Saga of Sonora

"There's gold down in Sonora..." went the theme of this wonderful hour of sheer lunacy and great mad charm. "Maxwell Smart", often in a circle in the corner of the screen, "drinking heavily", narrates this fantasy concerning Vince Edwards who is propelled back into a 19th century that certainly never was where he meets all manner of popular actors and comedians of the time playing absurd Western roles. Zero Mostel in drag in a stagecoach with its back blown off; lines such as "It was suicide. He backed into my gun six times"; and Jill St. John as the bad guy's cohort of whom our narrator says "Bad girls aren't built that way." The song "Belly Up to the Bar" did not seem to fit but everything else worked together right to the nonsensical "Good-bye"s at the end. Surely such lines as "He's so stupid he saw a "Bridge Out" sign so he took out his upper plate and drove straight into the river" deserve to be remembered. No,I do not have total recall: I made an audio tape of "The Saga of Sonora" when it was first rerun. Oh would that we had possessed a DVD recorder or VCR in those days! "The animals of the forest need our help. Take a wild pig to lunch." (That was the last line of the show and gives some idea of how off-the-wall it really was.