Yep, I keep watching the show. And yep, I keep cranking out the reviews. Not of every episode. For one thing, my retro channel is only showing the episodes of Maverick with Bret (James Garner) in it. And for another thing, not all the episodes are good for reviewing.
Heck, I'm only reviewing "Escape to Tampico" because of two things. Casablanca, and Gerald Mohr.
Casablanca? Besides being one of the greatest movies of all time in this bespectacled reviewer's opinion, it's the uncredited basis for "Escape to Tampico". You have a club owner, who wears a white suit and looks kind of like Humphrey Bogart. Said owner runs "La Cantina Americana" rather than :"Rick's Café Americain". The plot focuses primarily on the owner, Steve Corbett, and his issues with America. Bret starts the plot, has a couple of cute con scenes, and he resolves the final showdown. but the focus of the story is on Steve.
If the episode was any closer to Casablanca, the authors of the original play could sue for copyright infringement.
Gerald Mohr is the second best element in the episode, and I have to admit I have a crush on the actor. Mohr sadly passed away in 1968 at the age of 54. I've liked him since seeing him in an episode of Lawman. He already played Doc Holliday on Maverick, and goes on to play three more different roles, so apparently the casting people on the show liked Mohr as well. Mohr bounced around Hollywood since 1939, and did voice work as well as acting roles. He narrated the radio and TV openings of The Lone Ranger, voiced Mr. Fantastic in the 1967 animated Fantastic Four series, and much more.
Mohr adds a dark, sinister presence to a lot of the shows he's in. Maverick is no exception: he plays Doc Holliday as a sinister foreboding presence but also with moments of education and self-humor. In "Escape to Tampico", Mohr's Steve is originally a dark sinister presence but lightens up as the episode progress.
How does the episode progress? Bret is busy losing money in New Orleans. He's down to his last few pennies, and gets an invitation to meet with the Gireaux family. Father Raoul and son, Rene, tell Bret Steve killed Raoul's other son, Victor, while robbing their silver shop. Steve has fled to Mexico and can't be extradited, so the Gireauxs want Bret to bring Steve back across the border so they can have him hanged for murder. The Gireauxs offer Bret $5,000 to bring Steve back, and he accepts.
Bret goes to Steve's café/club/casino in Mexico and cons a lady's man dealer into leaving town. The gambler then gets a job as a dealer at the club, and soon befriends Steve. Steve is enamored with an American singer at the club, Amy Lawrence (Barbara Lang), and keeps saying he wants to marry her.
As time goes by, Bret eventually offers to clean up the club for Steve in return for 10% of the extra money he makes. Bret kicks out the patrons who are working with the crooked dealers to overwin at the tables, and advises Steve not to fire the dealers because dealers always cheats. Steve is so impressed with this that he and Bret become friends. When one of the dealers and his thugs comes after Bret, Steve is on the scene and helps Bret defeat them.
Bret eventually tells his buddy he was hired to bring Steve back to America but doesn't believe he's guilty, and borrows $1,000 to pay off the Gireauxs (who paid him $1,000 in advance). Amy tells Steve someone in the club from America has reminded her of her past, she can't marry Steve, and heads back to America. Steve goes after her despite Bret's warnings Amy may have been hired to bring Steve back as well.
When the lady's man returns and says he saw Amy in America with Rene, Bret heads to America and finds out where Steve went. Steve is meeting with Amy, and she reveals she's Victor's widow and has a hate-on for Steve. Steve admits he did kill Victor, and Raoul steps out. Where Rene is, I have no idea. The killer says he only wanted to rob the shop but Victor attacked him, and hints there was something between him and Victor. Steve then jumps Raoul, takes his gun, and wounds him.
As Steve leaves, Bret stops him and says he can't let Steve leave. Steve admits he's guilty but he's not going let Bret to stop him. They go for their guns and Bret once again gives the lie to the fact he's a poor shot by outdrawing Steve and killing him. The end.
"Escape to Tampico" isn't a very Maverick-like episode. Other than Bret conning the lady's man character, the Bret role could be played by any mercenary or hard-luck cowboy of the period. Steve has one strike against him because he's accused of murder. Mohr does a good job of going from the originally sinister Steve, to a more affable one as Bret gets close to him, to a lovestruck American when Amy leaves him.
The ending doesn't make a lot of sense. For one thing, as I noted, where's Rene? For another, we never do find out if Victor's killing was justified or not. The script plays fast and loose with whether Steve was justified in robbing the silver shop and eventually killing Victor. The way Steve talks, he makes it sound like he had good reason to commit the crime but we never find out why. Whether the script (by writer Douglas Hayes, who also directed) tries to mellow Steve a bit by avoiding he's saying a flat-out killer or not, is hard to tell.
The supporting cast is good, as almost always the case with Maverick. Lang is okay as the American singer. Tony Romano plays her guitar-playing accompanist, who likes to emphasize his comments with musical cues. He's a lot like Sam in Casablanca. John Hubbard plays the lady's man, and William D. Gordon, a HITG sinister guy of the era (he was the bad guy in Twilight Zone's "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room", among others) does well as the dealer who tries to kill Bret.
Another HITG, Roy Engel (President Grant in the later episodes of The Wild Wild West, and on many other shows) has a brief bit as a furniture salesman who sets off Amy's panic attack. Although that leads to another plot hole: why does Amy pick the salesman to claim he's a part of her vague mysterious background? The salesman seems to be chosen at random, but doesn't that mean Steve might see through Amy's claim? It's a safe bet the guy is from America, but other than that, he has no connection to Amy. Her claim he's out of her past is vague enough it probably couldn't be disproven. But then again, "disproven" is one of those words like "close", only count in horsehoes and nuclear hand grenades.
Overall, "Escape to Tampico" is a decent Western. It's not the greatest Maverick episode, but Garner as Bret is affable as always. And Mohr and the Casablanca rip-offs/homages make it better than average. And I'm fond of episodes that end with no clear winners and losers, something Maverick did a lot of.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Sep 30, 2019
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