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 | | Forever Pete by Friscogirl | |
 Forever Pete
by Friscogirl
But by the late '60’s, the Westerns were disappearing off of television, being replaced by lighter fare such as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ,“The Odd Couple” and “The Partridge Family.” So I was delighted to discover “Alias Smith & Jones.” And Pete Duel. Start with a dark-haired dark-eyed hero with the Devil in his smile and the cutest dimples on God’s earth…stir in a plot line of a rapscallion trying to do good but always tempted by “the other side”…and toss in the element of a man running for his life (think “The Fugitive” in the 1880’s…) and I was smitten.
No matter that I was just starting out my career in a high-pressured job producing local television news. What did matter was that the world in 1970 was an unhappy and unsettling place; anti-war protests, civil rights anger, women demanding equality, an unpopular war in Viet Nam. There wasn’t much there to give a girl a chuckle. “Smith & Jones” fit the bill.
Pete had campaigned for anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy; he’d been shocked by the bloodshed at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He loved the outdoors and campaigned for a cleaner environment years before it became a political movement. If he cared about something, he acted; he didn’t just stand by.
And he brought that passion to his work. Pete’s Hannibal Heyes was a person of exquisite complexity, much like the era we lived in.
- He could be dark and forbidding… (Think of “How To Rob A Bank in One Hard Lesson” when he almost drowned Harry Waggoner in an effort to find the Kid.)
- He could be sweet… (Who could forget his guitar solo in “The Posse That Wouldn’t Quit?”)
- He could make the most appalling bad decisions… (Think “Six Strangers at Apache Springs” where he ventures into dangerous Indian territory looking for gold dust.)
- He was devious…in too many episodes to point out. But most of all, he was loyal to his best and only friend in the entire world: Jedediah Curry.
It’s rare to see a series where the partners dare to show that they care about each other. These guys actually touched each other: starting in the pilot as Heyes slung his arm around his partner while watching the futile attempt to recover the safe…to “Night of the Red Dog” where Heyes solicitously wrapped up Curry in warm blankets. They gave each other comfort in a dangerous, threatening world. Heck, they even had to share the same bed at times! (What a radical notion! Think of all those sitcoms where the husband and wife had to sleep in single beds to observe propriety!) Pete Duel was a man who seemed confident of his own masculinity, confident of being in his own skin. The warmth he projected on screen was the same warmth friends off screen attributed to him.
He was a Mensch.
I never would have thought that a man so quick to laugh would have so much sorrow inside him. Who would have realized then that Pete Duel struggled with serious depression, except those who knew him the best?
In my 30’s I waged my own battle with blackness, and there were times when I felt that simply dissolving myself into nothing…would be the most welcome thing in the world.
Maybe that’s how Pete felt that terrible New Year’s Eve, 1971. We’ll never know.
I learned of his death the next morning. I was at work putting together the “Noon News” when the bulletin crossed the wire: ding! ding! ding! Pete Duel was dead. I remember staring at the copy as it churned off the noisy wire machine; then ripping it off and taking it to my desk where I stared at it some more. I felt tears well up and a stab of sorrow. How could this happen? A mistake, surely? A terrible, terrible accident?
The very least I could do was make sure to include a mention of his passing in my newscast. The fact that I remember writing it...40 years later…says how difficult the job was. How do you sum up a man in 15 seconds of copy?
I would imagine I wrote something like this:
Pete Duel, the popular star of the TV Western “Alias Smith & Jones” was found dead this morning in his home in Los Angeles. Duel’s girlfriend called police after hearing a gunshot and finding the actor on the floor with a bullet wound to the head. Duel was rushed to the hospital, but died hours later. The cause of the shooting is under investigation, but police suspect the young actor committed suicide.
So very neutral in tone. Just the facts, ma’am. It’s what I did…and do…for a living.
Forty years later, Pete seems somehow very much alive. On the DVD’s of “Alias Smith & Jones”…in all the wonderful fan fiction on these pages.
So I thank you, Pete. For bringing us Hannibal Heyes. For all the bright passion in the too-brief flame of your life. For sharing yourself with us. You’re forever young.
(Writers love feedback! You can tell Friscogirl how you enjoyed the story with a quick comment. Just click Post Reply for the Comments for Heyes 2.0 thread below the story.) | |
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