LAREDO Ep. Forty-Six  1-20-67
"SCOURGE OF SAN ROSA"
Written by CALVIN CLEMENTS
Directed by JOSEPH PEVNEY

Guest Cast
ROBERT YURO as Johnny Rhodes
KATHLEEN FREEMAN as Mio
RODOLFO ACOSTA as Luis
PEDRO GONZALES-GONZALES as Liveryman
STELLA GARCIA as Marguerita
ROBERTO CONTRERAS  as 1st Peon
ROBERT HOY as Willie
FRED KRONE as George McCord
MARIA COVE as Marie

Neville Brand
A bump on the head turns
Reese into the 
Scourge of San Rosa
Reese gets the best of outlaw Johnny Rhodes when Rhodes brings his lame horse to a waterhole.  However, a snake spooks Reese's horse before he can transport his prisoner to Laredo.  As Reese lies unconscious some men approach.   Rhodes takes off on Reese's horse, leaving his lame horse behind with its distinctive silver saddle.
Neville Brand
Reese captures a murderer

Johnny Rhodes

But fate slithers in

Reese goes down
Reese wakes up with amnesia and a lame horse.  He walks to the nearest town -- San Rosa, Mexico.  He ends up in a cantina  with Mio, its flirtatious owner.  When bad man Luis comes in to make unwelcome advances to one of the young bar maids, Reese stands up to him and ends up with a beer poured over his head.

Reese can't remember
anything

Mio, the friendly proprietor

Luis the lout

A confrontation
The ensuing fight is interrupted when one of Luis' men notices the silver saddle on Reese's horse.  Everyone concludes that he must be Johnny Rhodes who robs those with money and kills those with empty pockets.  Reese figures they must be right.

Luis drinks a part of a beer

& pours the rest over Reese

Luis & Reese fight

Until Reese is IDed as
Johnny Rhodes
In the meantime, Chad and Joe have found Reese's hat by the waterhole.  They track the horse they think Johnny Rhodes is riding into San Rosa.  However, the view through the cantina window shows Reese holding court as Johnny Rhodes.  They don't want to mess up whatever plans he has, so they go in pretending to be friends of Rhodes.
Peter Brown and William Smith
Joe finds Reese's hat
 

Reese flirts with Mio
Peter Brown and William Smith looking in the cantina window
Chad & Joe find Reese
Peter Brown and William Smith confer
The boys do some plotting
However, all three are confused over the course of the conversation.  Reese thinks they're trying to confuse him in order to cut him out of a gold shipment robbery he has planned with the McCord gang.  Actually, Chad does plan to do just that although for different reasons.  He figures in his discombobulated state, Reese would mess things up.  So he and Joe will pose as Johnny's partners and tell the gang the gold train was delayed on the U.S. side of the border.  Once they get up there, the gang can be rounded up and jailed in Laredo.  Joe suggests they just tell the McCords they've decided to rob the Laredo bank after the gold gets there so they won't have to walk them so far to jail.
Peter Brown
Chad is confused when 
Reese doesn't know them
Neville Brand
Reese is just  confused
William Smith
Joe tries to work things
out in his own mind.
 
Peter Brown, Neville Brand, William Smith
A little night air might help.
Mio, who wants "Johnny" to take advantage of his memory problems to retire from the outlaw business and run her cantina in Durango as "the man of the house".  They figure that Chad and Joe, his fellow outlaws, could cause him trouble for backing out of the McCord deal.  Mio has  her two comely young barmaids to help Reese.  The girls flirt with our heroes and put knock-out drops in their drinks.

Joe thinks things are
going well - for a while
Peter Brown gets to use his excellent Spanish
Chad rarely errs on the
side of caution where
women are concerned
William Smith and Peter Brown heads on table
The boys aren't as irresistible
as they had thought
 
Mio not impressed with Chad and Joe
"Them two sure ain't much"
Joe and Chad wake  trussed up with rope,  feeling like they've had sand laced with tabasco shoved down their throats.  Reese intends to dump them on the edge of town so he can take off for Durango.
Peter Brown and William Smith pissed off
Chad & Joe wake up tied up & fed up
Unfortunately, the real Johnny Rhodes and his gang show up.  Rhodes can't figure why one of the Rangers has tied up the other two, but takes all favors without question.  Luis takes the opportunity to repay Reese for their previous fight by kicking him into the street where he hits his head and gets his memory back.
 
Peter Brown, Neville Brand and William Smith
Chad & Joe try to talk sense

Johnny Rhodes is back
William Smith & Peter Brown all tied up
Joe & Chad not thrilled
With the help of Mio's skillet bounced off Luis head, our heroes escape, but not before Rhodes' gang mines the street with dynamite.  Naturally it only takes three Rangers to overpower the whole gang.

Mio clobbers Luis
Peter Brown grabs the bad guy
Chad grabs Rhodes
William Smith with rifle
Joe gets most of the rest
Neville Brand with rifle
with Reese's help

 
Once again, Peter Brown with the nicest drop, roll & shoot in TV Westerns
Reese explodes the last of the dynamite just in time to soil Erik, point man on a Ranger patrol.  The boys let Reese know he apparently made some plans with Mio.  The episode ends with Reese's classic bleating complaint.  "You guys" [which prior to Erik's addition to the cast was "You two."
William Smith, Peter Brown and Neville Brand
Reese learns he may have made
a few promises to Mio.
Robert Wolders in a brief appearance
Erik gets dusty
NiteOwl Review:  Overall this was a fun episode.  It was one of the favorites of our parents and younger siblings who just couldn't get enough of Neville Brand. Our Favorite Scene:  We loved Mio's single line capper to the scene in which Chad and Joe think they've gotten lucky with two beautious Mexican girls only to be slipped a mickey in their drinks.  As she and Reese watch them collapse, we hear our heroes summarized sucinctly, "Them two sure ain't much."  Cast Note:  Kathleen Freeman [Mio] who played delightfully opposite Neville Brand in this episode, was a prolific comic actress for decades.  In 1921, at the age of two, she was part of a vaudeville act with her parents.  She appeared as a regular on five  sitcoms and made numerous guest appearances on others.  As Flo Schafer on two seasons of The Beverly Hillbillies, she teamed with Phil Silvers as part of a team of con artists who tried to part the Clampetts from their money with such schemes as selling them the Washington Monument.  She was also a regular on the short-lived series It's About Time (1966-67) with Joe E. Ross & Imogene Coca ["It's about time, it's about space; it's about the dawn of the human race]; Funny Face with Sandy Duncan (1971); Lotsa Luck with Dom DeLuise (1973-74) and for one year (1953-54) on the early classic series Topper with Leo G. Carroll.  She also guested on numerous Westerns, sometimes doing a comic turn as here [e.g Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)] but often played the shrewish troublemaker as in Wagon Train "The Geneva Balfour Story" in which Peter Brown guested and on Peter's prior series Lawman "The Substitute."
TO LAREDO EPISODE FORTY-SEVEN
Laredo 2nd Year Episode List
Laredo 1st Year Episode List
To Laredo Home Page
To William Smith Fan Site
To Peter Brown Fan Site

Contact us at:  laredofans@williamsmith.org