The Mild Mild West
Not as Wild as They Said

Of course, everyone knows that The Wild Wild West was canceled after four seasons because it was just too darn violent. Supposedly someone sat down and tabulated how many fights there were and how many guys got killed in each episode. Then when the numbers were toted up, the Powers of American Decency were shocked! shocked! at the amount of mayhem the American public was being exposed to.

There's no doubt that there were some people worried about television violence and thought The Wild Wild West went too far. But this explanation of why one of the top shows on the air was canceled really comes off as a bit simplistic. After all, some commentators have pointed out that other shows - like the private eye show Mannix - also had as many fights and as much gunplay.

In any case, the reasons why television shows get yanked often have more to do with back and forth contractual negotiations and scheduling of other productions. Sometimes it just boils down to the personal preferences of the television executives and their families.

We also should point out that four seasons was a quite respectable showing for the time. Shows lasting twenty years or more were impossible since network television itself was only about 15 years old. And the Wild Wild West still has its fans. Although not ubiquitously broadcast today, it's a good bet that there are some stations where you can still catch the adventures of Special Agents James T. West and Artemus Gordon.

Why the show was cancelled isn't the real question. Instead, why was the show so popular?

Well, there was certainly a nice balance of action, drama, and humor. And it was a combination of the two favorite genre, the western and the spy thriller. It was worth a try and it worked.

But a big factor was the calibre of the guest stars. Most were seasoned veterans and were just on the verge of becoming household names: Carroll O'Connor, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Knight, Ed Asner, Diane McBain, Martin Landau, and Robert Duvall. Others were actors that had already achieved fame: Victor Buono, Ricardo Montalban, Ida Lupino (who also directed her episode), John Astin, Agnes Moorehead, Pernell Roberts (putting on a less than convincing Irish accent), Phyllis Newman, Harvey Korman, Pat Paulsen (yes, Pat Paulsen of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour), and former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson who actually did a nice job of acting.

As in all television shows, some episodes were better than others. One of the best was the first. This was "The Night of the Inferno" and according to Robert Conrad it had a budget of nearly $700,000 - the price of some movies of the time. This show had the virtue of three top guest stars, Victor Buono, Nehemiah Persoff, and Suzanne Pleshette. Alas, for modern audiences this - and the other first season shows - were in black and white and have yet to be colorized.

There's one show where you almost do a double take when you see the special guest star. After all, you don't expect Don Rickles to show up playing a serious role. This was "The Night of the Druid's Blood". Don - sporting a bushy mustache - plays an evil stage magician named Asmodeus who is in cahoots with Astarte, the new (and young) wife of a US Senator. Asmodeus and Astarte (played by Ann Elder) along with the senator's personal physician, Dr. Tristam (played by veteran character actor Rhys Williams) have an evil plan which is (of course) to take over the world. The senator is not aware of the conspiracy unfolding around him and only learns of it when Jim foils the evil plan.

If you watch the episode carefully, you see that in the scene where Asmodeus tries to skewer Jim with a spear, they switch to Don's stunt double. You suspect that finding a double for Don wasn't easy, and the mustache was a necessary prop. But the double still doesn't look that much like Don.

The mustache also produced a bit of a problem in continuity. In one scene Asmodeus whacks Jim on the head, and Jim falls to the floor. But before fading to a commercial, the camera cuts back to Asmodeus, and you can see the mustache is peeling away from his upper lip. Of course, budgets for early television shows were surprisingly low compared to today. Rather than reshoot a scene, minor slip-ups were simply ignored.

Don portrayed Asmodeus as a smarmy, conniving, and yet strangely insecure villain. The show, though, is not one of the better Wild Wild West offerings and has without doubt one of the lamest and most ridiculous endings in the history of the series. But we will not spoil it for the readers who have yet to see it.

