The California-born actor is back as Bat Masterson for Season 3 of the INSP docudrama series.
A half-decade before the premiere of Wild West Chronicles, the popular docudrama series returning for a third season Thursday on INSP, California-born actor Jack Elliott took his first crack at playing Bat Masterson in an episode of Gunslingers, the Emmy Award-nominated 2015 American Heroes Channel series.
“Before Gunslingers,” Elliott says, “I didn’t know that much about Bat. My dad and I watched a lot of Westerns [while I was] growing up. And one of his favorite shows was Bat Masterson, along with The Rifleman and Have Gun Will Travel. So I knew a little bit. But not until I really delved deep into the research part of it did I find out what a renaissance man he was.”
So he was well prepared to interpret Masterson in Wild West Chronicles not as the spiffily-dressed gunfighter and occasional lawman memorably portrayed by Gene Barry in the 1958-61 TV series — and by, among others, Randolph Scott in Trail Street (1947), George Montgomery in Masterson of Kansas (1954) and Joel McCrea in The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959) — but rather as the formidable figure who transitioned from Old West legend to New York journalist in his later years.
The INSP series cleverly imagines a series of assignments that carry Masterson back to his old stomping grounds in the late 1880s. Each week, the shootist-turned-wordsmith returns to the West to gather material — and conduct interviews — for in-depth, up-close profiles of such notables as Billy the Kid, Bass Reeves, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Temple Houston and Belle Starr. From these first-hand accounts, he aims to gather facts that often are stranger, and wilder, than fiction.
Elliott recently joined us in the C&I Studio to talk about the 13-episode Season 3 of Wild West Chronicles, which airs at 10 pm ET Thursdays on INSP.