The TV show Jack Nicholson would have “loved” to star in: “They wanted to get on a series”
When Jack Nicholson set out on his acting career, no aspiring movie star wanted to become pigeonholed as a TV guy when there was such a clear distinction between the mediums at the time, even if there was one series he’d have gladly made an exception for.
Of course, performers tend to go where the work is, with Nicholson notching up several small screen credits in his early years. However, despite appearing in ten different shows between 1956 and 1967, on just two occasions did he stick around for more than a solitary episode.
After taking that last guest spot on The Guns of Will Sonnett, though, Nicholson never appeared in a TV series again for the rest of his days. Not that he needed to, when counterculture classic Easy Rider helped him crack the world of mainstream cinema after he’d paid his dues on one of those invaluable Roger Corman apprenticeships that have served so many icons so well.
One he got his foot in the feature-length door, he never showed any inclination to remove it, with Nicholson going on to set an Academy Awards record as the most-nominated male actor in history, notching three wins for his troubles and becoming a worldwide superstar.
As referenced in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, one of the easiest ways for an actor to find work in the ’60s was to seek out one of the countless western-themed shows that flooded the airwaves. Nicholson appeared in a couple of them, but not the one he always had his eye on.
Tarantino regular Bruce Dern – a friend and co-star of Nicholson’s in The King of Marvin Gardens – shared an anecdote about their desperation to the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs creator, who in turn regaled his own New Beverly Cinema with the duo’s desperation to take part in an episodic favourite.
“Bruce told me that he and Jack killed themselves trying to get on western shows. And I mean, guesting on them,” the filmmaker shared. “The Virginian is on for nine years, Doug McClure and James Drury stayed there, but then the rest of the cast like rotates every four years. They wanted to get on a series. Like, Nicholson would have loved to have been on The Virginian in its sixth season.”
By the time it left the airwaves in 1971, The Virginian was one of the longest-running westerns on TV after amassing nine seasons and almost 250 episodes. The sixth run – which Nicholson had his eye on, according to Dern – ran between September 1967 and March 1968, so it would have fallen neatly into the pre-Easy Rider years of semi-obscurity. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, with the star missing out on the chance to tick it off his bucket list.