Three of the stars of Gilligan's Island - which was also one of the most popular shows at the time - also show up: Alan Hale, Jim Backus, and Dawn Wells. Dawn ("Mary Ann") has a part in "The Night of the Headless Woman" - one of the middling to fair episodes - and Jim ("Mr. Howell") had a cameo in "The Night of the Sabatini Death", an episode where Alan ("The Skipper") stood in for Ross Martin as Jim's partner. There was even an inside joke at the end where Alan says he needs to take some time off on a desert island. As he walks off we hear a snippet of the Gilligan's Island theme song.

Some shows were pretty much straight westerns such as "The Night of the Fatal Trap". Here a big time Mexican criminal named Vasquez is sending his men into American territory to rob, steal, and plunder. For his part Vasquez never sets foot north of the border. That way once the robbing, stealing, and plundering are done, the banditos can high-tail it back over the Rio Grande where Vasquez is waiting to taunt the American law officers.

So a mustachioed Jim goes undercover playing a bandit who has moved up from being a crude thug to one sporting fancy duds - except that putting a crude thug in fancy duds doesn't make him less crude or less thuggish. Jim's character stood in contrast with the elegant and suave Vasquez. Some scenes were played for laughs such as when Jim breaks a 200 year-old wineglass and displays bad table manners at an elegant supper.

There's a distinctly different twist in Jim's relationship with the girl. Years ago, Vasquez's girlfriend, Linda Medford, played by Joanna Moore (Tatum O'Neal's mother), was involved in a counterfeiting scheme that was foiled by Jim - except at that time Jim was also working undercover. Linda never learned Jim was a government agent and so she still thinks he's a crook. She wants to go halves with him in hijacking a million dollars worth of gold. Of course the robbery is just a ruse to get Vasquez onto American soil where he can be arrested. Even at the end of the show, Jim still doesn't tell Linda who he really is.

Ron Randall is great as the evil but affable Francesco Vasquez and at the start of the show you kind of have to like him. Toward the end, though when he threatens Linda and locks her up, you realize he's just a thug underneath the gentleman's polish.

One of the best scenes is at the bank where Vasquez (disguised as a guard of the gold shipment) realizes he's been double crossed after he thought he had double crossed Jim. The ending though is a bit of a let down. Vasquez goes over a cliff and is presumably killed. He should have been arrested just as he got to the crossing of the Rio Grande.

Some of the shows mixed science fiction in with the plot. Today, of course, half-century old science fiction seems incredibly naïve and laughable (you can find plenty of articles about the bad SF of the era). But still some of the Wild Wild West plots come off better than you might think. A case in point is The Night of the Burning Diamond.

With its gaffs, continuity errors, and inconsistencies The Night of the Burning Diamond should have been another ridiculous western-with-outdated-sci-fi episode. But a number of factors made it one of the best shows in the series.

First there are the performances of Robert Drivas and Christine Schmidtmer as the power and money hungry duo, Morgan Midas and his fiancée Lucretia Ivronin. Drivas is completely convincing in portraying Midas as a man who doesn't mind killing his aunt to get her diamonds which he burns to produce a liquid so that whoever takes a sip moves at superhuman speed. He would have even killed his aunt's cat except for the objections of Lucretia. But since his aunt never travels without her cat, Jim knows Midas's story that she has gone to Germany for a health cure is phony. Lucretia is a bit more sympathetic - after all she didn't want to kill the cat - and in the end she does try to help Jim. But we also have to believe that Lucretia ended up spending at least quite a few well-deserved years in jail.

The Night of the Burning Diamond is also notable for the work of the stunt doubles. When "Artemus" jumps onto a makeshift lever to propel "Jim" up to the second story of Midas's house, you hardly notice the switch to doubles. The stand-in for Artemus is completely convincing in his mannerisms as he runs up to make sure Jim doesn't fall. You'll also see "Jim" is not Robert Conrad (the brushed back hair is a bit too pompadourish). This action scene was a bit acrobatic even for Robert Conrad, who almost always did his own stunts and was a bonafide member of the stuntman's union.

