Lover Boy

"Lover Boy" gives Ken Curtis a chance to show what a good actor he is. Shorn of facial hair, he plays a charming and heartless rogue who loves 'em and leaves 'em. (In real life, he would have seduced the women, but this is only vaguely suggested by his first conquest being sufficiently humiliated that she becomes a saloon girl.) Curtis shows how good he is at creating characters almost entirely by facial expression.

Consider John Anderson, Royal Dano, and Morgan Woodward, veterans of many TV Westerns. With few exceptions, each is instantly recognizable. Not Ken Curtis. You'd have to think a while before recognizing Curtis as both Kyle Kelly and the original Festus. (The latter Festus is even more distantly removed.)

Curtis started out as a conventionally handsome man, with vapid good looks. (It's easy to see why John Ford's daughter was so hot for him.) He got better looking as he matured and his features grew more angular. In an unintentional bit of humor, one of his conquests complains that her husband is "nearly 50". * So was Curtis -- he was 48 when this episode was shot! ** He was nearly 60 when the series ended.

Though Festus and Chester were "similar" characters, Festus had the athleticism Chester lacked. *** In fight scenes, Curtis is quick and nimble -- you wouldn't want to get on his bad side. And in an early Festus episode, when he and Slim Pickens are about to be strung up in a stable, Curtis leaps up off his horse and wraps his legs around the beam.

An above-average episode -- strongly recommended.

* 50 was considered "old" in the 19th century -- retirement age, essentially.

** In "Lover Boy", he looks closer to 60 (or even older). Strange as it might seem, the Festus whiskers shave a good decade off his apparent age.

*** Dennis Weaver supposedly suggested Chester have a stiff leg, as he didn't find it plausible that an able-bodied young man would take a poorly paid job as the marshal's assistant.

Well... that husband was so high and mighty about how there's nothing worse than an informer, yet he demands that his wife "inform" on who came to visit her. :)

Took me a few minutes to recognize Ken Curtis. Didn't know he was so handsome! I always loved him as Festus and still love to hear him sing. (YouTube.) This episode really shows his range of character.

Ken Curtis is a kind of Man of a Thousand Faces in the televised Western genre and here he's far from the scummy looking, Strother Martin imitating Festus, a real charmer who uses woman, and he's really not good looking enough for that. His face looks like a shield. He played opposite a sort of standard-handsome lead on the series Ripcord, which ended around this time. On the verge of a decade long gig, this is Curtis's verge into stardom. It's like seeing Harry Morgan playing the conceited General on MASH before he'd become a regular. And it's nice seeing Sheree North.

This is not anywhere near up to writer John Meston's and director Andrew McLaglen's usual standards. Sheree North (as another hard-done-by, bored, unfulfilled prairie wife, Avis Fisher) and Carol Byron (as fallen saloon gal Terry Lee) are lovely to look at. They're about the highlight of the whole thing, looking sexily sullen as they do throughout. I'm thinking Meston should have passed it on to women's writer Kathleen Hite at the scenario stage. Much more should have been made of Terry's reaction to old flame Kyle destroying her life for a second time - by the original betrayal and now the murdering of her fiance. But, nothing. Ken Curtis overdoes it as the ever-smarmy villain "irresistible lady-killer" Kyle Kelly -- acting all through like he should have had a moustache to twirl. And Ab, Avis's 50-something husband, is just too dumb to live -- I'm amazed he has lasted this long alive in the world. Terry's fiance isn't too bright either, facing Kyle unarmed and with a welcoming smile to the ranch after the villain has threatened his life the night before. It's more than a little unbelievable. Comic relief from Chester/Doc very sadly absent too.