consisted of half interest for Warren Lewis and Don Sharpe as executive producers, a quarter interest to Jock Mahoney for starring in the series, and a quarter interest to Richard Sale and Mary Loos, husband and wife, as creators. The show's sponsor was S. C. Johnson & Son, and Klear floor wax was a regular sponsor.

Sale and Loos based the series on "The Devil Made a Derringer", a short story by Sale that appeared in All-American Fiction in 1938. Sale was one of the highest-paid pulp writers of the 1930s. The story was never mentioned, but it was about a destitute aristocrat and troublemaker who returns to New Orleans three years after the American Civil War. In the story, Derringer has no first name; "Yancy" was added for the television series.

Overview

The eponymous character, Yancy Derringer, is an adventurer and gambler. He is a former Confederate Army Captain who has returned to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War, during the southern Reconstruction Era. The state is under Union control and martial law. Life goes on in New Orleans, despite the fact that the city's atmosphere is forbidding, filled with trepidation and mourning. The Derringer family itself paid a heavy price in both lives and their family home and property during the Civil War. Yancy's brother David and his father Yancy Sr., died in the conflict.

Widely respected by all parts of New Orleans society as a Southerner who never surrendered, Derringer is recruited by the Federal City Administrator, John Colton, to work as a secret agent; only Colton knows of this special role. Often at the beginning of an episode, Colton, a former Union Army colonel, asks Yancy to help solve New Orleans' present threat. Often, by the end of an episode, he arrests Yancy for breaking the law in order to do it. Yancy agrees to be Colton's "huckleberry" for the good of the city and his interests."

Yancy has a strong conviction that the United States must be one nation again. Although he is based out of New Orleans, his Mississippi riverboat, the Sultana, and Yancy's propensity for adventure mean that some episodes take him far away from Louisiana; some stories take place as far away as Nevada and California.

Tommy Mara recorded the show's theme with an orchestra and chorus in 1959 for Felsted Records (Felsted 8561).

Cast and characters

Main

Jock Mahoney - Yancy Derringer

• Yancy lives at the family plantation, Waverly, and also owns a riverboat, the Sultana. (The actual riverboat of the same name sank from an explosion and fire on April 27, 1865.) A lover of fine cuisine and the high life, he spends much of his leisure time at Madame Francine's Club (an exclusive members-only gambling house), the Sazerac Restaurant, or at the Charter House Restaurant, whose specialty is French cuisine.

When called to action, Yancy's weapons of choice are four-barrel Sharps pepperbox derringer handguns carried concealed (one held by a clamp inside the top of his hat, one in his vest's left pocket under his jacket and one up his jacket's left sleeve in a wrist holster) and a knife in his belt. (A belt buckle inset with a toy single-barrel derringer, sold by Mattel at the time and popularly associated with Yancy, did not resemble anything that the character actually used.) He is an expert marksman. He also carries a cane or a riding crop with hidden swords and is said to have iron fists: one punch and his opponent remains unconscious for a day. Yancy dresses elegantly, most often in a white suit with a long coat, ruffled white shirt, a silk vest, a sash instead of a belt, a black under-the-collar bow tie, and a white flat-topped straw hat with curled brim.

X Brands - Pahoo Ka-Ta-Wah

• Yancy's sidekick, Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah, is a silent Pawnee American Indian who communicates only by sign language. Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah is Pawnee for "wolf who stands in water" (as mentioned in the first episode). Although Pahoo is short on talk, he is long on action. Beneath a blanket wrapped about his body, he carries a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun loaded with split buckshot, which he wields in emergencies. Most of the time, however, he uses a throwing knife sheathed on his back.

Kevin Hagen - John Colton

• John Colton is the city administrator, and a hard-nosed, incorruptible leader who works tirelessly to clean up New Orleans. Colton is also clever, and knows that his position would be untenable if he were personally caught using questionable methods to clamp down on crime. He therefore uses Yancy to unofficially deal with situations that cannot be resolved by conventional means.

Frances Bergen – Madame Francine

• Yancy's recurring love interest is Madame Francine. She is the strong-willed, beautiful owner of a members-only gambling house in New Orleans, and she or her business are often involved in Yancy's adventures. Her real name is Nora and she is actually Irish.

Robert McCord, III – Captain Amos Fry

• Captain Amos Fry is the local head of the U.S. Secret Service who works closely with Colton to combat lawlessness in New Orleans. Fry does not know of Derringer's unpaid work as an espionage agent; often the amiable but plodding Fry is working on combating a problem in a legal manner, while Derringer—unconstrained by official law-enforcement policies and procedures—uses decidedly more unorthodox, colorful and possibly borderline-illegal methods to nullify the threat.

Richard Devon – Jody Barker

• Jody Barker is a respectable-looking Bourbon Street pickpocket. Yancy and Francine were wise to his ways, and frequently stopped him from fleecing club members. However, he was a useful source of information about doings in the criminal underworld, and sometimes participated in certain 'sting' operations for Yancy.

Larry J. Blake – Turnkey

• Yancy spent so much time in the local jail (usually put there by Colton or Fry), he became great pals with the jailer, who was addressed as "Turnkey". The genial Turnkey (played by Larry J. Blake) often played poker in the cells with Yancy, and, sympathetic to Yancy's situation, sometimes aided in (or at least turned a blind eye towards) Yancy's escape plans.

Bill Walker – Obadiah

• Obadiah is Derringer's African-American servant. A dignified pillar of the community, he is the head of a committee that represents "thousands of law-abiding citizens of New Orleans" in bringing a petition to the city administrator in the episode "V as in Voodoo". A club doorman addressed as Jeremiah is seen in a few episodes, but this character has no lines and is not credited.

Recurring

Guest stars

Reruns and syndication

After the program's single year on network television, its reruns found audiences in repeats and in syndication. NBC bought all 34 episodes from Don Sharpe Productions to show as part of the network's afternoon Adventure Theatre anthology series beginning February 8, 1960. In 1961, it was broadcast in at least 43 TV markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and New Orleans. Official Films Inc. handled the distribution.

Critical response

A review of the premiere episode in The New York Times called it "nonsensical" and "distinctive in its silliness". The review concluded, "Yancy Derringer is just too quaint to be entertaining."

The trade publication Broadcasting, in a review of the first episode, said, "this overloaded action series threatens to sink in the first patch of bayou quicksand."

Episodes

DVD release

On October 9, 2012, Timeless Media Group released the complete series on DVD for the first time in Region 1.

References

External links

• Yancy Derringer at IMDb
• National Firearms Museum – Sharps Derringer