F Troop
F Troop is a satirical American television Western sitcom that ran from September 14, 1965 to April 6, 1967, with a total of 65 episodes, airing for two seasons on ABC. The show is about U.S. soldiers and American Indians in the Wild West during the 1860s. The first season of 34 episodes was broadcast in black-and-white and the second season was in color.
The series relied heavily on character-based humor, verbal and visual gags, slapstick, physical comedy, and burlesque comedy. The series played fast and loose with historical events and persons, and often parodied them for comical effect. Some indirect references were made to the culture of the 1960s, such as a "Playbrave Club", a parody of a Playboy Club and two rock and roll bands, one of which performs songs written in the 1960s.
Setting and story
F Troop is set at Fort Courage, a fictional United States Army outpost in the Old West, soon after the American Civil War. Fort Courage was named for the fictitious General Sam Courage. A town of the same name is adjacent to the fort. The fort is constructed in the stockade style typically found in most American Westerns.The commanding officer is the gallant although laughably clumsy Captain Wilton Parmenter, who is descended from a long line of distinguished military officers. He is awarded the Medal of Honor after accidentally instigating the final Civil War charge at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Serving as a private in the Quartermaster Corps, he is ordered to fetch the commanding officer's laundry. As Parmenter rides off to get the laundry, he repeatedly sneezes. A group of Union soldiers mistake his sneezing for an order to attack, turning the tide of the battle and "earning" Parmenter the nickname "The Scourge of Appomattox". He also is awarded the Purple Heart after he is accidentally pricked in the chest by his father and commanding officer while receiving his first medal, making him "the only soldier in history to get a medal for getting a medal." He is promoted to captain of remote Fort Courage, a dumping ground for the Army's "least useful" soldiers and misfits; the Secretary of War notes, "Why, the Army sent them out there hoping they'd all desert." Indeed, of the three commanding officers at Fort Courage before Captain Parmenter, two did desert, while the third suffered a nervous breakdown.
Much of the humor of the series derives from the scheming of Captain Parmenter's somewhat crooked but amiable non-commissioned officers, Sergeant Morgan O'Rourke and Corporal Randolph Agarn. They, in league with the local American Indian tribe, the Hekawis—led by Chief Wild Eagle. The pay for the fictitious scouts is apparently used to help finance O'Rourke's operation. Although O'Rourke and Agarn try to take full advantage of Captain Parmenter's innocence and naïveté — Parmenter is referred to as "Great White Pigeon" by Wild Eagle — they are also very fond of and fiercely protective of him. Parmenter also struggles to exert his authority outside the ranks. Very bashful, he tries to escape the matrimonial plans of his girlfriend, the amorous shopkeeper–postmistress Jane Angelica Thrift, known locally as "Wrangler Jane" —though he becomes a bit more affectionate toward her during the second season.
The episode "Captain Parmenter, One Man Army" reveals that all of the soldiers of "F Troop" have been at Fort Courage for at least 20 months, meaning they spent at least part of the Civil War there. They are so incompetent that when they are formed into a firing squad in the episode titled "The Day They Shot Agarn", all of their shots miss Agarn despite the fact they are standing only a few yards from him. The most common running gag through both seasons of the series involves the fort's lookout tower. Every time the cannon is fired in salute, the lit fuse burns out. Corporal Agarn or Private Dobbs then kicks the cannon's right wheel, collapsing the cannon and causing it to fire off target. The cannonball strikes a support leg of the lookout tower, bringing it crashing to the ground along with the trooper in it. In one episode, an arrow brings the tower crashing down, and in another, Parmenter yanks down the tower with a lasso. In another episode, loud music causes the tower to collapse. The fort water tower is also prone to this gag. In one variation, Vanderbilt, Parmenter, O'Rourke, and Agarn are standing in the water tower platform when a lone Indian, "Bald Eagle", tries to capture Fort Courage by scaling the tower and jumping on the platform; the combined weight causes the floor to collapse and "Bald Eagle" to be captured. In another variation of the cannon gag, the cannon collapses as it is fired, and blows up the fort's powder magazine, causing Agarn to be saved from a vengeful Chief Geronimo.
Episodes
Characters
Main
F Troop officers and enlisted men
- Captain Wilton Parmenter is the so-called "Scourge of the West." As military governor of the territory and commander of Fort Courage, he is credited with keeping the peace. Chief Wild Eagle knows him by a different title: "The Great White Pigeon". When the need to keep up appearances arises, the troopers and the Hekawis stage mock battles to fool Parmenter and outsiders. Parmenter is successful at "keeping the peace"; he just does not know why. He is well-meaning and sweet-natured, although essentially clueless and a bit gullible. He also invariably is kind and encouraging to his men, and always bravely leads them into action, albeit ineptly. A stickler for regulation and proper military conduct, he checks the Army Manual for even the oddest situations, such as "If a soldier is captured by horse". A perpetual klutz, Parmenter is forever jabbing himself, pinching his fingers in or on something, banging into, tripping over, or knocking things over. He cannot dismount a horse properly, and frequently becomes entangled with his ceremonial sword. Parmenter, born in Philadelphia, comes from a "proud family" with a "great military tradition." Among his relatives are his first cousin Major Achilles Parmenter, second cousin Lt. Colonel Hercules Parmenter, uncle Colonel Jupiter Parmenter, his father General Thor Parmenter and his great-grandfather Major Hannibal Parmenter—who was with Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge. By contrast, Corporal Agarn's great-grandfather was a deserter. Jeanette Nolan played Parmenter's visiting mother in "A Fort's Best Friend is Not a Mother". When his sister Daphne Parmenter visits the fort, her eyes are on Private Dobbs. O'Rourke frequently calls Captain Parmenter "the Old Man" though Parmenter usually is surprised at being called that because he is fairly young. In one episode, he receives a medal for accidentally capturing Chief Geronimo, who falls into a bear trap while trying to kill Corporal Agarn. In "The Majority of Wilton", he turns down a promotion to major because it would mean being reassigned to a new command and leaving F Troop.
