Earl Holliman

            On Sunday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky and finished the roll. I would need to get some more later that day. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow. It didn’t catch as many bedbugs as usual. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck, turned the heat on, and went to bed around 1:37. I got up to pee at 4:47, turned the heat off and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and there were a few on the walls above the baseboards. 

            I posted the lyrics for “She Betrayed Her Man to the Undercover Cops”, my translation of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian Facebook page and on my own Facebook page. The next Vian song on my list is “Je trouve ça coperchic” (I Find it Super Chic) but there is no audio for the song so I’ll just revise my translation and publish it on my Christian’s Translations blog without the music. 

            I worked out the chords for all but the last two lines of the first verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I weighed 90.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since last Sunday. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I went over to Home Hardware and bought two rolls of carpet tape. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few bedbugs. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos before lunch. September 29 was the last early afternoon when I was so unkind to the scale but I was a lot meaner that day. 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was a little behind in my journal and worked on catching up.

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, chicken nuggets, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching the final episode of the TV series Custer. This was the last episode to be taped but it never aired. 

            Dan Samuels is a former army scout who is being sent to prison for three years for stealing army food and giving it to the Cheyenne. Custer feels bad about Dan’s sentence and has some sympathy with his actions. He has also considered him a friend although we’ve never seen him before. In respect for Dan’s years of service to the regiment Custer asks that his handcuffs be removed before he is placed in the prison wagon. Also Dan’s pregnant Cheyenne wife Red Moon Woman is there to see him off and so Custer allows them a moment together. But Red Moon Woman has a horse with a rifle in a scabbard ready for him and he jumps on it. Two guards try to stop him but he knocks one away and shoots and kills the other before escaping. The tragedy is that the review board would have lowered Dan’s sentence so that he would have only served six months at the most but for Dan even half a year was too much.

            Custer wants to go after Dan alone but General Terry won’t allow it. So Custer asks for a temporary leave of absence. Terry allows him one week knowing that Custer would probably go even if he didn’t grant it. 

            Custer carefully follows Dan’s trail. He stops at a trading post where the proprietor says he knows Dan. Custer is looking for Lance Springs and the man says it’s due north so now Custer knows it’s south because he can tell he’s protecting Dan. 

            Custer finds fresh horseshoe prints so he knows Dan is nearby (But it seems to me that Red Moon Woman wouldn’t have given him a shorn horse as Cheyenne and other plains horses developed stronger hooves). 

            Dan is behind some rocks and is about to fire but Custer sees him in time and jumps from his horse. The horse is killed and Custer takes shelter behind some rocks. They shout back and forth each trying to figure out where the other is through the echoes of their voices but Custer figures it out first, sneaks around and jumps him. They fight until Custer wins. Dan says he could just let him go but he won’t. 

            Then they notice a Sioux war party that’s come out to investigate the shots. Custer has Dan at gunpoint and says to start walking. A Sioux warrior jumps Dan and Custer kills him. While Custer is looking at where the other Sioux are Dan knocks him out and takes his rifle. He kicks Custer into a crevice so he won’t be found and then leaves. 

            Custer tracks him to a campsite where Red Moon Woman is preparing a meal and then Dan arrives. Custer comes out with his gun trained on Dan (where did Custer get a second rifle?). He says Red Moon Woman will have to come with them until Dan is in custody. She tells Custer she will do anything to save Dan. She would even become Custer’s woman. 

            Suddenly she goes into labour and says the baby is the wrong way around. Custer has delivered a colt before that was in breach and so he does the best he can and Red Moon Woman gives birth to a girl. She’s ashamed of not giving Dan a boy but he assures her that a girl is better. He says every buck in the territory will be giving him horses because they’ll want to marry her. 

            The Sioux are camped nearby and yet the baby doesn’t cry which is pretty unrealistic. Once his wife is recovered Dan tells Custer he’s going to go with her to the Sioux camp. He reminds him that the Sioux Chief War Horse would love to carry Custer’s yellow scalp on his lance so he’d better not try to stop him. Custer lets them go. 

            They walk into the Sioux camp. Dan says he lost his horse. War Horse says the only dead horse nearby is a cavalry horse. War Horse had found a piece of Dan’s buckskin jacket near the body of the brave that Custer killed. He sees that it matches and Dan begins to fight. Custer jumps in to help him. Custer shoots War Horse but before he dies he fatally wounds Dan. Dan tells Red Moon Woman to make sure his daughter knows he loves her and then he dies. They bury Dan and then Red Moon Woman heads for Cheyenne territory with her baby. 

            Dan was played by Earl Holliman, who became interested in movies while ushering at a cinema. In his early teens he became a magician’s assistant. He ran away from home at 15 hoping to make it in Hollywood. When that didn’t work he lied his age and joined the navy. He was assigned to a navy communications school in Los Angeles and in his free time he hung out at the Hollywood Canteen. He was transferred to Virginia and became involved with theatre within the navy. After the war he studied at the UCLA Drama School and the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his film debut in Destination Gobi in 1953. He co-starred in the Rainmaker (and won a Golden Globe), I Died A Thousand Times, Giant, Anzio, Sharkey’s Machine, Trooper Hook, Don’t Go Near the Water, The Trap, Last Train From Gun Hill, Visit to a Small Planet, He starred in The Biscuit Eater, He made his TV debut on Matinee Theatre in 1957. he appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show 14 times, The $10,000 Pyramic 95 times, He was in the first episode of the Twilight Zone in 1959. He was a regular panelist on Hollywood Squares. He starred in the short-lived series Hotel de Paree and Wide Country. He co-starred in Police Woman, P.S.I. Luv U, Delta, Night Man, . He was the president of Actors and Others for Animals for 25 years.