40 years ago today, the first episode of “A Colt for All Cases” was broadcast. No need to get sentimental. Or?
Nothing against the child in man – but it does have a deeper meaning that most plans and wishes fall by the wayside somewhere on the long way into adult life. Because if all the boys had emulated their then only true TV hero in the 1980s, there would probably have been 82,000 unemployed stunt men in their prime between Flensburg and Munich who sit in their garden bathtub with cowboy hats, puffing cigars on their badger skin-thick chest hair – and waiting for it that the phone rings.
Perhaps one or the other of these nameless stunt men in their prime also dreamed that one day a blonde in a bikini rushed in through the door and dragged him out of the tub because he was really needed out there …
One thing is for sure: when the title song of “A Colt for All Cases” is played at a party, almost everyone in attendance can sing along to the tune of the “Unknown Stuntman” while in front of their minds a golden-brown painted GMC pickup with a chrome flashing bumper flies through the air. It was 40 years ago, but some things have burned themselves so deeply that obviously even the time with their tooth cannot gnaw anything away.
Lee Majors, who had finally risen to the league of the most successful TV stars of the eighties in the role of Colt Seavers, had sung the song himself, or better: grumbled into the microphone. A fact that certainly impressed not a few guys deeply: Colt, so: Lee Majors, could not only jump, he could also sing!
Ironic? Oh well…
The text definitely had more tinder than Majors’ voice, as the fictional stuntman tells of his amorous associations with Hollywood stars like Bo Derek or Farrah Fawcett (with whom he was actually married from 1973 to 1982). The fact that his catchy Chauvi stuntman song made it to number 11 in the German charts was, from Majors’ point of view, less due to his charisma, but more – as he once said self-ironically – a sign that the “over there simply have little idea of music ”.
The fact that the now 82-year-old Majors always talks about Colt Seavers with a wink is, for some, unmistakable evidence that the early evening series, which first aired in the USA 40 years ago today, should definitely be viewed as an ironic format. Colt inventor Glen A. Larson already played with clichés back then and overdrawn everything quite a bit: The bad guys were always rather simple-minded, real guys like Colt were taciturn, beautiful women like Jody (Colt’s colleague, played by Heather Thomas) were rather naive, often more Scantily clad, easy to impress, and anyway they always got very weak when someone like Colt showed up.
Therefore, it cannot be completely dismissed that some are rather critical of the format and say that Colt Seavers alias Lee Majors was a macho before the gentleman and that all episodes of the five seasons, which were produced and broadcast between 1981 and 1986, are not a cult, but a constant warming up of a rather simple plot: a stuntman goes on the hunt for crooks between his film projects because a good friend asks him to do so. This acquaintance had advanced the bail to the scoundrels who disappeared shortly before the court date, and would like to see her money again soon. And the notoriously clammy Colt could always use the extra money. Always there: Colt’s cousin Howie, played by Douglas Barr (now 72 and widely respected director and producer), and stunt woman Jody Banks alias Heather Thomas (now 64, unfortunately addicted to cocaine in between, but meanwhile over it and married to a media lawyer ).
Oh yeah … it was nice. And even if Colt today probably could not give good advice to very few men in their prime: Lee Majors can. Unlike Colt Seavers, he prefers not to waste his time in the tub: He is still in front of the camera. Whereby not only slightly sentimental authors like on “maennersache.de” admitted on the occasion of the 80th birthday of majors that the admiration gradually passed from the cool Colt and the funny Howie to the hot Jody with each subsequent season, until after the series was over and had disappeared from the German evening program, from the former dream of jumping from houses like Colt and flying through the air in a car, only the faintest inkling of the melody of the “Unknown Stuntman” remained. And the desire to puff a cigar in the tub every now and then.
