Rawhide: Incident of the Captive

(Picture taken from a news article about Bobby being cleared from his dope case.  Courtesy of the owner of bobbydriscoll.com!)

Okay so:

Over the course of the last few months, I have run across a couple of YouTube videos chronicling why they believe, or in some cases know, that Bobby had suffered various types of abuse as a child.  I even mentioned one of them in the last post.  More than anything, of course I want to vindicate him by talking about what was said to have happened, how horrible people are, how he couldn't catch a break in his life, etc. etc. etc.

BUT.

Then I was reminded, there is no shortage of blog posts, essays, and articles telling Bobby's sad story.  We all know by now that he did not have either a good life or a good death.  However, when I published this blog five years ago, I had said it was my mission not to linger over these details, but to celebrate the person Bobby was and add to his legacy by discussing his work and the various facets of who he was.  So that's what I'm going to continue to focus on versus the things he struggled with and the things done to him.  Because I feel that's what he would want us to remember.

That brings us to today!

In talking to a longtime reader about what types of blog posts she'd like to see the most of on here, I've come to understand that at least some of you really enjoyed the commentaries I used to do on his shows and movies.  I haven't done one in a long time, largely because no new video content featuring him has been found recently.  But there are a couple of shows I would like to do a commentary on that have been around on YouTube for awhile, and which are two of my very favorite:

The RAWHIDES.

This was a popular cowboy show back in the late 50's and early 60's that my mom even remembers.  Bobby starred in two of their episodes, as this was back in the day when you didn't have a million bit players to pick from like you do today, and it wasn't uncommon to see stars appear twice or more in various episodes.  This appears to have been the case for Bobby during this time, and I'm just grateful that they gave him a chance to act.

By the way, television shows are in their heyday right now and actual films are getting sidelined.  There's a whole cultural thing behind this, but suffice it to say that back when Bobby was acting, TV was the redheaded stepchild.  You usually only did a TV episode if you were a "has-been" desperate for work or a B-list actor.  Bobby apparently shared the sentiment (according to a would-be biographer who studied Bobby's life and spoke to some primary sources about his opinions).  So we can only imagine how he felt about being cast in such projects after he'd won an Oscar the decade before for two films.  

However, what I love is that Bobby's acting didn't suffer one bit.  He was still incredibly on his game, and we don't see that more than in "The Incident of the Captive" which was released in 1960.  Annoyingly enough, the show is always taken down every so often when it's learned that to post it breaks some copyright law, so if you can't find it right now on YouTube, keep checking back.  It always gets put back up.

Lucky for us though, I've seen it a half a billion times and am forever grateful to Morgan Bridges for posting lots of Bobby's screenshots on Pinterest.  She does not disappoint when it comes to having captured Bobby's work on this Western.

So the first thing that stood out to me when I was watching this episode for the first time was, Bobby has given us a really great glimpse into the type of character he could play if he'd been given more of a chance.  It's our best chance to see him as an unsympathetic character, sarcastic and rude.  I love it, because mostly he played the polite, heroic type in his other films and TV shows, but in "Incident of the Captive," it's a whole new ballgame.  He's in a stagecoach riding along with another man and two women -- one of whom we learn is another character's mother, on her way to visit him and bring him home from his new gig herding cattle.  We aren't told any kind of backstory about the guy Bobby plays (imdB calls him Billy Chance), but we know immediately that he's an @$$hole.  

The simple version of the exchange goes something like this:  an older woman is conversing with a slightly younger woman as they're having a presumably pleasant trip (so far) out west, and the young buck keeps butting in with smart remarks about the older woman's age.  After this bullying goes on for a few minutes, the younger woman tells him to tone it down.  

Who can forget Bobby's menacing, "Or what?"  With just his tone, he quite literally became every bully you remember from high school, every friend's bratty kid brother.  And he is rewarded with a slap.

The mouth action there is so epic.  And it really shows us how witty Bobby could be.

The best part about the character is yet to come, though, because very quickly, he sobers up and tells the woman "I was just joking!" followed by talking about how tough he is, how many "knotches" he has on his gun.  Which nobody believes, including us when we see, a minute later, the stagecoach being hijacked by a few guys on horses with guns.  

Suddenly, Billy freezes up completely, only moving to the order to get out of the coach when one of the offenders grabs his arm and pulls him down onto the ground.  We're able to deduce by this that the guy isn't half as tough as he looks.

We go a little further, I won't bore you with the details about the bigger story, but when the stagecoach finally continues on and reaches its destination, the passengers are told not to leave because they will be questioned about the robbery.  This does not at all sit well with Billy, and he tries to sneak away, but the hijackers are waiting for him.  In one fell swoop they pull him behind a building, gag him and struggle to drag him away.  This shows yet more great acting ability from Bobby, who actually DOES struggle and doesn't appear to be doing the "play struggling" you often see from actors at this time.  They do get the best of him though, and we don't see him again for several more scenes.

Next and final part:  we find out that the men who captured Billy had purportedly brought him with them in order to steer some cattle.  But it was a trap, as we soon saw.

Their goal was to kill him off.  *GASP*

He pleaded with them when he realized they were holding guns on him, and they kept pushing him back as he made his case.  They kept pushing and pushing until he tripped over a rock behind him and plunged to his death into a pit in the ground.  

This was something I felt Bobby did an amazing job acting out.  The way he "tripped" looked very natural and not at all like he was, once again, "play tripping."  The most heart wrenching part, however, was his guttural scream at the end when he was descending into the pit.

I don't mean to make it all more than what it is, but this made me sad.  I guess because this is the last known (or at least accessible) appearance Bobby ever made on TV or film other than Dirt, and it all ended with him falling into a pit with a final, desperate cry.  It felt, in a way, like it was a foreshadowing of what was going to happen to him:  his descent into a vast abyss, never to be seen or heard from again.

BUT.  Let's not get hung up on that.  The point is, this, to me, is one of the finest of Bobby's TV performances because of the unique character he plays.  And, of course, one can't ignore how dashing he is in cowboy garb!

Next post will be a chronicling of the events of "Incident of Fear in the Street."  Stay tuned!