Yancy Derringer is an American Western series that was broadcast from 1958 to 1959, with Jock Mahoney (1919–1989) in the title role. The show was produced by Derringer Productions and filmed in Hollywood by Desilu Productions. Derringer Productions consisted of half interest for Warren Lewis and Don Sharpe as executive producers, a quarter interest to Jock Mahoney for starring in the series, and a quarter interest to Richard Sale and Mary Loos, husband and wife, as creators.
The Sales based the series on a 1938 short story written by Richard Sale. In the 1930s, Sale was one of the highest-paid pulp writers. The story was never mentioned, but it was about a destitute aristocrat and troublemaker who returns to New Orleans three years after the Civil War. In the story, Derringer has no first name; "Yancy" was added for the television series.
The titular character, Yancy Derringer, is a gentleman adventurer and gambler. He is a former Confederate Army captain who has returned to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, in the southern Reconstruction Era. The state is under Union control and martial law. Life goes on in New Orleans despite the fact that the city's atmosphere is forbidding, filled with trepidation and mourning. The Derringer family itself had paid a heavy price in both lives and property during the Civil War. Yancy's brother David and his father Yancy, Sr., had died in the conflict.
Widely respected by all parts of New Orleans society as a southerner who never surrendered, Derringer is recruited by the Federal City Administrator, John Colton, to work as a secret agent at no pay; and only Colton knows of his special role. Often at the beginning of an episode, Colton, a former Union Army colonel, asks Yancy to help solve New Orleans' present threat; and often, usually at the end of an episode, he arrests Yancy for breaking the law to do it. Yancy agrees to be Colton's "huckleberry," because Yancy feels the United States should be one nation again. Huckleberry was just one of many unique southern slang terms creator Richard Sale brought into use during the show. One slang definition of Huckleberry is man, guy, or fellow, as in "I'm your huckleberry."
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