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Whispering Smith

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Frank H. Spearman
(1859-1950)

Cowboy and railroad detective GORDON “WHISPERING” SMITH first showed in in a 1906 novel by celebrated Western author Frank H. Spearman. Supposedly, Smith was modeled on real-life Union Pacific Railroad detectives Timothy Keliher and Joe Lefors (though his name was taken from another UPRR policeman, James L. “Whispering” Smith.

It turned out to be quite a valuable property over the years, inspiring at least seven films and a television series.

First out of the gate was a 1916 silent film (on which Harold Lloyd served as an assistant director, while the director, J.P. McGowan, also played the lead). It was followed by another silent film in 1926, which in turn was followed by yet another silent flick, Whispering Smith Rides (1927). Then, in 1935, Whispering Smith Speaks, was released — his first talkie. Each film wandered a little further from the source material, but the real oddity was 1951’s Whispering Smith Hits London, wherein Smith travels to England and tangles with Scotland Yard while trying to crack a particularly tough case involving blackmail and murder, not to mention a curious sexual ambiguity. Presumably, this is a modern-day Smith, not an 1870’s cowboy. From a script co-written by Steve “I Wake Up Screaming” Fisher.

But his most famous cinematic outing was the 1948 release, once again simply titled Whispering Smith. It caught Alan Ladd in one of his first starring roles as Luke “Whispering” Smith,  and was, by all accounts, a good ol’ shoot-em-up. In it, Smith is a by-the-book railroad investigator from Wyoming assigned to solve the mystery of a rash of train robberies, and discovers that the perpetrator is none other than his old friend Murray Sinclaire (played by Robert Preston). There’s a big showdown at the end, and an interesting romantic triangle of sorts with Sinclaire’s wife.

It was the success of this film that lead to the creation a TV show back in the early sixties, that tried to combine the then-popular genres of westerns and private eyes, much like Have Gun, Will Travel, The Man From Blackhawk and Shotgun Slade had all attempted recently.

This time, Smith was played by Audie Murphy, and once again he was a detective for a railroad company based in Denver, Colorado. His partner was played by Guy Mitchell and the police chief John Edwards was initially played by Sam Buffington.

Their job? To protect the railroad from fraud, scandal, robberies, and murder — pretty standard television turf for both cowboys and private eyes, actually. But if the setting was relatively familiar,  the list of guest stars was relatively impressive: a young Robert Redford, Harry Carey Jr., noir dame Marie Windsor, a pre-Kildare Richard Chamberlain, a pre-Peter Gunn Minerva Urecal and a pre-Gilligan Alan Hale Jr.

The show occasionally “borrowed” some of the more entertaining exploits of Allan Pinkerton, as it traced Smith’s attempts to bring “modern” police methods to the West. Supposedly actual cases from the files of the Denver Police Department provided the basis for many of the episodes.

But the show had its share of problems. Originally scheduled for the 1959-1960 fall season, they only had seven episodes in the can when co-star Guy Mitchell fell from a horse and broke his shoulder. Meanwhile, Murphy’s horse, Joe Queen, was so fast he outran all the other mounts, and Murphy had to use another horse. And then actor Sam Buffington, who played Chief John Richards, committed suicide.

“I guess he must have seen the rushes,” Murphy supposedly snapped. But by that point Murphy, already less than impressed with television, was all for scrapping the show completely.  “When they said this series could be made cheap my immediate reaction was that we wouldn’t make it cheap at all,” he complained to TV Guide. “I fought with them constantly.”

When the show finally aired as a summer replacement series in 1961, the Senate Juvenile Delinquency committee pounced, filing charges that the show was too violent, prompting SenatorJohn Carroll (D) of Colorado to remark that the show was “not only bad for children, it’s bad for adults.” The show aired its twenty episodes and was allowed to die a quiet death. Nobody complained, least of all Murphy, who told TV Guide “My contract is firm for something like 86 episodes. I just don’t think I could stand that.”

The concept had already been preceded by other, better shows, so that by the time Whispering Smith made it on air, it seemed dated and derivative. On the bright side, for detective fans at least, NBC replaced Whispering Smith on the schedule with Richard Diamond, Private Detective, which gave us David Jannsen and Mary Tyler Moore’s legs.

So there is that…

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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
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