The Prisoner Comment

    Alexis Kanner on ‘Living In Harmony.’ “Well, Patrick sent a telegram {in those days there was no faxes} from Los Angeles that basically said "Look I'm getting lessons from Sammy Davis Jnr, who's the best in the world, and from Steve McQueen and I expect a really good show when I arrive." So I was given the Colt Peacemaker {although Kanner used to say "Pacemaker"} to take home and practice. And I practised, and I practised in the mirror. Finally to get it quicker and quicker.... you know you couldn't just pull the trigger on those old guns, because they didn't have the spring mechanism. You had to 'cock' it and then you could fire it. But if you 'cocked' it and fired it you'd be spaghetti... So the quick thing to do was to 'fan' it. 'Fanning' is a very serious business and to make it even quicker I eliminated the trigger, just wired it back so all I had to do to make the gun go off was this {at this point Kanner stood up and demonstrated the 'fanning' action. Meaning to pull back the hammer and release the trigger in one motion without the actual use of the trigger at all}. Except I think it was Frank Maher, the stunt man, told me I was taking my life in my hands because I would be ripping it out of the holster with a full load of gun powder in it, and I had the trigger wired back so it would just fire automatically if it hit anything, and that Robert Mitchum had shot off a piece of his leg that way once.

    In any case, by the time we got to the final shoot out, a lot of money was wagered because the guys said I'd got pretty quick, and there was a rumour that Patrick had got quicker. There was a lot of money on the sidelines as to who was going to outdraw who. The theory was that both guns would go off together and you wouldn't know.”

   And yet it was The Man With No Name {the Prisoner} who fired first, as the Kid paused for a second! Well it had to be, couldn’t have the Kid standing there with a smoking gun, standing over the body of Number 6. On the other hand, that could have worked, if the Kid had shot The Man With No Name instead of the Judge. Number 6 could still have woken up wearing his Village attire, wearing headphones. But instead of lying in the dust on the Saloon floor, he’d have been lying in the dirt in the street!

Be seeing you