If today’s network TV landscape seems dominated by shows with either “Chicago,” “CSI,” or “NCIS” in their title, back in the late ’50s and early ’60s it was a wild and wooly frontier ruled by the cowboy. Western programs boasting gunslingers of all stripes roamed the airwaves. There were two-fisted marshals (Gunsmoke), frontier families (Bonanza), cane-toting dandies (Bat Masterson), and conniving card players (Maverick). One of the more unusual good guys of the era was Tom Brewster, better known as Sugarfoot and played for four years by easy-going actor Will Hutchins, who passed away earlier this week at 94.
A correspondence-school law student from the East who decided to make a name for himself in the untamed Oklahoma Territory, Tom’s lack of gun and riding skills earned him the title of “Sugarfoot,” said to be one notch below a tenderfoot. He took the nickname in stride, though, as he pursued his law career and did his best to fight for law and justice in the 1880s West. Brewster could handle a rope with the best of them and used his wits to get himself out of scrapes. His arch-enemy was the Canary Kid, a ruthless outlaw who just happened to be Tom’s exact double (Hutchins playing the dual roles). Oh, and his barroom drink of choice: “sarsaparilla with a dash of cherry.”
Based on a 1951 Will Rogers, Jr. film named The Boy from Oklahoma, Sugarfoot is considered the first TV western comedy. It premiered on ABC in October of 1957, five days before James Garner’s debut as Maverick. A product of the Warner Bros. TV branch, it alternated in its Tuesday night timeslot with the already popular Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker, and later with Bronco, featuring Ty Hardin. As part of Warners’ western stable, Hutchins’ Brewster found himself making guest spots on his Tuesday compadres’ shows, with them returning the favor…as would none other than Garner’s Bret Maverick and his brother Bart (Jack Kelly). Another frequent guest was government agent Christopher Colt (Wayde Preston) from the series Colt .45. The “wide open spaces” of the TV frontier were smaller than one might have imagined.
Apart from the Canary Kid, Sugarfoot’s most dangerous foe might have been his own horse, at least in the first season. “My horse, Sickle, must have been part mule, or he read a different script from mine,” Hutchins once recalled. “We were never on the same page. Hence, we had to use a lot of trickery to create the illusion I was one with my hoss.” Season Two saw Sickle put out to pasture in favor of copper-hued Penny, whom Hutchins said “was my best pal at Warner Bros.”
As for the man behind the saddle, Hutchins was born Marshall Lowell Hutchason in Los Angeles in 1930. The showbiz bug bit him at an early age, when in 1940 he wandered onto the location shooting of the W.C. Fields comedy Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and made his big-screen debut as an extra. After studying drama and cinema at Pomona College and UCLA, he joined the Army and served for two years during the Korean War as an Army Signal Corps cryptographer. Following the war, he found work–and a name change–at Warner Bros., with turns on such shows as Matinee Theatre and Conflict. He also picked up small roles in the films Bombers B-52, Lafayette Escadrille, and No Time for Sergeants before he was tapped to play “Sugarfoot” Brewster.
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After Sugarfoot finished its four-season run in 1961, Will would have less success with two single-season sitcoms. He and Sandy Baron played Manhattan bachelors living in a brownstone apartment building Hutchins inherited from his uncle in 1966-67’s Hey, Landlord! The show featured appearances by Sally Field as Hutchins’ little sister. Two years later, he was cast as sandwich-loving everyman Dagwood Bumstead in CBS’s adaptation of the popular comic strip Blondie, with Patricia Harty in the title role. There were also guest turns on Gunsmoke, Emergency!, Love, American Style, The Streets of San Francisco, and both Perry Mason and The New Perry Mason.
In between his TV shows Hutchins appeared on the big screen in 1961’s Claudelle Inglish and 1962’s Merrill’s Marauders (the latter reuniting him with Bronco buddy Hardin). He played Warren Oates’s “addlepated” pal in director Monte Hellman’s offbeat frontier drama The Shooting (1966), and he was featured in a pair of Elvis Presley musicals, Spinout (1966) and Clambake (1967). The 1970s found Will in some rather idiosyncratic efforts. There was the Africa-based war actioner Shangani Patrol (1970) and the made-for-TV chiller The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973). Of course, there was also a pair of racy exploitation romps: Slumber Party ’57 (1976), with a young Debra Winger, and The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977), with Joey Heatherton in the title role.
Hutchins went for a career change in the 1980s, stepping away from the camera and under the big top to perform as Patches the Clown with Australia’s Ashton Family Circus. He still made occasional appearances in films, with an unbilled cameo in the 1994 Maverick remake and playing The Judge in Christopher Coppola’s 1999 western Gunfighter. Will’s last movie role was the 2010 comedy The Romantics. He passed away on April 21 at a Long Island hospital from respiratory failure.
Of his time as a Wild West do-gooder on the Warners lot, Will said “I’m proud I got to hit the saddle and go on that glorious, wild ride across America’s small screens, guns a’blazin’.” He also recalled, “Over the years I had the privilege of wearing Walter Brennan’s shirt, Errol Flynn’s coat and Humphrey Bogart’s pants. I never felt comfortable with scripts that made me too brave. I was a reluctant hero.” Reluctant, maybe, but a hero nonetheless.