TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1955)

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Professionally, Jim finds his adventures these days on Hawkins Falls, the Chicagooriginated NBC-TV daytime drama of small-town life. Jim describes his role as Mitchell Fredericks: "I was on the lam when I blew into this town. I was the honest attorney who refused to defend gangster clients. Next, I sort of drifted around, making up my mind what to do. Now I run the newspaper, so again I'm all mixed up in everything." Like Jim himself (who has been married) Mitchell Fredericks is, at this writing, unattached and eligible. Jim says, "In Hawkins Falls, Dr. Corey beat me out when we were both courting Lona, so I guess Bill Barrett, who scripts the show, has been trying to make it up to me ever since. I'm always interested in some pretty girl." Jim has seen that kind of situation before— with variations. He makes a comparison. "Of course, I've never yet got the girl, but I sure have fun trying. That's more than the movies do for me. All I ever got in a Western was a horse — or a sock in the jaw. I've lost more fights to guys half my size. . . ." Losing such filmed fights occurred when Jim took a leave of absence from Hawkins Falls to go back to Hollywood to make what he calls "a flock of Westerns." In every one, he was cast as the villain. Appearance of the films on television brings him such greetings as, "Boy, did Kit Carson clean up on you last night!" Jim meets such sallies with an easy grin and a recollection of a stunt man's wage scale. "I hope they realize that every time I bite the dust, it was a two-hundred-dollar fall." He also insists that it was his ability to fight and ride which first got him into the movies. "It is a lot easier for a director to teach an athlete a little acting than to teach an actor a lot of athletics." The explanation is over-modest, for Jim — who ' was born in Kansas City and graduated from Rockhurst College — drew his first rave notices for work in school plays. He was a radio announcer in Kansas City, St. Louis and at several California stations. Columbia Pictures signed him and started building him up in minor roles. One, as a priest, he recalls with special pleasure. He got it when a casting director saw a picture of Jim's favorite brother, Father John Bannon, who teaches history at St. Louis University. They look enough alike to be twins. "We've had a bit of a turn-about," says Jim. "Now John is having his chance at television, doing a series of history lectures." Jim played the lead in one mystery, but it was the Westerns which captured his fancy. "I had been around livestock all my life. I could ride a horse and handle a steer. In school, I had been an athlete, so the stunt stuff gave me no trouble. They put me in a few epics and I decided the Western was just the thing for me." Young America agreed with him when he won stardom as "Red Ryder." Jim recalls, "As you do in Westerns, I guess I played Red Ryder more off-camera than I did on-set. Got a kick out of it, too. For one thing, there was that car. . . ." The sensible, grown-up reason for "that car" was the promotion campaign which sent Jim to make personal appearances in cities where the film series was playing. The private reason, one suspects, was that Jim enjoyed it almost as much as his young fans did. The vehicle started out as a Buick Roadmaster convertible, but turned into quite a wagon by the time Jim installed tooled-leather upholstery, used an antique long-barrelled Colt revolver as a shift lever, and replaced the conventional door handles with chromiumplated horseshoes. The crowning touch was a pair of longhorn-steer horns spreading out as a hood ornament. Jim still chuckles over its effect. "I'd drive up in front of a theater and, within half an hour, every kid in town had come a -running. 'Course, I dressed kind of quiet, too. Just a big wide hat, gambler's-stripe pants and the wildest shirt I could get." 1 oday, he would just as soon forget the role — living with it off the set, as well as on, got to be too much of a good thing — but people at WNBQ, where Hawkins Falls originates, either hold fond memories of their own Saturday -afternoon movies or recall somewhat less enraptured hours spent escorting small fry to the flicks. Jim takes as much of a ribbing over his hero role as he does his later villain's drubbings by Gene Autry, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, et al. One wag even revised the usual studio-door sign which reads: "Do not enter when red light is on." Light was crossed out and Ryder substituted. The role can still have advantages, too. Last Christmas, Jim headed for California. His car, loaded with luggage and gifts, was conventional, but his driving clothes — levis, boots and a red Hudson's Bay jacket — were unintentionally "Red Ryder." Stopping for the night in a small Kansas town, he worried about possible theft and decided to ask the local police where to park. Striding up to the desk sergeant, he began, "I've got a problem — " The officer's recognition was instant. "What's your trouble, Mr. Bannon?" They solved it fast. The sergeant not only kept the car safely in the lockup overnight but he also arranged to have the town's Cadillac agency open early to service it. The agency included a wash job, with their compliments. Jim's large collection of Western clothes can, upon occasion, turn into a community asset at Chicago NBC. While Ben Park, the producer for Hawkins Falls, was also working on the Eddy Arnold film series, he insisted on historically authentic costumes. When Park specified shirts were not to have wide-spread collars, Joan King, the wardrobe girl, found the order hard to fill until Jim turned up with two. His own sartorial trademark on Hawkins Falls is the turned-up collar. The style has become so exclusively his that a visiting actor who inadvertently duplicated it was told by the director, "Turn it down. That's the Bannon treatment." Whether the scene calls for sport clothes or the conservatively tailored dark suit Jim wore when he was best man at the wedding of Lona and Dr. Corey, his personal wardrobe can usually supply everything but a trench coat. "I've bummed trench coats from everybody on the set, including stagehands," he says. "My own is too light-colored for the camera." Jim has no trouble borrowing, for he is as popular in person as he is in the script. Like the show's heroine, Bernardine