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SCANDINAVIAN ~ GUNFIGHTER ~ FROM BROOKLYN ~ | |
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Those of us who have spent more of our lives watching westerns, much more so than we have eating, sleeping, and procreating, know instantly two of the actors who played the North Fork blacksmith-- John Dierkes and Karl Swenson. Curiously, Dierkes only played the character twice, and Swenson once. Yet the two early Dierkes episodes set the base from which everything else was to diverge, and Swenson--by the very sameness of his name to that of the character-- may have dropped an anvil into this river of changes. (Ponder this puzzle--in Swenson's one episode called "The Vision," he was identified by a sign in the story as Svensen, but was listed in the closing credits as Svenson.) How substantially was Karl to influence the flow of the The Rifleman? The irony is, the show actually seemed to have caused more ripples in his life. Consider his resumé: Before his appearance in The Rifleman, he had only portrayed one Scandinavian on screen: a character named Lars Larsen. Yet after playing Nils Svensen/Svenson in The Rifleman, he went on to portray a horde of Northmen on film: Dr. Lindstrom, Lars Nordquist, Lars Carlson, Karl Swenson, Dr. Karl Hansen, Lars Hanson, Lars Karlgren, Dr. Karl Svenson, Captain Neils Larson, Dr. Kihlgren, and Lars Hanson. Was it fate borne in genes that brought Karl to a continent that he was to populate with stereotypes? His Swedish ancestry may have been true, but a truthier truth is that Karl was born in Brooklyn. Truthiest: Karl Swenson was made to develop a Norsey accent by a Hollywood that offered him that niche. Scriptwriters have always indulged in the in-joke of naming characters after friends and enemies in the industry, but Swenson's Scandinavianity may be the biggest laugh ever in the saga of casting. The Karl Swenson phenomenon does yield a couple of lessons: First, that Karl--by himself--caused no problems; he was a regular in both Cimarron Strip and Little House on the Prairie, and the names of his two characters remained constant. Clearly, it took a multiplicity of actors in the same role, Swenson's Scandinavian schtick, and a couple of drunken set designers on The Rifleman, to bring about the baffling blacksmith bender. Second, that Swenson's own name (which itself sometimes shifted to Swensen) definitely had a tendency to invade like a Viking the lives of his characters--not only did it muddy the waters of The Rifleman, but he had two other roles where his characters literally became him-- Karl Swenson, and Dr. Karl Svenson. An invasive procedure indeed. May 29, 2007 Copyright © 2007 E. A. Villafranca, Jr. All Rights Reserved |
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