Questioning Why

Lawman moves to syndication sporting great numbers.

I work at a communications firm with a lot of younger people who are always talking about the latest movie or series they’re consuming. They get so excited talking about it, and one will mention a title and three others will chime in with enthusiasm. They don’t seem to notice that I’ve gone mute and averted my gaze because I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about and have nothing to contribute to the conversation. I remember the time the owner of the company came into my office maybe 15 years ago and asked me what my favorite television show was at that time, and I said, Cheyenne. She’s older than I am and started singing the theme song from Cheyenne, a western that ran from 1955 to 1962. Even then my boss thought it was funny that my favorite show was 47 years old. Yes, I continue to be trapped here in—wait, what year is it?—while my psyche lives in the dim and distant past. When I read a book, it’s about the Civil War or WWII; when I watch TV, it’s nothing that was made after 1975. You get the idea.

What’s your point, Robert? OK, my point isn’t anything about Lawman, per se. My point is about the nature of addiction, and are addicts born or made? Do you decide one day that you can’t live without your liquor or pills or chocolate? Or are you born with these unquenchable desires? I watch Peggie Castle on Lawman when she was 33 and 34 looking for clues about the addiction that would go on to kill her a decade later: hardening of the arteries and cirrhosis of the liver. She strikes me as such a tragic figure, this tall and willowy blonde who, you would think just by looking at her, had the world by the balls. For all I know after some quick research, Peggie Castle’s biggest problem at the time of Lawman was trouble keeping weight on to the point that her diet featured mainly pasta. Were those bags under her eyes a hint at late nights on the bottle? Or trouble sleeping caused by worry that would go on to cause the drinking?

One of my favorite shows is Lawman, a Warner Bros. western in production from 1958 to 1962. Lawman featured John Russell as Marshal Dan Troop of Laramie, Wyoming, who could draw pretty fast but lived more by an unwavering moral compass. Season one went well for Lawman in a booming period for television westerns, so for season two they decided to write in a love interest for Dan Troop (a couple of prospects had washed out in season one because of lack of pizzazz and chemistry with Russell). Warner Bros. hired 32-year-old Peggie Castle for the role, she the star of some noir B and costume pictures made throughout the 1950s. Sure, she had some roles in A pictures, but more often she made an impression as the “other woman” who was murdered in the second reel. The nasty film noir 99 River Street comes to mind.

Peggie Castle (left) in pre-Lawman days, vixen and murder victim in 99 River Street.

Four marriages by age 30 (the first in 1945 at 18 to a serviceman) make one suspect a capricious person, or an unhappy one looking for a stability she couldn’t muster on her own. The fact that she made her last motion picture right before Lawman and left television at the show’s cancellation in 1962 speaks to a general lack of ambition, or a need to get away from a Hollywood that seems to have been pretty good to her over the course of 12 years of steady work.

Russell as Lawman Troop; Castle as saloon owner Lily Merrill. Studio flak hinted at onscreen wedding bells in season four.

After Lawman, Peggie Castle would make just one more appearance in series television, a walk-on in a 1966 episode of The Virginian that was shocking for a couple of reasons. Her part as a dance-hall girl amounted to one scene that had nothing to do with the plot; it was something obviously written as a favor or a motivator, probably with ex-husband William McGarry pulling the strings. McGarry served as a long-time assistant director with a career that went back to To Be or Not to Be with Carole Lombard in 1942, and his many credits include Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn. (Oh, by the way, I wrote books about both actresses. Fireball. Dutch Girl. Warrior.)

I gasped the first time I saw Peggie Castle in this scene in The Virginian that was shot around the holidays 1965. Three and a half years had passed since Lawman wrapped production in May 1962, and Castle now looked like absolute hell, sporting what appears to be a black eye. They could cover that left cheek with makeup, but the swelling was another story.

Last glimpse of Peggie Castle–a one-scene curio on The Virginian.

If somebody were to write a book about Peggie Castle, I promise to buy it to learn what story arc set this woman on a path of self-destruction that ended when ex-husband McGarry found her sitting on the couch in her Hollywood apartment, dead at age 45. In an era when players earned no residuals for their movie and TV work, how did she pay rent for that apartment? How did she buy enough booze to wreck her body so fast? Most importantly, why did she lose the desire to live and work and need to be anesthetized 24/7? Did Hollywood kill her as it has taken so many others, and if she had never left Appalachia, Virginia, would everything have been different?

Lots of questions and no answers as I sit trapped in time watching Lawman.