text added by Kaye Spencer
For one television season, October 1958 through September 1959, a western called Yancy Derringer was a favorite show my parents watched. I was too young to remember it when it aired.
It must have gone into rerun/syndication at some point in my older childhood, because to this day I remember the theme music an the introduction to each episode. I had such a crush on Yancy.
This is the Yancy Derringer Wikipedia article for those of you needing to know more.
Hollywood stunt man, Jock Mahoney, played Yancy, and X Brands played his partner, Pahoo Ka-Ta-Wah. Jock was married to actress Sally Field’s mom, Margaret Field aka Maggie Mahoney, who was in two of the episodes.
Fast forward to early summer 2023.
I went looking for Yancy Derringer on Amazon Prime and found it, to my purchasing and downloading delight. I have since watched these 34 episodes many times. So many movie stars I grew up with, and loved, were guest stars on this show: Charles Bronson, Nick Adams, John Dehner, Louise Fletcher (aka the infamous Nurse Ratched), Lee Van Cleef, J. Pat O’Malley, Yvette Mimieux, Francis Bergen (Candace’s mother), and one of my favorite Hollywood and television villains…
Claude Akins.
Back to Mr. Akins in a bit.
Fast forward again to the first part of August. I was going through some stored-away dishes to send with my granddaughter to college, and I found these cups.
These are Anchor Hocking Fire-King D Handle coffee mugs. They were manufactured from the 1940s to the 1970s. Anchor Hocking was a company known for making Depression Era glassware. These cups are made of a sturdy, thick glass.
The stamp on the bottom of the cups reads: ANCHOR HOCKING Fire-King Ware Made in the USA . They were more commonly made in white. My grandparents had these, and I remember these in my house when I was young. These are all that remain, and I’m not sure why I ended up with them.
Move forward again to yesterday when I was watching Yancy Derringer episodes, and I discovered this little anachronistic gem in Episode 2 in a scene with Claude Akins. The coffee cup he is holding appears to me to be this very cup. The anachronistic aspect is Yancy Derringer is set in 1868 New Orleans. These coffee cups weren’t manufactured for another 72 years.
Since Yancy Derringer was filmed in 1958-1959, I have no doubt the props for this scene were whatever were on hand, and that happened to be these coffee cups.
Had I not unpacked those coffee cups when I did, who knows if I would ever have noticed this anachronism.
Little things like these delight me.
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
Lasterday Stories
writing through history one romance upon a time