F-Troop belongs to the
ranks of television's great military slacker comedies, including
Sgt. Bilko and McHale's Navy. Ken Berry was promoted from
bit player to leading man with his role as clueless and clumsy ("I
fall down a lot") Wilton Parmenter, who is put in charge of the
frontier post Fort Courage after a display of inadvertent Civil War
heroism. "He's the pigeon we always dreamed of," enthuses Sgt.
O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker), who runs "O'Rourke Enterprises" with his
sidekick Corporal Agarn (Larry Storch). Most episodes involve
O'Rourke and Agarn's get-rich schemes that ultimately backfire. The
show's great (albeit politically incorrect) comic conceit is the
Hekawis, the decidedly un-bloodthirsty Indian tribe who makes
tourist souvenirs, not war. "We invent peace pipe," proclaims Chief
Wild Eagle (Frank DeKova), whose broken English and anachronistic
vernacular (similar to Joey Bishop in Texas Across the River)
provide most of each episode's biggest--and, in these more
enlightened times, guiltiest--laughs.
F's troupe
also includes Melody Patterson as Wrangler Jane, who has a hankerin'
for "Will" ("I told you, Jane, not in front of the men"), James
Hampton as bungling bugler Dobbs, Joe Brooks as nearsighted look-out
Vanderbilt, cowboy star Bob Steele as gung-ho Alamo survivor Duffy,
and venerable character actor (and Rocky and Bullwinkle's
"Fractured Fairy Tales" narrator) Edward Everett Horton as Hekawi
medicine man Roaring Chicken. Among the more memorable guest
appearances include Zsa Zsa Gabor as a gypsy who attempts to fleece
Agarn in "Play, Gypsy, Play," and Don Rickles (!) as Chief Wild
Eagle's excitable, warlike son in "The Return of Bald Eagle." The
episode, "Reunion for O'Rouke," contains the classic bit about how
the Hekawis got their name. F-Troop debuted in 1965 and
lasted but two seasons. It broke no television ground and was never
nominated for an Emmy. A single-disc compilation of six episodes is
also available, but Baby Boomers who remember F-Troop fondly
will want to enlist for a full season. It's old school, flat-out
funny. -–Donald Liebenson
