Does anyone know about the co starring relationship between Garner and Kelly. I'd say that Garner was clearly the star, and Kelly the co star. How many episodes did Garner appear in alon, and how many did Kelly. How many were they in together. Did it seem they were equals or was Garner clearly the bigger character. Anyone know?
shareI can help answer this question for you. Here goes, from what I have read I believe the MAVERICK that everybody very fondly remembers with James Garner and Jack Kelly WASN'T supposed to happen AT ALL. Maverick was originally intended as a James Garner ONLY one character series. But because it took 8 days to film a Maverick episode brother BART HAD to be added to the series to keep Maverick on track. James Garner was ONLY in 55 Maverick episodes altogether of which 14 were 2 brother episodes with Bret and Bart in the same episodes. Jack Kelly by the way did 75 episodes of Maverick. So in the end Jack Kelly was the one who was in more Maverick episodes than James Garner.
shareEarly in the first season, Kelly appeared in episodes supporting Garner. Then, there was a transition period in which Garner would appear at the beginning and set up Kelly's episode and then step aside. For a couple of years, Garner and Kelly would star in their own episodes and occasionally in tandem. Warner's TV stars were way underpaid even for TV. So, Garner, who could command 50 times more as a star in feature films left the show for good. He was replaced by Roger Moore as Cousin Beau Maverick. A Garner lookalike, Robert Colbert, appeared in an episode or 2 as Brent Maverick.
No Kelly only appeared in one episode supporting Garner, his first "The Hostage" episode 8.
His first starring episode was "The Jeweled Gun" in episode 10 (Bret makes a cameo appearance in the beginning and end of this ep)
Episode 11 is a dual Bret and Bart ep. Bret starts the episode, but Bart carries most of it.
From them on they tended to be either Bret or Bart eps with Bret introducing Bart's eps in the 1st season to get the audience used to him. This practice is gone by the 2nd season. The last ep of the 1st season Seeds of Deception was another dual Bret/Bart ep.
Old post but they were both stars of the show and got equal billing. That was negotiated in Jack Kelly's contract. He was absolutely not Garner's co-star. However I believe early on Garner got paid more and might have got first choice of scripts.
Kelly was brought on because the show could not produce enough episode with just Garner so they set it up so the show would have two leads that would alternate from week to week and they could film episodes at the same time with 2 production crews. Occasionally both Kelly and Garner appeared in an episodes together (although it did seem that Kelly made more cameo appearances in Garner's eps)
Kelly was introduced as early as the 8th episode Hostage. This was a dual episode with Garner and Kelly. Early on in the first season Garner would introduce Kelly's episodes to get audiences used to another Maverick but this practice eventually stopped.
Since Garner left the show in season 3, Kelly stars in more episodes.
Not really sure why people only associate the show with Garner. Seems strange to me. Yes Garner started the role but Kelly joined very early on in the first season. . And even in those first 8 episodes I would argue the show was definitely still finding itself. Adding Kelly and a brother to the show actually made the show better. The clever humor also started developing more later on.
Jack Kelly was very good.
Maverick wasn't the only show to have this problem. Often you'll see a Gunsmoke episode in which either Dillon or Festus is out of town, and you see little or nothing of everyone else. Then the next episode shows what everyone else is doing while that character is out of town. Same thing--two units filming two episodes at once with different parts of the cast, trying to stay on schedule.
Other shows used other strategies. Bonanza was very good at shooting scenes from more than one episode every time they went out on location. Which is why poor Little Joe, despite being of a wealthy family, had to wear the same ugly green shirt for a whole decade of his young life.