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F Troop

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F Troop
File:FTroop.jpg
Cover art from the 2006 DVD release of the 1st season of F Troop showing stars (clockwise from top) Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Melody Patterson and Ken Berry
Created byRichard Bluel
Seaman Jacobs
Ed James
Jim Barnett
StarringKen Berry
Forrest Tucker
Larry Storch
Melody Patterson
James Hampton
Frank Dekova
Bob Steele
Joe Brooks
Country of origin United States
No. of episodes65
Production
Executive producerWilliam T. Orr
Running timeApprox. 22 minutes
Original release
NetworkABC
ReleaseSeptember 14, 1965 –
April 6, 1967

F Troop was a satirical American television sitcom that originally aired from 1965-1967 on ABC. It premiered in the United States on September 14, 1965, ran for two seasons, and finished its first run on April 6, 1967, for a total of 65 30-minute episodes. It originally was shot in black-and-white . It premiered on the ITV network in the United Kingdom on October 29, 1968, and was repeatedly screened until July 16, 1974. The series was also broadcast nationally in Australia on ABC-TV and in Ireland on Telefís Éireann.

Story

F Troop was set at Fort Courage, Kansas, a fictional United States Army outpost in the West, in 1865, after the American Civil War ended. There was a town of the same name next door to the fort. The commanding officer at Fort Courage was the gallant but chronically clumsy and accident-prone Captain Wilton Parmenter (Ken Berry), the descendant of a long line of military leaders. He was awarded the Medal of Honor after accidentally instigating the final charge at the Battle of Appomattox. As a private, he was ordered to fetch his commanding officer's laundry. When he rode away on horseback to accomplish the errand, the pollen in the air caused him to sneeze repeatedly. He sneezed loudly just as he passed a group of soldiers, and they mistook this sneeze for the order "Charge!" His superiors, wishing to reward his action, promoted him to captain and gave him command of remote Fort Courage, a dumping ground for the least useful soldiers.

Much of the humor on the show was derived from the schemes of Captain Parmenter's non-commissioned officers, Sergeant O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn, and the local Indian tribe, the Hekawis, alternately seeking to expand and conceal their illicit business, O'Rourke Enterprises, as well as the struggles of Parmenter to exert his authority and escape the matrimonial plans of his girlfriend, shopkeeper/postmaster Jane Angelica Thrift, "Wrangler Jane."

Opening theme music

The circumstances of the F Troop story line are illustrated in the show's opening theme (taken from the first episode):

The end of the Civil War was near,
When quite accidentally,
A hero who sneezed, abruptly ceased
Retreat and reversed it to victory.
His medal of honor pleased and thrilled
His proud little family group.
While pinning it on, some blood was spilled,
And so it was planned he'd command ... F-Troop!
Where Indian fights are colorful sights
And nobody takes a lickin',
Where paleface and redskin
Both turn chicken.
When drilling and fighting get them down,
They know their morale can't droop,
As long as they all relax in town
Before they resume, with a bang and a boom ... F-Troop!

