Dennis Weaver
Dennis Weaver died a couple of weeks ago.
It is, it seems to me, a special sort of ignominy for a TV star to have his death eclipsed because he was careless enough to die the same day as Barney Fife or, technically, the actor who portrayed Deputy Fife, Don Knotts. Make no mistake – I agree that Knotts was not only the more clownish (and thus never troubled us to take him seriously) but also the more memorable and more lovable performer.
Nonetheless, Dennis Weaver deserves some recognition for his own qualities and contributions.
He was unforgettable as Chester Goode, Marshall Dillon’s deputy on Gunsmoke. While it is impressive that Weaver played a character that he described as “inane” so well that he won an Emmy, I consider the true sign of his virtuosity in this role to be the fact that thousands of grade school age boys, including me, executed our first (and for too many of us, our last) recognizable impression of a famous personality by running with an exaggerated limp while calling out, with some urgency, “Mr. Dillon, Mr. Dillon.”
In McCloud, Weaver played the role of – you had best pay attention here – Sam McCloud, a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico who is reassigned to the 21st Precinct of the NYPD in order, of course, “to study local police methods.”
On the streets of New York, Sam was invariably polite, chivalrous toward the ladies, who were invariably ready to jump his bones,1 competent on the job, loyal to a fault, and kind toward others. He was, in fact, the consummate good old boy making it in the big city by exercising his rustic qualities. No small part of my admiration for Weaver is that the McCloud character he created represented virtues, such as honesty, humility, and self-confidence, to which a kid from the Ozarks could aspire.
And, while it required extraordinary mental exertion to view this series with the willing suspension of disbelief that Coleridge held to be the essence of poetic faith, I, for one, found myself more willing to put forth that effort at Weaver’s invitation.
McCloud’s most identifiable contribution to contemporary culture was his catchphrase, “There you go” (or, as he put it, “There ya’ go”). I have found this phrase to be especially protean and malleable, making it useful in a surprising number of situations in which a non-specific, non-committal, non-offensive response is required. Consider these examples,
If I’m grounded tonight, my entire life is ruined. There you go
Is this really the best offer you can make? There you go
Are you sure you don’t want to be in the Naked Parasailing calendar? There you go
Given such skillful rhetoric, is it any wonder that in reunion TV movie, The Return of Sam McCloud, the ex-marshal had become a senator from New Mexico? And why hasn’t anyone else noticed that another actor, Ronald Reagan, all but won election on his use of the same phrase altered only by the addition of a single word, “There you go again?”
Finally, Dennis Weaver holds a special place in my firmament because he is arguably the most famous alumnus of Joplin Junior College.2 Joplin Junior College became, some time after Weaver graduated, Missouri Southern College, which, by an incredible coincidence of Thomas Hardy proportions, is my own alma mater.3 Dennis Weaver not only spoke at my commencement (regrettably forgoing the much-anticipated “There you go” tag line) but had also invested his money and personal resources in programs at the college to promote what he called Ecolonomics.
On the other hand, I don’t even know where Don Knotts went to school.
It’s just that I think it’s worth noting that, like McCloud, Dennis Weaver was a stand-up, self-effacing, capable man and a heck of a guy.
Footnotes
- I fondly recall an episode when Linda Evans and Stefanie Powers physically fight over him ↩
- Hmmm – does using “arguably” imply that one can imagine the possibility of two individuals sufficiently invested in the question of which Joplin Junior College alumnus is most famous to sustain an argument? If so, perhaps the reader could substitute “perhaps” for “arguably.” But I digress – rather severely. ↩
- Since I left, Missouri Southern College has again transformed, this time into Missouri Southern State University – Joplin. ↩
1 response so far ↓
1 Mrs. Linklater // Mar 13, 2006 at 5:51 am
I loved Maverick. Especially the Gun Shy episdoe that spoofed Gunsmoke. It was half over before I realized they were just kidding. As for Dennis Weaver, I remember being surprised that McCloud didn’t have a limp. I was pretty literal back then.