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A Word on Westerns

Will Hutchins

39 min • 5 maj 2025

Will Hutchins (1930–2025)—the lanky Angeleno who ambled onto ABC screens as gentle‑souled law‑student‑turned‑drifter Tom “Sugarfoot” Brewster—joins host Rob Word and producer/co‑host RJ Word in a 2021 Zoom sit‑down that now feels like a fond farewell. Hutchins recalls how Warner Bros. spun Sugarfoot out of Clint Walker’s smash hit Cheyenne, easing Walker’s load of thirty‑nine hour‑long episodes a year with a rotating‑slot companion series. He delights in writer‑director Montgomery Pittman’s wild “Canary Kid” trilogy, where he played both straight‑arrow Brewster and his mustachioed outlaw twin. Towering memories follow: sparring with James Arness in Gunsmoke’s 1963 gem “Blind Man’s Bluff,” where Ted Post carved tension to the bone; leaping from TV backlots to William Wellman’s World War I adventure Lafayette Escadrille (1958); slogging through jungle mud and live ammo for Sam Fuller’s rugged war epic Merrill’s Marauders (1962); and embracing desert existentialism in Monte Hellman’s cult classic The Shooting (1966) opposite a young Jack Nicholson. Hutchins even appears—cheekily bullet‑proof—in Clint Eastwood’s Magnum Force (1973). The conversation crescendos at his 2002 Golden Boot Award, where fellow Warner cowboy Clint Walker calmed his stage jitters poolside. Recorded before his passing, this episode now stands as a warm campfire send‑off to television’s gentlest cowboy—proof that a dash of sarsaparilla humor and an Arctic‑blonde mop can still make the frontier feel friendly.

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