User Reviews

Edward Ashley as Nobby Ned Wingate their English cardsharp friend appears in this episode long enough to clean out Bart Maverick and a bunch trail hands who are mighty sore. Jack Kelly has to find a work situation soon for them and for himself. He hires the whole group to Susan Morrow who is driving cattle to Abilene and her trail boss is mixed blood Anthony Caruso. Who Kelly keeps swearing he knows him from somewhere.

But in fact Caruso is in the league with a pair of con artists Joan Elan and Anthony Eustrel to steal Morrow's herd.

Caruso masks it well never taking off his gloves, but in fact he has prosthetic arm of iron that's quite the weapon. He's a dangerous dude.

In one of his early roles is Robert Redford as Morrow's younger brother who Elan plays like a piccolo appealing to his male member. Not a hint here really that Redford would become a screen legend.

Kelly and Morrow are cute though, trying to top the other with Morrow more often than not conning the conman.

Fans of the series will like this one.

You are either old or a fan of 60s film to get the allusion to Goldfinger. Regardless, Joe Vermillion's (Anthony Caruso) iron hand doesn't play a pivotal part in this Maverick episode.

Connie Coleman (Susan Morrow) and her brother Jimmy (Robert Redford in first credited film appearance) hire Bart to assist in a cattle drive. Bart claims several times that he knows Vermillion, but he just can't quite remember the details. Early on, Bart recognizes that Connie is a greenhorn as a trail boss/owner and tries to wise her up but to no avail, and Connie's stubbornness eventually costs her a herd.

There is the usual byplay, especially between Connie and Bart, but Bart is so slow on the pickup that you would think he is the innocent in the world of gambling. So innocent, he never picks up on how Connie has cheated him until the last few frames of this episode. Perhaps it is his embarrassment that keeps Bart out of the last three episodes of season three.

A slow episode with few surprises, but still watchable even if the writing isn't as smart as we have come to expect.

Bart's got a big cattle herd to help get to Abilene before scheming crooks and money-grubbing Kiowa's get it all first. First scene is a hoot when Bart loses his money, and worse, the pay of some pretty tough hombres in a poker game. Now he's in trouble. That had me thinking the rest would be a hoot too. But it's not. Maybe you can keep up with all the twists and turns-- I lost track. Besides, after a certain point, I didn't much care. Certainly the cheesy outdoor sets don't help-- they're about as convincing as a dime store painting. Even the town's main street is an obvious indoor set. And take a gander at the Indian attack with all the fake rocks and guns that can't shoot straight. Whatever money went into this entry, it certainly wasn't spent on background. Add to that the staging which mostly consists of people standing around mouthing their lines, and you get a pretty static and poorly acted episode on top of everything else. The bathtub scene does manage some Maverick spirit and humor, but is left stranded by the rest. The "iron hand" is a neat gimmick and had me thinking James Bond, but it's really left dangling, while the Indian pow-wow is funny and one of the few times an Indian is made to look ridiculous. Of course, the main interest now lies in Robert Redford making one of his first appearances, in a routine supporting role. Looks to me like the pressures of a tight shooting schedule and fresh story ideas were catching up with the crew's ability to make them gel.

I thought that I had seen the worst of the "Maverick" series before but that was before I saw this one. "Maverick" was undoubtedly (IMHO) the best of the TV westerns in that era and, being a teenager living out west in Wyoming at that time, I probably saw them all. Thank goodness I never saw this one or maybe it made such a bad impression that my memory rejected it. Watch it once and you'll appreciate the efforts that Roy Huggins put into the excellent "Maverick" episodes, of which there have been many. It's no wonder that James Garner (and later Jack Kelly) left for greener pastures with writing and scripting of this caliber. Watch it a second time, if you can stand it, to catch one of the young Robert Redford's first roles.