Also after Artemus and Jim win the fight on the stairs with Clive and Rudd - Midas's combined servants-henchmen (played by Colin Brown and Whitey Hughes) - Jim slides down the banister while Artemus gets to his feet. Jim (facing the camera) says to Artemus (back to camera), "Let's go". So they head up the stairs only to be slugged by the invisible and fast moving Midas. When "Artemus" is hit he rolls down the stairs and only by stopping the action just as he begins to fall can you see it's a stand-in. The build, carriage, and looks (at least from behind) are convincing. Robert Conrad again does his own stunt here when he's clobbered by Midas and tumbles down the stairs.

It's often not appreciated how unusual it was (and is) for a show to allow big stars to do their own stunts. When Jim and "Artemus" jump off the back of a wagon in front of Midas's house, it's again the stand-in for Ross Martin. Not to criticize Ross, mind you. In films and on television, the simplest of actions like jumping from a chair often use stand-ins. Even minor injuries to the stars - a twisted ankle, a pulled muscle - can put the shooting schedule behind a week or more.

This was the era long before computer animated special effects and there were problems in the scenes where the superfast people are involved. In the first scene at the Serbian embassy there is a badly timed pause from where the ambassador says "This room is as safe ...." to where the door opens and the diamond case is shattered by the invisible and fast-moving Midas.

Here Midas is breaking the glass case with a flick of his finger. This leads to some dialog inconsistency when Midas says it was hard sorting the diamond from the broken glass. But if he's moving so fast you can't see him he would be able to pick the diamond out before the glass even hits the ground.

There are some scenes where the actors have to freeze to show Jim, Artemus, and Midas are moving at superspeeds. But standing completely still isn't easy - particularly if the director tells you to stop in mid-stride. So in the scenes at the diamond exhibit when the three men walk into the reception room, you can see the actor in the foreground rock back and forth. And look carefully in the next scene as the camera cuts to a front view of Jim and Artemus. You'll see a man in the background who is just visible over Jim's shoulder. His movement is VERY noticeable.

A big gaff is when Jim and Artemus get out of the carriage. They are again moving too fast to see, but the curtains fall back at a normal rate. They should remain suspended in mid-air when shoved aside. Also the carriage rocks back and forth when everyone climbs out. Any movement should be unnoticeable.

After Jim, Artemus, and Midas are about to go into the reception, there is a true continuity error when Midas places the flask in mid-air. In one camera cut, the flask is below his shoulder level. In the next when Midas retrieves the flask, it's higher than in the previous shot. Even if the bottle is falling too slowly to be seen, it still would not have moved upwards.

Also note when Lucretia throws the gun to Jim in the final fight between Jim and Midas. As the diamond elixir takes effect and the gun freezes in mid-air, we see Lucretia's left hand is resting on the desk. But when the camera cuts to Jim and back to Lucretia, her hand is off the desk and hanging at her side. Then after the fight is over and the potion wears off, the gun drops straight down. Physicists will cringe.

There's a final inconsistency with the action of Midas's demise which can't be dismissed as a simple error as it's crucial to the plot. In the last fight both Jim and Midas are again moving at the superspeeds. Then Midas is pushed against a table and a flask of alcohol breaks with the liquid spilling over Midas's shirt. But the breaking glass and spilling liquid should be moving so slowly that it wouldn't have time to land on Midas.

In any case, it's more likely that any alcohol landing on the fast-moving Midas would simply evaporate - not catch on fire. And besides, a superfast Midas hitting the table would reduce it to splinters.

Finally why do all of the fantastic scientific discoveries of the 1800's end up getting lost before the twentieth century? To this day, the formula for the diamond elixir remains a mystery.

We mentioned that Robert Conrad did his own stunts. This continued until the third season and "The Night of the Fugitives". During a barroom fight Robert - or rather Jim - was supposed to jump from a second floor balcony to a chandelier. He wasn't able to get a good hold and fell backwards and landed on the back of his neck. In the show he immediately gets back up and continues the fight.

What really happened is not clear. In some accounts we hear Robert was knocked out. But a reviewer of the show said you can tell that the next shot shows one of the stunt men checking on a very unsteady Robert as he gets to his feet. Only then does Jim continue with the action.

