The one TV character Tom Hanks always wanted to be like: “A friendly guy on a motorcycle”
The world of Hollywood is a truly heinous place to leave your self-esteem. Beyond the very real necessity to always be in the limelight and deal with the conversations, let alone criticisms, that go along with such a mantle, the city relies on failure as much as success. It means Tinseltown is as riddled with those willing to bring you down as celebrate you. You’d be hard-pressed to find an American actor quite as widely beloved as Tom Hanks.
Sure, the likes of Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep might come close, but few of these people have the same effortlessly affable approach as Hanks, who remains humble in spite of his two Oscar wins and countless collaborations with movie master Steven Spielberg.
Rising to fame at a considerable pace in the early 1980s, Hanks starred in the Ron Howard mermaid romance flick Splash in 1983 and immediately put himself in the Hollywood shop window. Thanks to his performance, Penny Marshall recruited Hanks for the coming-of-age tale Big, which would later become a seminal classic of the late 20th century, allowing the actor to enter the final decade of the 20th century with a fair amount of industry clout.
Still, despite his success by the 1990s, Hanks would himself admit that it was his initial stint in the world of TV that would allow him to thrive. Appearing in Family Ties, Happy Days and Taxi in the early 1980s, it was the somewhat outdated comedy Bosom Buddies that would grant him the most success, starring in the beloved show, about two single men who have to disguise themselves as women to live in their expensive apartment, alongside Peter Scolari.
While he has made his name most prominently in Hollywood, Hanks has dipped his toe into other productions away from the glamour of feature films, too, of late, and shared a real soft spot for television. Producing Masters of Air as well as narrating a documentary series about America.
A lover of the small screen, as well as the silver one, Hanks, revealed, in an interview with Rolling Stone back in 1988, one of his favourite television icons. “Did you ever watch the TV show Then Came Bronson?” he asked the interviewer, “Michael Parks as Jim Branson – now that guy I honestly wanted to emulate. I wanted to be a friendly guy on a motorcycle who gave everybody a fair shake and yet always rode out of town at the end of the hour”.
A thrilling drama series, Then Came Bronson, aired from 1969 to 1970 and told the story of a disillusioned reporter who quits his job and begins speeding through the streets on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, looking for some purpose in life. Starring the great Michael Parks, the majority of the show involved the protagonist interacting with locals, where he would share his words of wisdom.
Hanks isn’t the only fan of the series either, with Tarantino saying of Parks: “He’s always been one of my favorite actors in the world. On Then Came Bronson, Michael gave these Brando-like performances, the most naturalistic acting I’ve ever seen on a TV show”.
An iconic show of the era, Then Came Bronson, also gave rise to other such Hollywood stars as Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern and Robert Loggia. Take a look at the trailer for the programme below.
