If you are old enough like me, you might remember a TV show
that premiered on September 17, 1969 called “Then Came Bronson.” This show resonates
even today among certain people (especially motorcyclists) who call themselves “
Bronsonites.” This show was on NBC for one season, but the character, played by
Michael Parks, and the red 1969 Harley-Davidson Sportster, continues to have a
cult following after more than 40 years. By the way the television shows pilot was
released in Europe as a feature film.
In the opening credits of the show there is the iconic
encounter that seems that it could have come from H-D’s own publicity
department. In fact many people in this counter culture era could identify with
the businessman in the station wagon as Bronson pulls up beside him at a
stoplight on his Sportster. Basically the bored businessman asks “Taking a
trip?” Bronson says “Yeah,” where the man asks “Where to?” Our hero then
replies “Oh I don’t know, where ever I end up I guess.” The guy in the station
wagon then says those famous words “Man, I wish I were you.” Bronson questions “Really,
well hang in there.”
How many times today do we as biker types pull up next to
someone in (what now would be the typical suburban van) and hear those same
words?
There is a custom motorcycle builder named Don Collins who
is one of the “Bronsonites.” He latched onto the Bronson character and probably
yearned to get on his bike one day and just head out with no particular
destination. Collins like many thought that the Bronson character was
fictional. Through contacts in the group he found out that Bronson’s character was
based on the real life of Birney Jarvis.
Jarvis also is a former Hell’s Angel, as well as a prize
fighter with an eighth grade education. He was the first reporter of the San
Francisco Chronicle hired with less than a college education. He was also hired
and fired several times from the newspaper. In fact it was in Hunter S. Thompson’s
famous 1966 best seller “Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the
Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs,” that Thompson writes that it was Jarvis who
introduced him to the Angels president Sonny Barger.
In the show Bronson tells his editor he is quitting. This
was the third time that he had quit since he was disillusioned by the suicide
of his best friend, and in the parlance of the day, “I’m sick working for the
man.” In real life Jarvis bought a boat
and sailed down the pacific coast. Later Jarvis wrote a book “What do you do
with a Drunken Sailor.” A friend of his from the Chronicle was now a movie
writer. He took the book, created a character named Jim Bronson reversing
Birney’s initials, ‘J’ is from Jarvis and the ‘B’ is from Birney. A Harley was substituted
for a boat and there you go.
At a request from Jarvis, Collins built a loose replica of
the 1969 Sportster using a 1979 Sportster. The bike is red just like the television
shows Harley and also has the interesting “Eye of Providence” decal on the peanut
tank. As a newspaper article reported in 2010, the two planned on meeting with
other “Bronsonites” for a motorcycle trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
By the way, some critics have always said that the TV show
ripped off the film “Easy Rider.” Actually “Easy Rider” came out later. Michael
Parks parlayed the show into a somewhat cultist film career. He’s worked in
many films including what you would call drive-in horror movies and
anti-establishment films in the 1970’s. Lately he has had roles in Quinton
Tarentino’s film and subsequent sequel “Kill Bill 1&2.” Parks also is a
singer of some note, his song “Long Lonesome Highway” featured in the closing
credits of the show hit #20 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1970.
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