Rant #1,499: Goodbye, Wrangler Jane

Yes, several days have passed since it was announced that actress Melody Patterson had died, but due to circumstances, I never got to talk about it here.

To many, she was nothing but a footnote, one of those 1960s actresses, like Yvonne Craig, who had a long list of accomplishments in her day but had faded off the face of the earth in recent times.

But baby boomers will always remember her as Wrangler Jane Angelica Thrift, the comely, sex-starved gunslinger from the classic TV show "F Troop."

"F Troop" was one of the funniest shows of the era, a send-up of Civil War era America, right on a military base, the fictional Fort Courage.

Captain Parmenter, played by Ken Berry, ran that base, and he was as inept as could possibly be. And he was kept in the dark by Forrest Tucker as Sgt. O'Rourke and Larry Storch as Corporal Agarn, who played pow-wow with the Hakowi Indians and ran businesses on the side through O'Rourke Enterprises.

How did Wrangler Jane fit into this?

Well, way before women's lib, she was the finest shot on the base, and she had her eyes on the Captain, and just about every other part of her body and mind, too.

But the show ran just short of being leering, and Wrangler Jane was every bit the lady, too.

Patterson played the character to the hilt--or to the hilt that a 1960s sitcom would allow--and even though the show ran just two seasons on ABC, it became a classic in reruns, and she will forever be Wrangler Jane to us.

However, the back story is even more interesting than that.

Patterson somehow passed herself off as being of age--18 years old--to get the part.

However, when she won the role, she was just 15 years of age.

The story goes that she had, let's say, blossomed kind of early in her life, and by 15, she looked every bit of, well, probably at least 20 years of age, if not more.

She lived this kind of white lie throughout the show's run, and well, it is kind of strange that the role she had had her rolling her own goo goo eyes at Parmenter even though she was barely a teenager in real life.

This came out years later, and supposedly she apologized to the cast, which had absolutely no idea that the sex-charged Wrangler Jane was as young as she was in real life.

If I remember correctly, Ken Berry was taken aback by this, saying that if he knew then what he knew now, he didn't know if he could have played his role opposite Patterson with the same verve that he did back then.

I mean, heck, she was just 15 years old--he was in his 30s.

Kind of robbing from the cradle, in a TV sitcom sort of way.

Anyway, Patterson appeared on numerous shows in the 1960s, including "The Monkees," usually playing a vamp, based on her looks. But in real life, she was barely in her teens when playing these roles.

She later married actor James McArthur, and lived much of her life in relative obscurity in Hawaii, emerging every now and again in nostalgia shows, often meeting up with her former "F Troop" cast.

The way her death came out was also bizarre.

It came out that she had died, but that was pulled back, and reports were that Larry Storch was actually the one who had passed.

I mean, he was 92, she just 66.

But when it did come out that it was Patterson that died, the reason for death was, and still is, kind of bizarre: total organ failure.

She had lived in a nursing home, evidently, and had been ill for some time, but nothing more had been released on her cause of death.

Whatever the case, her work on that show and other shows will live on forever, and at 66, she died way too soon.

Rest in peace. You will always be Wrangler Jane to the baby boomer generation.

"Wilton!"