This accident ended the shooting of the third season and the episode had to be completed the next year. After this incident, the network was much more restrictive in letting Robert do his own stunts.

A less dire mishap happened during filming of "The Night of the Underground Terror". In the final fight scene Jim - as usual - takes on multiple adversaries at once and bests them all. But during the fracas Jim has a most unfortunate accident. He rips his pants.

Actually split britches weren't unusual in the show. Robert mentioned the pants were so tight as to be uncomfortable and he was always ripping them. In this case, though, reshooting the scene would have required redoing the whole fight. Jim also ripped his pants in "The Night of the Assassin" but much less noticeably.

"The Night of the Assassin" was a pretty good episode and one of the guest stars was Ramon Navarro. Ramon, if you haven't heard of him, had been almost as big a matinee heart-throb during the silent film era as Rudolph Valentino. It was Ramon who starred in the 1925 silent version of "Ben-Hur". In "The Night of the Assassin" he played an elderly Spanish nobleman who is in league with the evil Colonel Arsenio Barbossa played by Robert Loggia.

There was also what was certainly an unintended gaff. In the opening scene Jim spies the assassin in a bell tower taking aim at Mexico's President Benito Juarez as he comes into town in his open carriage. Jim calls to Artemus to toss him a wine bottle so he can startle the horses and spoil the sniper's shot. But as Artemus tosses Jim the bottle you can see he dumps one of the pretty young senorita's on her rear end.

Of course, you can find gaffs in shows other than the Wild Wild West. Often these errors occur when multiple takes are spliced to make one scene. However, with the ever-increasing number of commercials - (one educational show was broadcast in 2 hours and the DVD release was 55 minutes) - we now have pseudo-continuity errors. These particularly occur in re-runs of the older shows where to pack in an extra ten minutes of commercials, ten minutes of the original release have to be cut.

For instance, you might have seen "The Night of the Falcon" (with guest star Robert Duvall). In one scene Jim is asleep in his hotel room - it must be a nap since he only took his coat off and is snoozing with clothes (and boots) on. First there is an attempt to blow him up and when that doesn't work some of the Falcon's henchmen come in. In one broadcast you saw Jim fight the men in his room and then when he emerges onto a balcony to jump down on his horse he suddenly has his coat on.

Actually in the lesser-edited version there is no error. As Jim leaves the room, we see that he actually grabs his coat and puts it on in the hallway. There is, in fact, no error except that due to the commercial crammers.

"The Night of the Falcon" is one of the more amusing and yet unbelievable shows. It's not just you get to see Robert Duvall gussied up in a super-bad-guy costume with a falcon helmet and cape. Some of the scenes are simply impossible. During a meeting of the Falcon with the bad guys (with Artie in disguise), Jim climbs to an upper window to see what's going on. He first uses a blowgun to send Artie a message which only Artie notices as it flies through the air to land at his feet. Then after Artie uses a long winded speech to reveal where the secret weapon is, Jim takes an arrow tipped wire and shoots it across the room to embed in a far wall. Then Jim slides down the wire to the other end of the room, drops down, and scurries into a hallway. All of this was done above the heads of everyone else. Again no one notices a thing.

In addition to guest stars who were later to find fame and those that were already established actors, every now and then some of the guests were really big names. On "The Night of the Returning Dead", Sammy Davis, Jr., played Jeremiah, a ranch hand who had a way with animals, and who was suspected of being behind a mysterious ghost-like figure that kept making appearances around the countryside.

At first Jim was pretty tough on Jeremiah who kept giving evasive and mystical answers even though his boss, rancher Carl Jackson, had warned Sammy to answer all questions and not to be "insolent". Carl was played by fellow Rat Pack member (and brother-in-law of former President John Kennedy), Peter Lawford. Jim didn't like the answers Sammy gave and ordered him locked up in the smoke house. What gives? This is not the James West we all know and love.

But it was all an act. All along Sammy had been working undercover with Jim and Artie to catch a gang of Civil War bushwackers who had once burned a family alive in a shack. But since the criminals (which included Peter) were now respected citizens - one was even a judge - our heroes had to move carefully.

