William Shatner and Andy Griffith Played Against Type (and Each Other) in Pray for the Wildcats

From 1969 to 1975, ABC put out weekly films. They functioned as TV pilots, testing grounds for up-and-coming filmmakers, and places for new and old stars to shine. Every month, Chloe Walker revisits one of these movies. This is Movie of the Week (of the Month).

The ABC Movie of the Week loved casting against type, but 1974’s Pray for the Wildcats took that practice one step further: Taking two TV legends, placing them in roles completely antithetical to those that had made them stars, and then pitting them against each other. The result was, in its own uniquely TV movie kind of way, spectacular. 

Warren (William Shatner), Paul (Robert Reed) and Terry (Marjoe Gortner) work for an advertising agency desperate to keep their wealthy but erratic client Sam Farragut (Andy Griffith) on the books. Sam is well aware of that desperation and revels in it, basking in the power of having the men in thrall to him. His latest power game is to insist the three accompany him on a motorbike trip in Mexico across 600 miles of desert, supposedly to scout locations for an ad campaign. In reality, it’s just another excuse to make them jump through his hoops. When Farragut’s violent impulses result in an unexpected tragedy, Warren, Paul and Terry are forced to examine what is most important to them: Professional ambition, or justice.

Today, among movie lovers, Andy Griffith is perhaps best known as the terrifying demagogue Lonesome Rhodes in Elia Kazan’s prescient 1957 classic, A Face in the Crowd. By the time Pray for the Wildcats first aired in 1974, however, that performance was not in the forefront of most viewers’ minds; Griffith was far better known for spending most of the ‘60s as beloved sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show. He’d followed that up with a series of short-lived productions he hoped would echo his eponymous megahit’s popularity, but nothing was proving even slightly as successful. 

William Shatner was in a similar place in his career. After finishing his original three seasons as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk in 1969, he’d been on his own wilderness run, taking guest spots on TV shows and various TV movies, returning to the journeyman he’d been before first boarding the USS Enterprise (although when Pray for the Wildcats aired, he was midway through his initial voice-only return as Kirk in Star Trek: The Animated Series). 

Captain Kirk was a typically heroic figure—suave (in a campy, ‘60s way), confident, brave. In Pray for the Wildcats, Shatner plays Kirk’s opposite. Warren Summerfield is exhausted and miserable; a wrung out sponge of a man in dire need of a good rest and a tiny bit of hope. He’s repelled by Griffith’s Sam Farragut, and full of self-loathing at the things he and his colleagues have to do to keep him as a client, but is so deeply depressed that he can’t seem to fathom a way out of his subservience. It’s only when he’s on the brink of ending it all, and truly thinks he has nothing to lose, that he finds the wherewithal to fight back. 

But Farragut remains a fearful adversary. Though at six feet tall, he was a fairly standard height for a TV actor, Griffith’s imposing physicality makes him feel far taller. There’s something animalistic about his presence in a scene; the way his features all seem too large for his face. While Jack Turley’s screenplay does hand him plenty of chances to go big, he’s actually more frightening in his quieter moments, where it’s never quite clear what intentions lie behind his wolfish grin.

Knowing where Shatner and Griffith were at this point professionally—foundering in their own personal deserts with the oases of their next big projects undoubtedly feeling like mirages—gives Pray for the Wildcats even more of a bitter, weary bite; a pervading note of sweaty despair that seeps into all its dusty corners. And what to make of the unavoidable fact that the two spend the bulk of the duration wearing tops that look just like Star Trek uniforms? This is a movie full of humiliations: Farragut being handsy with Terry’s girlfriend (Janet Margolin) in front of him, knowing that he’d never say anything to risk Farragut’s ire (alas, this is a film at best cursorily interested in the inner lives of its female characters); Warren’s boss chiding him about his “little, narrow lapels” (ah, the ‘70s!). Dressing a decidedly bedraggled, beaten-down Shatner in the clothes of his glory days could read as its own form of mockery.

The film as a whole is an imperfect beast. At 90 minutes, it’s unusually long for a MOTW and didn’t need to be; the excision of some of the many similar shots of the four men riding in the desert, however handsomely lensed they are, would have made this a sleeker journey. The great Angie Dickinson, as one of “the wives,” is criminally underused. And although Shatner, Griffith and Reed (who, as the paterfamilias of The Brady Bunch, was also playing against type) all give engaging, convincing performances, the same cannot be said for the fourth of their number: Marjoe Gortner. While the man himself had a fascinating story—the former child preacher performed his first marriage at age four; a documentary about his life had won an Oscar two years earlier—his turn is gratingly loud and unwieldy.

Any time Griffith and Shatner go face-to-face, however, barely hiding their mutual antipathy behind shark smiles and faux obsequiousness (Shatner is great at giving ostensibly servile remarks a sarcastic kick), Pray for the Wildcats becomes completely thrilling. There’s a relatability to their dynamic that’s surely led to the MOTW’s second life as a cult classic—who hasn’t had to repress their distaste for a boss behind a dead-eyed smile in order to keep their job? It’s not just the spectacle of two TV titans playing both against type and against each other, but that their battle and the psychology behind it feels so firmly planted in real life, that gives the movie its tangible edge. 

Griffith and Shatner would both eventually find their next big projects (Matlock and the Star Trek feature films respectively), and in the scopes of their long, storied careers, the 1974 MOTW would survive as little more than a footnote. Nevertheless, once you’ve spent these 90 minutes with them in deserts both literal and metaphorical, smelling the fumes of exhaust and desperation, you’ll understand there’s something about Pray for the Wildcats—despite its considerable flaws—that’s surprisingly indelible.

Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.