| "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" | |
|---|---|
| Maverick episode | |
 Brothers Bart (Jack Kelly) and Bret Maverick (James Garner) exchanging glances at the Hotel Sunny Acres. | |
| Episodeno. | Season 2 Episode 10 |
| Directed by | Leslie H. Martinson |
| Story by | Douglas Heyes |
| Teleplay by | Roy Huggins |
| Original air date | November 23, 1958 (1958-11-23) |
| List of episodes | |
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", starringJames Garner andJack Kelly, remains one of the mostfamous and widely discussed episodes of theWesterncomedytelevision seriesMaverick. Written by series creatorRoy Huggins (teleplay) andDouglas Heyes (story) and directed byLeslie H. Martinson, this 1958 second-season episode depicts gamblerBret Maverick (James Garner) being swindled by a crooked banker (John Dehner) after depositing the proceeds from a late-nightpoker game. He then surreptitiously recruits his brother Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and a host of other acquaintances to mount an elaboratesting operation to recover the money.
As Huggins noted during a lengthy discussion of the episode in hisArchive of American Television interview, the first half of the 1973 movieThe Sting seems based on Huggins' script.[1] While Bart and all of the series' recurring characters join forces to energetically flim-flam the banker ("....if you can't trust your banker, who can you trust?"), Bret sits whittling in a rocking chair across the street from the bank every day, responding to the amused and patronizing queries of the local townspeople curious about how he plans to recover his money, "I'm working on it."
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" was generally the first episode that Garner mentioned in interviews.
The episode is also the only one featuring brief appearances by all five of the series' early semi-regular recurring characters:Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Dandy Jim Buckley,Diane Brewster as Samantha Crawford,Leo Gordon as Big Mike McComb,Richard Long as Gentleman Jack Darby, andArlene Howell as Cindy Lou Brown. It proved to be the final series appearance for both Samantha and Dandy Jim because they were each working full-time on new series, Zimbalist in77 Sunset Strip and Brewster as the schoolteacher inLeave It to Beaver. Additionally, for Gentleman Jack and Cindy, it was their only appearance in an episode in which Bret also appeared, although they shared not a single scene with Bret—all their dealings onMaverick were with Bart.
When I walked into Universal on the morning "Sting" came out,Max Baer Jr. was...outside my office, and he says, "Roy, are you going to sue?" I didn't know what he was talking about. "What do you mean?" He says, "You didn't see 'Sting'?" I say no; he says, "Well see it, because the first half of it is 'Shady Deal at Sunny Acres'!"
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