Cont.
A Little LAREDO

 
Q: Looks like there was a little rivalry in this shot.
Bill:  No.  I always knew Peter was the better horseman.  [The scene is rerun.]
I did that scissors vault a lot on Laredo.  Not a big deal.  Looks good there.  I see Peter hits the horse's rump before he makes the saddle.  [Oh, no competitiveness there.]
Q:  You said something earlier about Neville Brand falling off his horse because he was drunk.
Bill:  Oh, that happened a lot --  many times when the three of us were supposed to ride up on our horses and hit a mark.  We'd start about 400 yards away and come over a hill as fast as we could toward the camera.  Peter and I would hit the mark.  Neville's horse would be there.  And Neville would come staggering over the top of the hill.  We were always having to do those scenes over.  But despite the drinking, he was so good in that part.  They tried several other guys to take his place.  None of them were kept in the series but they would replace Neville for one episode..
Q:  Peter Brown said they considered Claude Akins.  Wasn't he in about five episodes?
Bill:  Yeah, and he was a great guy.  They also tried George Kennedy [Pride of the Rangers].  They decided George couldn't act and that was just before he won the Academy award for Cool Hand Luke.  [Best supporting actor -1967]  And there was Michael Conrad [No Bugle, One Drum]
Q:  Conrad would have been great if the series had taken a more serious direction.
Bill:  Well, it was originally supposed to be a serious show about the Texas Rangers, but we were all so inept . . . . They made a comedy out of it.  [Sounding almost serious.]  Peter was really fast with a gun though.  But not as good with the cross-draw he tried the first season.
Q:  In Wildside you did a pretty good cross-draw.
Bill:  Well, on Wildside there was this old guy who's been in the business . . . I don't know how old he was, maybe 65 years old . . . [pause as Bill remembers how old he himself is now] which is actually quite young, come to think of it.  On Wildside, he did all that stuff for me.  They would cut to my face and then they would cut down and it would be him handling the gun.  It was unbelievable all the things he could do with a pistol.

Bobby Fuller's good too.  He has a great story about being arrested in New York where he was doing some kind of charity gig.  He went to dinner with his full costume including his guns.  Some asshole tried to start something as they left the restaurant and Bob fired off some blanks.  The asshole disappeared but the police got there right away and took Bob downtown.  It was only the first year of his show [Laramie] so they didn't all recognize him.  Or maybe they didn't care. Anyway, Bob could definitely hold his own with Peter.
Q:  Are you saying you aren't good with a gun?
Bill:  I couldn't hit a barrel 20 feet way.
Q:  There were some long shots in Wildside where you had to draw.  You didn't look too bad even if the "old" guy did the fancy stuff.
Bill:  I was never as fast as Bobby Fuller or Peter though.  And the fastest of all was Sammy Davis Jr.  He was unbelievable.  Both guns at once.  He could toss them in the air and get them both back in the holster.  He did one of the best Laredos we ever did.  Might have been a TV movie or a movie for overseas.  The great thing about it was, he played a Texas Ranger.  He didn't know anything about it until I told him that 40% of the Texas Rangers after the Civil War were black.  He started reading books about it.  He was so good in that show you couldn't believe it.

[We can't find anything to indicate exactly what Laredo project with Sammy Davis Bill remembers so clearly.  It doesn't show up as one of the regular episodes in the reruns or match the descriptions of the two movies they made out of Laredo episodes for overseas.  We haven't had the chance to ask Peter Brown.  We did hear Peter speak on another occasion about a second Lawman episode that Sammy was in.  [The credits books only list Sammy in one Lawman episode.]  Could they be thinking of the same Westerns project?  None of our credits references list Bill and Sammy in the same project or Peter and Sammy in any Westerns except the one Lawman episode.  If anyone out there can enlighten us, we'd appreciate it.]

Bill:  Sammy was really good friends with Peter Brown.  Peter got married to a French girl, Yvette, just before we went down to South America to film Caribe [released as Piranha, Piranha]  We went down there the day after he was married.  He had this little ceremony in this church in Beverly Hills.  Sammy Davis and Dean Martin were there.  Dean Martin fell sound asleep just before Peter said "I do".  [Makes loud snoring noises].  But Dean Martin was one of the nicest guys I ever met in my life.
Q:  Oh well, if he slept through one of Peter's weddings, you can bet there was another one not too far off.

With that note, we concluded this interview session.  We hope to get to talk to him again before he gets everything into his book.

And look for Bill in a new heavy metal music video by the group Pantera.   [Not one of our video group had a clue as to who this group is.  We span limited musical genres from Western, classic Rock, Motown, jazz and classical but no heavy metal or rap.] Apparently Bill had a great time playing the father of one of the band members in flashbacks to his childhood.