Rango Was Wrongo

Alright, put your hands up now if you liked Rango.

Hmm. Not too many of you.

Well, I liked it. It starred Tim Conway doing his patented clumsy stuff as the laugh track filled the living room. Hey, it worked for Don Adams. Unfortunately it didn’t work for Conway. It lasted 17 episodes.

Years ago, failures on TV carried on for a full season. The networks had committed the time, sponsors had committed the money. But ABC changed all that. It dumped ratings losers within months and put new shows on the air in January, with the network’s PR machine screaming it was a “Second Season.” Hey, it worked for Batman. Conway’s show was a Western sitcom. Hey, it worked for F Troop.

These stories have more to do with Conway than his soon-to-be first TV failure. This syndicated story ran starting November 16, 1966.

Tim Conway To Ride Scout For Second Season Shows
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK—ABC's Second Season, known in some quarters as the annual overhaul, is only a few months away (January) and one of its brightest stars has already been dispatched to ride scout for the new premieres.
He's Tim Conway, the bumbling Lt. Parker of the network's successful "McHale's Navy," now about to leave the sea and mount up as "Rango," a bumbling Texas Ranger.
For an actor Tim is virtually unarmed, he does not possess a big ego. A former funny local personality on Cleveland TV, Tim wouldn't bat a bankbook if he struck out in Hollywood and had to pack up wife and family and move back to Chagrin Falls, his hometown and a suburb of his beloved Cleveland.
After trying to convince me that Chagrin Falls got its name because the first settler to spot an Indian near the Falls was admittedly chagrined, Tim talked about his happy days there on local TV.
TV RUSE
"We used to announce the imminent arrival of some big personality like the mayor to keep the audience watching while we showed some lousy feature film," he recalled. "Naturally, he'd never show up but we had him stuck in traffic or chasing a fire engine. Some people probably believed us but those that didn't had a lot of laughs."
Some day Tim would like to be rich enough to buy into a local station operation and then invite back all the people who got their start in Cleveland and make them his partners. "And we wouldn't starve," he added as if to defend his sanity. "There's plenty of money in that kind of operation and an awful lot of peace of mind. Who was it who suggested that the President could perform a great service by going on TV and ordering everybody to go back to their hometown? I believe in that."
No matter how busy his schedule Tim manages to get home as often as possible, particularly on weekends when his high school is playing football on Friday night and the Browns are home on Sunday. All this in spite of an immense fear of flying, which is so acute that on one occasion it threw an entire plane into a panic and actually delayed the flight.
"Rango" is the first joint effort under the newly formed alliance of Danny Thomas and Aaron "Burke's Law" Spelling. It was sold without a pilot and Tim was cast even before "McHale's Navy" submerged.
"I guess I was lucky," he said modestly. "The part fit my type of image and they thought of me. You know a lot of fans think I was the funniest thing on 'McHale's' but it's really not true. The star of a TV show is its concept and the way said concept is carried out. An actor is fortunate to be caught in such a situation."
Tim has already filmed several episodes of the new series and he sincerely expects to be lucky again. His co-stars, Guy Marks and Norman Alden, he thinks are just great and Conway feels they have a good chance of riding in on the crest of the second season ballyhoo and hitting like "Batman" did last year.
HORSE SENSE
Conway does not expect to have too much trouble adjusting to westerns since he was born in the saddle. "My dad was a trainer around the tracks in Ohio for years," he explained. "And for a while I was going to be a jockey. But I fell off so often I switched to football. There I merely busted my back and retired from sports to become a TV star," and he laughed and recalled how that came about.
"Rosemarie heard me in Cleveland and asked if I had any tapes of some of the wild semi-satirical humor we were pulling on our show. I did, she delivered them to Steve Allen and he invited me out to do his show. The offer to appear on 'McHale's Navy' came just about then. So I moved to Hollywood with my bride and we soon had four children. Now wasn't that a tough struggle?"
Conway concedes he has no training as an actor and, except for a recent one week guest star appearance in Chagrin Falls as Ensign Pulver in "Mr. Roberts," he's never done a live show.
“I did entertain in local clubs to pick up extra money but I was really awful. Even today I read the script and do the part the way it comes out.
“If the director wants something special he can’t get it from me because I don’t know that much,” concluded the very refreshing Tim Conway whose laudable ambition in this maniacal business seems to be not to become too ambitious.

This syndicated story appeared in papers on February 4, 1967. The show was already in trouble after three weeks.

