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Hargrove, Marion

Born October 13, 1919; Mount Olive, North Carolina, USA

Died August 23, 2003; Long Beach, California, USA

Maverick Writer

Marion Hargrove began his writing career as a newspaperman, and became a war correspondent during World War II. In Hollywood, he may best be remembered for his screenplay for 1962's "The Music Man,"[1] but he was very influential as a writer for Maverick.[2]

Hargrove is credited with the first inspiration for "Pappy" Beauregard Maverick. When he was dictating his first Maverick script to his secretary, Hargrove came up with a clever line of dialogue for Bret Maverick. His secretary hestitated in her transcription and Hargrove noticed the reaction. The line seemed too good of a line "for a dumb cowboy," but also too good to remove. Hargrove decided to leave it in, but by prefacing it with a line like, "As my old Pappy used to say…" When Hargrove told Roy Huggins about it, Huggins immediately saw the potential of the literary device as a way of quickly establishing Bret and Bart's philosophy and adding one more chance of humor into the scripts.[2]