The other day I embedded an episode of the Yancy Derringer TV show. I remember this show quite fondly…though as with many programs of my youth, my memory recalls something with a much bigger budget and higher production values. As you may know, I'm convinced someone went out and refilmed all the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. shows to make them look cheap and tacky. They couldn't have looked that way when we first saw them.
I also recall some elaborate fight scenes and stunts on Yancy Derringer. Publicity for the series sometimes asserted that its star, Jock Mahoney, did all his own stunts. He had a background in that area and I seem to recall him (or allegedly him) doing a few that you might not want your star doing if you had more episodes to film. But mostly, the show had a lot of talk…and sometimes when it looked like things were heading for a knockdown-drag out brawl, Yancy's faithful companion Pahoo would step in with a well-pointed knife and scare the potential brawlers into keeping their hands off Mr. Derringer and his nice white suit.
Our pal Bob Elisberg noted some interesting names in the credits. The story was co-written by the co-creator of the series, Mary Loos. As Bob notes to me in an e-mail, "She was the niece of Anita Loos, who wrote (among many things), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Also, the recurring character of Madame Francine was played by Frances Bergen, wife of Edgar Bergen and mother of Candice. Meanwhile, the lass from Ireland was Maggie Mahoney — wife of series star, Jock. By a previous husband, she was the mother of Sally Field!
And as many have told me but I didn't know when I embedded, the complete Yancy Derringer is coming out in October on DVD. It's a four-disc set with all 34 episodes and you can advance order it (as I just did) for $31.44 at this link. As there seems to be a dearth of decent Yancy Derringer photos on the web, I stole the above image from the box cover.
I'm eager to see which theme song will be on this DVD or if both will be represented. There were two — the classy instrumental that you heard on the video I embedded and a thing called "The Ballad of Yancy Derringer" that I gather was cobbled up by someone who noticed how much money "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" had earned and how much it had benefited that TV series. You can hear the Derringer song here and it's quite awful. [Caution: That site may start playing it the instant you get there.]
I seem to remember it popping up on the second of the show's two seasons and maybe just in the reruns. But at some point, I think whoever was syndicating the show edited it into the end credits of every episode…or maybe they just stuck it on one set of end titles and aired that one on every off-network rerun, making all but one episode's end credits wrong. I hope the DVD set has them all correct because as Elisberg noted, they can be quite interesting.