Since the pandemic began, my husband Perry and I have stayed close to home. Where we used to eat out several times a week, we only go out once a week now to a trusted restaurant.
We’ve taken to watching more television than before, hopefully landing on series that have multiple seasons, like All Creatures Great and Small, Frasier and Vienna Blood among many that are available.

Peter Breck played Nick Barkley on the popular cowboy
show The Big Valley.
One such tried and true series is the original Perry Mason. Raymond Burr is a bear of a man with soulful eyes and a shy smile. He always gets his man or woman; you can count on it. It is the most comforting show on the air.
We are entering the seventh season; many actors turn up repeatedly in different roles. I thought I recognized one man this week and Perry found his name: Peter Breck. Ah yes. He was a staple in cowboy shows and played many seasons on The Big Valley. But I remembered him for another reason.
After my mother had announced her desire for a divorce, it took a while to get my father a place to move into. Mom tried to escape the tension at home by volunteering nights at the nascent Arena Stage at its first location, on New York Avenue in Washington at the Hippodrome, a former movie theater. The backstage area was so small that often an actor would exit stage left and run through the alley in back to enter stage right. The neighborhood was so dicey on at least one occasion, the poor actor was arrested, as the police found the behavior suspicious.
My mother concluded that Breck wasn’t the brightest. He was at Arena to perform in George Bernard Shaw’s, The Man of Destiny. Here he was discovered by actor Robert Mitchum, who took Breck out to Hollywood where his career would really take off.
(I am reminded that my mother once told we that at a party, a very drunk Mitchum cornered her to talk about his aspirations as a writer. This may have been the venue at which she encountered him.)
Every free moment he had, Breck stood in front of a mirror and drew a gun from a holster on his hip. He would do this for hours.
So based on Mom’s opinion, I decided it wasn’t cool to like Peter Breck.
Fast forward decades.
Perry finds the name of the actor Peter Breck while we’re watching Perry Mason. He looks up his history. A co-star of Breck’s on The Big Valley, James Drury, reported that Breck had a photographic memory. He only had to read the script once or twice before he had the entire thing memorized.

A quick draw gun and holster.
(Or so I've been told.)
And according to Wildest Westerns Magazine, where Breck wrote a column, he was able to draw his gun in 16/100th of a second, making his character on The Big Valley, Nick Barkley, the fastest draw in television history!
Well, whaddya know. There was a method to Breck’s madness and I’m glad I found out about it.
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