Site icon The Thrilling Detective Web Site

Hank Brackett & Johnny Reach (Bearcats!)

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Douglas Heyes

“Ridin’ in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim/Man, those were different times…”
—Sweet Jane by Lou Reed

HANK BRACKETT and JOHNNY REACH were two freelance adventurers (Uh, mercenaries? Troubleshooters? Private eyes?) roaming around the American Southwest circa 1914 in their snazzy Stutz Bearcat in this fondly-remembered (by me, anyway) but short-lived (okay, I was, like, twelve!) TV action adventure series, Bearcats! (It was such an exciting show it even had an exclamation mark!).

Their fee? A blank check, which they would fill in after the job was done. Maybe there wasn’t a lot of detective work involved, but a good rock ’em-sock ’em showdown seemed to wrap up every show. It was great seeing those vintage planes and trains and soldiers on horseback, but the image that remains with me is of those large spoked wheels twirling, churning up a cloud of dust while a goggled Johnny fired off a .303 Vickers Maxim machine gun strapped to the Bearcat’s fender, sending the bad guys running, while Hank struggled to gain control behind the driver’s seat. It was The Wild Bunch for the ‘tween set!

Brackett, as played by Rod “Travis McGee” Taylor, was a no-nonsense former Army captain and a veteran of the Spanish-American War campaign in the Philippines, who had settled in the Southwest and was definitely the one in charge. He was working on his own as a freelance “fixer” for railroads, landowners and anyone else who he pay his fee, when he rescues younger, blonder Reach (Dennis Cole), from being lynched by an angry mob who suspected him of being a cattle rustler.

It was Brackett who was responsible for the sometimes convoluted schemes they used to defeat their well-organized foes, while the younger, more agile Reach would provide the muscle, and occasionally, archery skills (Hey! He’d been raised by Indians!).

Unfortunately, it was an action show at a time when television was going through one of its periodic eras of cleaning house, disposing of relatively marginal shows as a sop to anti-violence groups. And it didn’t help that it was pitted against Flip Wilson in its time slot.

Of course, now that it’s FINALLY available on DVD, I can see Bearcats! for what it really was: a cornball of a show with minimal plotting, continuity issues, formulaic scripts and far too much padding. Taylor bulled his way through the shows, as if he was in a hurry to get off the set, while Cole showed off his pearly whites in almost every scene, whether it was appropriate or not, as though he and he alone was enjoying a private joke.

But hey, a lot of things got blown up in every episode, the pre-WWI setting was great (Old cars! Biplanes! Mexican revolutionaries! German spies! Machine guns!) and a serious number of big-breasted Hispanic beauties in low-cut white peasant dresses seemed to require rescuing during the show’s short run. And THAT car!

I loved it all!

Turns out there was even “a (sort-of) a tie-in novel,” writes Tim Deforest, a follower of this site. “The 1972 novel Hell Hole by John Hunter, features Brackett and Reach–driving their Stutz Bearcat–as the main protagonists. Brackett is asked by an old friend to help save her gold mine from various threats. The novel was published after the series was cancelled and it is copyrighted by the author, so it’s presumed that Hunter was contracted to write it, but this was cancelled after the show failed to catch on. Hunter apparently then submitted the novel to Ballintine Books indepentantly and got it published. The book does NOT label itself as a Bearcats! tie-in, nor is the TV show mentioned at all. But the characters, with their names, backgrounds, modus operandi, and car are all lifted directly  from the series. Hunter was apparently hoping that the TV show would be quickly forgotten and no one would call him on copyright violation. And, apparently, he got away with it… in fact, I read the book yesterday. It’s really quite good. It has a strong plot with a number of effective plot twists and several truly exciting action sequences. The author never forgets about the car and it plays a concrete role in the story along with the human protagonists.”

Even better? After Tim’s letter, I did a little poking around, and discovered that John Hunter was a pseudonym of legendary Black Mask writer W.T. Ballard!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Creator, producer and director Douglas Heyes has written for several other TV detective shows, and The Lonely Profession, a “fine private-eye teleflick,” according to Ric Mayers in TV Detectives. He’s also written a few pretty good private eye novels, featuring various eyes, such as Steve Mallory and Ray Ripley.

OVERLY SENTIMENTAL EDITORIAL MOMENT

UNDER OATH

TELEVISION

NOVELIZATIONS

THE DICK(S) OF THE DAY

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And a really, really big and heart-felt thank you for the scan of the model kit box that John Boyle sent me. In fact, John’s something of a car nut, and actually owns one of the cars used in the show. John adds “The car pictured is a real Bearcat used in the pilot film “Powderkeg”. To save money MPC, the model company, airbrushed the brass radiator and made it chrome.”
Another thanks goes out to Tim Deforest, for cluing me in on the tie-in. Tim’s the author of several books on old time radio, film and television, but the one I like is Storytelling in the Pulps, Radio and Television: How Technology Changed Popular Fiction in America (2004). And his blog, Comics, Comics, Old Time Radio and Other Cool Stuff, ain’t too shabby either.
Exit mobile version