- Sergeant Morgan Sylvester O'Rourke is the Sgt. Bilko of his day. Originally from Steubenville, Ohio, he has been in the Army at least 25 years, and it took him either 10 years to become a sergeant or has been a sergeant for 22 years as of his 25th anniversary. O'Rourke's business dealings involve illegally running the local town saloon and an exclusive-rights treaty with the local Indian tribe to sell their "authentic" souvenirs to tourists and for the commercial market through the shady, undercover O'Rourke Enterprises operation. He also tries to find ways to fleece the men out of their pay through different schemes such as finding the men mail-order brides. Though most of his business schemes fail, he apparently is the only competent soldier in F Troop. O'Rourke is mentioned as a veteran of the Mexican–American War, but nothing is said about the Civil War. In "The Sergeant and the Kid", the tall and rugged O'Rourke shows his romantic side by taking an interest in the widow Molly Walker and her son Joey. In "Don't Look Now, But One of Our Cannons is Missing," O'Rourke claims he saved Agarn's life twice—once from drowning and once when a rattlesnake bit him. Tucker's wife at the time, Mary Fisk, appeared in the series twice. She played Squirrel Girl in "Lieutenant O'Rourke, Front and Center" and Kissing Squaw in "What Are You Doing After the Massacre?". In one St. Patrick's Day episode, Forrest Tucker played Sgt O'Rourke's father - a Stage Irishman who is just as much as con man as his son is.
- Corporal Randolph Agarn is O'Rourke's somewhat dimwitted sidekick and business partner in the shady O'Rourke Enterprises. The character Agarn, originally from Passaic, New Jersey, took six years after enlistment to become a lowly corporal. At the time of the series, Agarn has been in the cavalry for 10 years, and has been posted to Fort Courage for the last four, apparently spending the Civil War years at Fort Courage. He has impersonated Generals George Washington and Ulysses Grant. However, in dual roles, Storch played numerous lookalike relatives of Agarn, including his French-Canadian cousin Lucky Pierre, his Russian cousin Dmitri Agarnoff and his Mexican bandito cousin Pancho Agarnado, known as "El Diablo.". Confrontational and often overly-emotional in every respect, Agarn frequently collapses in tears with the phrases "Oh, Cap'n!" or "Oh, Sarge!". To get the men to attention, he barks out his trademark loud and exaggerated "Aaaaa-aaahh" command. Whenever he becomes frustrated by something one of the troopers does wrong, short-tempered Agarn hits him with his hat which, unlike everyone else's, is grey Confederate army issue. A hypochondriac, Agarn thinks he has contracted the illnesses he reads or hears about or others around him have. Agarn was briefly promoted to sergeant in the episode "Lieutenant O'Rourke, Front and Center". Larry Storch was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding performance by an actor in a leading role in a comedy series in 1967.
- Bugler Private Hannibal Shirley Dobbs is F Troop's inept bugler, originally from New Orleans, who can only play "Yankee Doodle" and "Dixie" with regularity. Standard U.S. Army tunes such as "Reveille", "Assembly", and "Retreat" are only occasionally played competently. One episode had him playing a song, which Wrangler Jane says is a lovely rendition of "Old Kentucky Home", only for him to say he'd been trying to play "Reveille". A southern "mama's boy", he is also Captain Parmenter's orderly, as well as serving in the fort's cannon crew—usually with disastrous results. Private Dobbs is a personal thorn in Agarn's side, with his regular taunts resulting in Agarn's frequent retort, "I'm warning you, Dobbs!", even threatening him with a court-martial. Dobbs learned how to use a lasso on his mama's alligator farm. Dobbs was briefly promoted to Corporal in the episode "Lieutenant O'Rourke, Front and Center". In one episode O'Rourke saved Dobbs from being married by explaining to a gold-digging mail-order bride that Dobbs was not a rich man.
- Trooper Vanderbilt is the fort's lookout, who seems all but blind even with glasses and answers questions from the lookout tower about what he sees with incongruous responses, such as "No, thank you Agarn. I just had my coffee." He once allowed two Indians wearing feather head-dresses to enter the fort unchallenged. Asked why, he replied, "I thought they were turkeys." In another episode he mistakes a flock of turkeys for attacking Indians. In one episode, he shoots his pistol in a crowded barracks—and manages to miss everyone. Vanderbilt was a bustle inspector in a dress factory before joining the Army. In the running gag that brings the lookout tower crashing to the ground, the heavyset Vanderbilt is the soldier who comes down with it.
- Trooper Duffy is an aged old-time cavalryman with a limp, the result of his "old Alamo injury" acting up again. Duffy claims to be the lone survivor of the siege of the Alamo in 1836, and loves to recount his exploits alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, "shoulder to shoulder and backs to the wall" roughly 30 years before being in F Troop.. However, no one ever seems to take his claim seriously, and he may be engaged in telling tall tales. Parmenter discovered that Duffy is listed as dead in his service record.