Shady Deal at Sunny Acres

Shady Deal at Sunny Acres
Brothers Bart (Jack Kelly) and Bret Maverick (James Garner) exchanging glances at the Hotel Sunny Acres.
Genre	Western Comedy
Written by	Roy Huggins (teleplay) Douglas Heyes (story)
Directed by	Leslie H. Martinson
Starring	James Garner Jack Kelly John Dehner Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Diane Brewster Leo Gordon Richard Long Arlene Howell Regis Toomey Karl Swenson
Theme music composer	David Buttolph Paul Francis Webster
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
Production
Executive producer(s)	William T. Orr
Producer(s)	Roy Huggins
Location(s)	California
Running time	60 mins.
Release
Original network	ABC
Picture format	1.33:1 monochrome
Audio format	monaural
First shown in	Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
Original release	23 November 1958
Chronology
Followed by	The New Maverick Young Maverick Bret Maverick Maverick
Related shows	Sugarfoot Cheyenne Lawman Colt .45 The Rockford Files

"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", starring James Garner and Jack Kelly, remains one of the most famous and widely discussed episodes of the Western comedy television series Maverick. Written by series creator Roy Huggins (teleplay) and Douglas Heyes (story) and directed by Leslie H. Martinson, this 1958 second season episode depicts gambler Bret Maverick (James Garner) being swindled by a crooked banker (John Dehner) after depositing the proceeds from a late-night poker game. He then surreptitiously recruits his brother Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and a host of other acquaintances to mount an elaborate sting operation to recover the money.

As Huggins noted during a lengthy discussion of the episode in his Archive of American Television interview, the first half of the 1973 movie The Sting seems based on Huggins' script. While Bart and all of the series' recurring characters join forces to energetically flim-flam the banker ("....if you can't trust your banker, who can you trust?"), Bret sits whittling in a rocking chair across the street from the bank every day, responding to the amused and patronizing queries of the local townspeople curious about how he plans to recover his money, "I'm working on it."

"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" was generally the first episode that Garner mentioned in interviews.

The episode is also the only one featuring brief appearances by all of the series' early semi-regular recurring characters, including Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Dandy Jim Buckley, Diane Brewster as Samantha Crawford, Leo Gordon as Big Mike McComb, Richard Long as Gentleman Jack Darby, and Arlene Howell as Cindy Lou Brown. It proved to be the final series appearance for both Samantha and Dandy Jim. Additionally, for Gentleman Jack and Cindy, it was their only appearance in an episode in which Bret also appeared, although they shared not a single scene with Bret—all their dealings on Maverick were with Bart.