At least in this show, there was some resemblance to historical reality. It was not uncommon in the Old West for men to lead dangerous and even murderous lives while they were young and then settle down and become respected citizens in middle and old age. Of course, here, with Jim and Sammy and Artie to battle, the bad guys were at a distinct disadvantage. In the end, the bad guys were brought to justice - even Peter who was about to blow the whole can of beans because of his guilty conscience.

Although realizing the Wrath of the Fans might fall on his shoulders, the Author and Illustrator of CooperToons holds that the Wild Wild West episodes were of varying quality. Some were great and others - how to put this politely? - stunk. One of the worst shows is The Night of the Raven - where not only does Phyllis Newman play an Indian princess, but Dr. Loveless shrinks Jim down to a tiny size and he almost gets eaten up by a house cat.

But in a Humble CooperToons Opinion the worst show of the series was "The Night of the Big Blast". Tortuously slow moving, this show is actually painful to watch. Ida Lupino, playing a Mrs. Dr. Frankenstein type of villain named Dr. Faustina, speaks with an accent usually reserved for Monty Python skits. Her limping Igor-like assistant, Miklos, mercifully doesn't have any dialog. Every Frankenstein cliché is used, down to having electricity from a thunderstorm bring the "monster" to life. In this case, the monster is a robot lookalike of Jim.

And if there was an Emmy for "worst look-alike for a stunt double" this show would have won hands down. Dr. Faustina is also making a robot to look like Artemus and when the Robot-Artemus is being energized the real Jim and Artemus jump into the room. During the fight that follows, the stand-in for the Robot-Artemus couldn't look more different to Ross Martin than if they had used Brigitte Bardot. Even the hair style is wrong. At first you wonder if there is to be some twist in the plot where the robot will somehow magically change to look like someone else. Nope, when the shot returns to the Robot Artemus, it's Ross Martin again.

Is this the same double that did such a great job in "The Night of the Burning Diamond"?

Another of the big name guest stars was Boris Karloff in "The Night of the Golden Cobra". Here Boris played Mr. Singh, a maharajah from India who has settled on the Pawnee Indian - that is, Native American - Reservation in "Greater Oklahoma". If not one of the worst stories, it is among the hokiest and has not much of a plot. Much of the time is filled with pointless "test of skills" contests where Jim is forced to fight Mr. Singh's three grown sons, ostensibly as tutoring them on the "fine art of killing". The scenes are repetitious and are nothing more than ways to fill out the time until we arrive at the last scene which has nothing to do with the rest of the story. There's even one scene with Balinese dancers and a guy in a gorilla suit.

Of course, by the 1960's Boris was not a young man, and filmmakers had to make allowances for his increasing frailty. Director Roger Corman remembered it was very iffy when Boris was negotiating some stairs in his first scene of The Raven which was filmed three years earlier. In "The Night of the Golden Cobra", Boris's performance is also mostly delivered sitting down. When he walked he did so with difficulty and when he was knocked to the ground toward the end of the show, the scene clearly employs a stunt double.

This episode is not noted for its historical accuracy. First there wasn't and never has been any territory called "Greater Oklahoma". At the time of this episode - the early to mid 1870's - what was to eventually become the state of Oklahoma (sans Panhandle) was officially called the "Indian Territory". That was the name, and on documents it was abbreviated as "I. T." It wasn't until 1890 that there was an "Oklahoma Territory" and that applied only to the western half of what was to be the 46th state (with panhandle added). Actually at the time of the story, the principal Pawnee Reservation was in Nebraska, and the tribe then moved to the central part of what is now the current state of Oklahoma. But this region was far enough west that it was part of "Oklahoma Territory" until final statehood was granted in 1907.

There is, though, a connection in this show with real history - not of the Old West but of modern Ireland. Jim's love interest was Mr. Singh's daughter, Veda, played by Audrey Dalton. Audrey was the real life daughter of Emmet Dalton, who was a producer and executive in the film industry in Ireland in the mid-20th century. As a young man, though, Emmet was a general in the Irish Free State Army and fought against the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War of 1921 - 1922. And it was Emmet who was sitting next to Michael Collins when they were ambushed by the IRA - and Michael killed - at Beal na mBlath in County Cork.