Regular characters

F Troop officer & enlisted men

  • Captain Wilton Parmenter (Ken Berry), the "Scourge of the West" - is credited with keeping the peace, which is in fact really kept by O'Rourke's secret treaty with the Hekawi. When the need to keep up appearances arises, the troopers and the Hekawi stage mock battles for the benefit of outsiders.
  • Sergeant Morgan Sylvester O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker) - the Sgt. Bilko of his day. O'Rourke's business dealings involve illegally running the local saloon and an exclusive-rights treaty with the local Indian tribe (the Hekawi) to sell their "authentic" souvenirs to tourists. He calls his dealings "O'Rourke Enterprises". (Doubly ironic is that Tucker had actually served in the US Cavalry prior to World War II and played a similar "O'Rourke" Cavalry Sergeant on Gunsmoke).
  • Corporal Randolph Agarn (Larry Storch) - O'Rourke's dimwitted sidekick and business partner in the illegal O'Rourke Enterprises scheme. His name is a play on both Randolph Scott and John Agar. The episode El Diabolo features his Mexican bandit cousin who, like other members of his family, all look exactly like him.
  • Private Hannibal Shirley Dobbs (James Hampton) - F Troop's inept bugler, who can only play "Yankee Doodle" and "Dixie" with regularity. Standard Army tunes like "Reveille," "Assembly." and "Retreat," are only occasionally played well. He is also Captain Parmenter's personal assistant as well as with the fort's artillery crew. (This usually results in the cannon misfiring, and knocking over the lookout tower. The scene from the first episode was reused most times).Private Dobbs was also portrayed as a 'thorn' in Agarn's side with his regular taunts resulting in Agarn's retort, "I'm warning you, Dobbs!"
  • Private Vanderbilt (Joe Brooks) - a legally-blind lookout (20/900 in each eye, according to Agarn) who also answers questions in the lookout tower with responses like, "No thank you Corporal, I just had my coffee". He once allowed two Native Americans wearing large, feathered head dresses to gain entry to the fort. When asked why he let them in he answered "I thought they were turkeys". A running gag has Agarn kicking the fort's cannon in frustration after it misfires, only to see one of its wheels come off, setting it off, sending a cannonball into one of the tower's support legs, causing the tower to collapse and sending Vanderbilt crashing to the ground. In one episode he shoots his pistol in a crowded barracks and misses everyone.
  • Trooper Duffy (Bob Steele) - an elderly cavalryman with a limp. Duffy is the lone survivor of the siege of the Alamo in 1836. Duffy loves to recount his exploits alongside the heroes of the Alamo, "shoulder to shoulder and backs to the wall." The way Duffy tells it, he was killed in action. Steele was a former 1930s Western movie and serial star.

Townspeople

  • "Wrangler" Jane Angelica Thrift (Melody Patterson) - Captain Parmenter's beautiful but tomboyish girlfriend, who runs the local general store and post office. She is determined to marry the naive Parmenter, and is often obliged to rescue him from his various predicaments. Patterson was only 16 years old when the series began.
  • Charlie, the town drunk (veteran stuntman Harvey Parry), who usually took his leave of the saloon through the plate-glass window. Fort Courage got Charlie from Dodge City. "We were lucky to get him - Dodge had a spare." - Capt. Parmenter.

The Hekawi tribe and tribal members

The Hekawi tribe supposedly derived their name from an incident in which the tribe became lost, exclaiming "Where the heck are we?", which then became "We're the Hekawi". They are partners in O'Rourke Enterprises and produce most of the company's products. They are a peace-loving tribe — Agarn has to teach them a war dance. They have a 50/50 deal with O'Rourke and have a still which produces the whiskey for the saloon. As a sly jest off the notion that Native Americans are the 13th tribe of Israel, many of the Hekawi Indians were played by veteran Yiddish comedians using classic Yiddish shtick, particularly Chief Wild Eagle and Medicine Man Roaring Chicken. The regular "Indian" characters (none of whom were played by Native American actors) include:

  • Chief Wild Eagle (Frank Dekova) — leader of the Hekawi tribe and business partner in the illegal O'Rourke Enterprises scheme. Often O'Rourke, Parmenter, and Jane come to him for advice when they have a problem. Wild Eagle has an old Indian saying for every occasion which even he sometimes admits he does not know the meaning of.
  • Crazy Cat (Don Diamond) — Chief Wild Eagle's assistant and heir apparent. He often acts as chief, and is subsequently rebuked by Chief Wild Eagle.

Recurring characters

In order of number of appearances:

  • Private Duddleson (Ivan Bell) — a sleepy, obese soldier who is hit on the head repeatedly by Agarn for having his body in line but not his belly, or sleeping when he's supposed to be at attention.
  • Private Hoffenmueller (John Mitchum) — trooper who only speaks in his native German. According to the fort's personnel records (doctored by O'Rourke to inflate the payroll) Hoffenmueller can speak Cherokee, Sioux, Apache, and Hekawi. "We can use you as an interpreter ... just as soon as you learn to speak English" —Capt. Parmenter.
  • Roaring Chicken (Edward Everett Horton) — aged medicine man (veteran actor Horton appeared as Roaring Chicken in the first season only, and only in certain episodes).
  • Private Leonard "Wrongo" Starr (Henry Gibson) — a jinxed soldier. He appears in "Wrongo Starr and the Lady in Black" and in "The Return of Wrongo Starr." Alternative explanations are given for the jinx. The name is a play on Ringo Starr.
  • Pete — bartender for O' Rourke's saloon. He is only seen in the first season but is mentioned several times in the second.