New Spoof on Old West Stars Funny Man Tim Conway
By RUTH THOMPSON
"You have a talent for creating problems," a wearied clergyman told Tim Conway in 1961 when he applied for permission to marry his godmother.
Tim's 1967 "problems" however, are principally those confined within the storylines of ABC's new Western spoof, "Rango." (Fridays - at 9:00 P.M.). And the Conway talents and creativity they're talking about this year have to do with his comedy impact. "Tim is a top banana," says his boss Danny Thomas who should know. A long-time top banana himself, Thomas has long also been one of television's top producers with a string of hit series that eventually cancel only because the actors tire of their roles with the passage of time. Contemporary situations and crisp comedy they had in common.
Right now for Tim, it's "do it or bust," but after hearing him for an hour, an insight strikes you for the future. Some day Thomas and his new partner Aaron Speling [sic] might do well to consider a series based on Tim Conway's own story. It was Danny Thomas, remember, who puffed contented cigars when his "Dick Van Dyke" property kept stacking up the Emmys. The Van Dyke show, of course, was based on the life of writer-comedian Carl Reiner. Like Reiner, Tim is a writer as well as a comedian. Also as I was told before I met him, "Tim is really a serious man who says funny things in a natural way. He's not a clown." And obviously the only man to play Tim Conway is Tim.
But Tim's serious side would have none of this "some day" talk right now. He was in town to do right by "Rango," which he himself finds funny and fun to do. For this new spoof on the Old West isn't so tightly written that Conway improvisations couldn't be sneaked in. Tim feels he's lucky, too, in Danny Thomas's casting of Guy Marks as the second banana. Says Tim: "Guy, who plays my Indian companion, Pink Cloud, and I met for the first time on the set. After ten minutes we were breaking each other up so, that they had to close things down for half an hour."
He goes on: "We stumble our way through the West at a pace that's more Laurel and Hardy than ‘McHale's Navy.’ Pink Cloud is no ugh-ugh Indian. He's educated." But not, it seems, in the ways of Indianship, which is supposed to add to the hilarity. Says Tim: "He can't read trails, doesn't want any part of violence, or buffalo meat, or smoke signals . . . in fact when he's ordered to build a fire, he burns the blanket.
Other Conway comments on "Rango:" "Yes, I can get on a horse. Once I was going to be a jockey because my father was a horse trainer," but for jogging along, Rango doesn't always need a real critter for closeups. Says Tim: "Sometimes we use a mechanical horse. Then I feel like a real idiot . . . getting up on four wheels and a truck."
As to villains, Conway assures: "Oh, you'll know the bad guys always in our series right away. John Wayne has already killed them several times."
As to himself, Tim concedes that having been born in a town called Chagrin Falls (Ohio) may have helped him develop his sense of humor early. He still visits his folks there often, describes it as "A New Englandish type village with high taxes and no industries."
He was also schooled in Ohio, and it was while he was a student at Bowling Green State that he made the serious decision to become a Catholic. Tim was dating a girl named Sue, thought they might marry and mother. The baptizing priest said no. So he settled instead for another school mate, Mary Anne Dalton, because "we didn't even like each other."
Then came the Army—two years each. Mary Anne went to Paris with Special Services. Tim was assigned to Japan but instead “guarded Seattle, Washington and some secret papers I had a rifle. And I lost it . . . but I did keep a broken fluorescent tube handy.”
At his release, Tim scooted home to Ohio, rounded up old friends and celebrated by giving himself a "surprise" birthday party. He surprised them by not showing up until midnight. Then all of a sudden HE was surprised. "Across that crowded room" he saw Mary Anne Dalton. He didn't hate her any more. She didn't hate him. And the priest had a fistful of red tape to unravel when they decided to wed.
Now they have four children. And a house in Tarzana, California which Tim first tried describing as "a 32-room cottage." Then scaled it down to kind of a barracks with a cafeteria. It's big, though, at least as far as bedrooms go. Because of the kids. A pool? No. Because of the kids. But when we turn the water on the ivy we let them run through." Then, seriously: "I've beamed the whole house myself and panelled it."
As to his career, the chubby Tim, who's not yet thirty, says, "It doesn't come any easier." His first job was answering mail at KWY in Cleveland for disc jockey Big Wilson. Big read some of Tim's letters one day and said, "You're funny. Why not write for me?" Why not? When Big went on TV, Tim went along, rapidly evolved into a producer-director-writer. Then one day Rose Marie the singer-comedienne was guesting in Cleveland, heard guffaws from the control room and investigated. "He's funny," she concluded and recommended him to Steve Allen. Next came "McHale's Navy," and four years for Tim as the inept, and very funny Ensign Parker. This year it's the starring role as the inept ranger, "Rango." All of which may be as "easy" as Tim says. Providing you're a serious funny man who's also noticeably ept and genuinely talented.

The storylines were the material from a pair of top writers, R.S. Allen and Harvey S. Bullock. Hey, it worked for The Flintstones. And The Danny Thomas Show. And The Andy Griffith Show. It just didn’t work for Tim Conway.