Of course, in any discussion of The Wild Wild West we have to mention Michael Dunn who played the evil albeit diminutive Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless. The first appearance of Dr. Loveless was in the third show, "The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth" and is one of the best in the series. Not just a run-of-the-mill bad guy, Dr. Loveless emerges as a complex, sensitive, and compassionate individual - in his own twisted way, that is. Dr. Loveless claims his family has the rights to half of California which he wants to make into a land where children can live and grow free of pain and sadness. To effect this noble end, Dr. Loveless will kill five thousand people unless he gets his way. During all the planning of his evil schemes, Dr. Loveless manages to practice his singing with the delectable Antoinette (played by Phoebe Dorin). For a bad guy, you can't beat Dr. Loveless.

Probably the best of the Dr. Loveless shows is the third, "The Night of the Murderous Spring". Jim inadvertently helps Dr. Loveless sneak into a hotel while the doctor is concealed in a large carpetbag. In return Dr. Loveless manages to slip a powdered drug into Jim's shaving bowl. When the drug is absorbed into his skin, Jim begins to act irrationally, starts hallucinating, and lashes out at Artie. He then shoots Artie dead!

Jim is taken to a sanitarium - which of course is run by Dr. Loveless. But when Artie shows up and is also taken captive, Jim realizes Artie's death was another hallucination. Then they learn that Dr. Loveless's plan is to place the powder in little capsules tied to the legs of a group of ducks that Dr. Loveless will release. The drug will then go into all the water supply across the world and send everyone into a murderous frenzy leaving no one alive.

After a ruthless demonstration of the powder's efficacy (by giving it to his household staff who go crazy and kill each other), Dr. Loveless begins to get ready to release the ducks. But Jim and Artie manage to escape after telling Dr. Loveless's large assistant, Kitten, that there will be no room for her in a world inhabited only by Dr. Loveless and the beautiful Antoinette. Jim and Artie stop the ducks from getting away and Dr. Loveless, Kitten, and Antoinette try to escape across a pond and seemingly sink to their deaths.

What happened to Kitten we don't know. But we realize that both Dr. Loveless and Antoinette will somehow escape. And they do.

All in all, from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969 Jim and Artie appeared in 104 episodes of The Wild Wild West. It may be just another trite cliché, but they really don't make 'em like this anymore.

References

WildWildWest.org

"Robert Conrad Dares Ya And God Heals Him: An Interview with The Wild Wild West Secret Agent", Henry Cabot Beck, True West, February 13, 2011.

"Robert Conrad Interviews", Emmy Legends, Archive of American Television.

"The Wild Wild West", Robert Conrad (Actor), Ross Martin (Actor), Michael Dunn (Guest Actor), Michael Garrison (Creator), Whitey Hughes (Stunt Coordinator), Internet Movie Data Base.

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series, Robert Conrad (Actor), Ross Martin (Actor), Michael Garrison (Creator), Whitey Hughes (Stunt Coordinator), Paramount Studios, November 4, 2008 (DVD Release).

" 'Wild Wild West': Back to the Future", Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1993.

"Interview with Robert Conrad", TNT Network, January 2, 1994.

"Commentary on 'The Night of the Inferno'", Robert Conrad, The Wild Wild West: The Complete First Season,2006.

"Wild Wild West--The Night of the Fugitives" Jamie Jeffords, Abstract Visions, October 28, 2010

"40 Years of The Wild Wild West", Terence Canote, A Shroud of Thoughts, September 17, 2005.

"Review of Emmet Dalton: Somme Soldier, Irish General, Film Pioneer", Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times, February 14, 2015. Some Internet sources - which we will not name - say that Audrey's pop was Louis D'Alton (1900 - 1951). However, this article, written by a prominent Irish historian at University College Dublin, states Audrey was Emmet's daughter.