Have Gun, Will Travel: Paladin's Seduction

 

I've been watching Have Gun all over again, and as usual, I am struck by how much it has changed. I have mixed feelings about Richard Boone, finding him both sexy and a little too craggy and world-weary to be truly appealing - oh, those long, long sighs that seem to indicate he's actually a little bored to be doing Season 7 of this thing - though he does have a diamond-sharp intelligence mixed with alpha-male swaggering that was, maybe, ahead of its time. He was something of an anti-hero, and an antidote to Chuck Connors, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, the other major players in this wildly-popular '60s genre. Have Gun was sometimes called the "thinking man's Western", and Paladin was surely a thinking man who sometimes thought with his pistol. Take that whatever way you wish.

This man wore ruffled shirts and paisley smoking jackets, murmured sweet somethings to the multiple fancy ladies in his hotel room in San Francisco, and then got called out to go and kill somebody. We knew it was coming when he flashed his card with the knight on it and we heard that unforgettable four-note theme that meant TROUBLE. BTW, I haven't confirmed this yet, but I have heard that it was written by the genius composer Bernard Hermann, who also scored Psycho, Taxi Driver and countless other classics.

In essence, that was the show. Ladies, card, travel, gun, oops, BANG, dead.  It was only a half-hour show, meaning the plot, characters and story arc had to all be accomplished in the space of 23 minutes. Sometimes I get lost in these intricacies which are introduced and developed so quickly that it can be hard to follow. Boone slows the pace down with his gravitas, his pacing lion's stride and centaur presence on a horse (though he DOES bounce a little too much, revealing that he's really a city slicker at heart). 

There's always a woman, often in some sort of dilemma, and always a longstanding grudge, sometimes a prisoner with his hands shackled together, a few tussles in which we obviously see Stunt Paladin at work, and then - always always - the gunfight. This is where the cobra strikes. And his fans all know that even if he has had to lay down his enormous horse pistol, he has another little gun secreted in the palm of his hand which, at close range, can blow a man down in a second. And then there's that thing he does with his hat, the quick jerk down over his eyes followed by a gentle pat on top. Aside from Humphrey Bogart, no man has ever worn a hat so well.

THIS particular scene is hotter than I expected. Paladin is getting over a fever and lying prone in the wagon - an erotic scenario to begin with - and this Mexican spitfire, whose husband is puttering around just outside the wagon, climbs in, climbs on and seduces him. He is more than willing to be seduced, and is that rare, rare thing - an actor who knows how to kiss convincingly. None of this Anthony Perkins flinching and wincing. He looks like he enjoyed doing this scene, and his little crooked smile at the end seems to say, "Ah. Another conquest."