Other Members of F Troop

Several members of F Troop were only mentioned or only seen in passing:

  • Gilbert
  • Sullivan
  • Lewis
  • Clark
  • Stanley
  • Livingston
  • Holmes
  • Watson

Notable guest stars

The program featured guest-starring roles and/or cameo appearances by:

Double Roles

In several episodes, one of the stars plays a double role:

  • Larry Storch as Agarn's Canadian fur-trapper cousin, "Lucky Pierre," Agarn's Mexican bandit cousin "El Diablo," and Agarn's Russian soldier cousin, "Col. Dimitri Agarnoff"
  • Ken Berry as an outlaw, "Kid Vicious"
  • Forrest Tucker as O'Rourke's father

Episodes

Creation and production

Although the show's opening credits claim F Troop was created by Richard Bluel, a final arbitration by the Writers Guild of America eventually gave Seaman Jacobs, Ed James, and Jim Barnett credit.

Episode writers included Arthur Julian (who, alone, wrote 29 of the 65 episodes), Stan Dreben (Green Acres), Seaman Jacobs, Howard Merrill (The Dick van Dyke Show), Ed James, Austin and Irma Kalish, and the highly successful comedy writing duo of Tom Adair and James B. Allardice, who collaborated on some of the most successful American TV sitcoms of the 1960s, including The Munsters, My Three Sons, Gomer Pyle, USMC and Hogan's Heroes.

The series was directed by Charles Rondeau and Leslie Goodwins, among many others, and produced by William T. Orr and Hy Averback.

The story is in some ways a comedy derivative of the John Wayne film, Fort Apache (a running joke in the film is the number of soldiers at the fort named O'Rourke). Actually, it bears more than a slight resemblance to a 1964 Glenn Ford film called Advance to the Rear, which appeared just one year before F Troop aired. Coincidentally, WB now owns the Region 1/4 rights to Fort Apache.

The entire series was shot on the Warner Bros. backlot in Southern California.

The show's ratings were still healthy after the second year, but according to Tucker, Warner Bros.' new owners, Seven Arts, discontinued production because they thought it was wasteful for so much of the Warner Ranch being taken up by a single half-hour TV show. Producer William Orr says the studio was unhappy with the added costs of producing the show in color during its second season.

Syndication and afterlife

Although only two seasons were produced, F Troop enjoyed a very healthy second life in syndication, much like fellow two-year run entries The Munsters, The Monkees, and The Addams Family, from the same era. The show was a particular favorite on Nick at Nite in the 1990s, running from 1991 to 1995 despite the fact that there were only 65 episodes to run.

On September 27, 2005, Warner Home Video released the first F Troop DVD compilation as part of its "Television Favorites" series. The six-episode DVD included three black-and-white episodes and three color episodes. Previously, the series had been digitally remastered and released on ten VHS tapes by Columbia House in 1998, with 30 of the 65 episodes represented in that series.

Following the successful sales from the "Television Favorites" release, Warner Home Video released F Troop: The Complete First Season, with all 34 black-and-white episodes included.

The Complete Second Season of F Troop was released on DVD May 29, 2007. The DVD features interviews with original F Troop members, writers and other production personnel, as well as behind-the-scenes information. However, only one major actor from the series, Ken Berry, was interviewed for the half hour special.

An 'F Troop' motion picture is currently being developed by filmmaker Bobby Logan ('Repossessed' 'Meatballs 4').

References

  1. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clTAZdT7LFo
  2. ^ F Troop – That's Show Biz at IMDb
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