Lawman – “Tarot” – Season 4, Episode 13.
Lily: Did you bring the tarot cards, Joe?
Joe Wyatt ( Lily’s friend who has just arrived in town): Ever see me without them? (gets tarot cards out of a large cigarette case)
Johnny (the Lawman’s deputy): What kind of cards are they, Mr. Wyatt?
Joe Wyatt: Fortune telling cards. The gypsies had them when they wandered the ruins of Rome. These were old when the pyramids went up on the banks of the Nile. Or so they say. Nobody knows who made up the first tarot deck. Some say the Devil himself.
Lily: Tell my fortune, Joe. For old time’s sake.
Joe Wyatt: If you remember old times, Lily, you know I never tell individual fortunes. Makes for disappointment and unnecessary worry.
Lily: Please, Joe.
Joe Wyatt: Well, I suppose I could lay out the tarot deck for all of us, a kind of general fortune that might apply to any one of us here. Will the fair queen cut? (He lays out the cards in a six card cross, the first card, crossed under the Wheel of Fortune, is face down and is never turned up.)
5 of Cups – Somebody’s going to get some money.
The Juggler standing upright – Somebody’s going to take a trip.
The Wheel of Fortune beside the dark of the Moon – That’s kind of hard to figure, unless somebody’s going to sit up all night with a pot of gold.
Lily (looking at the final card): The Hanged Man.
Johnny: Well, what does that one mean?
Joe Wyatt: Oh, it’s not exactly the best card in the deck. Stay out of bad weather, bad company, something like that.
Johnny: Oh, I see.
Lily: You better tell him what it really means, Joe.
Joe Wyatt: If there were anything to this nonsense, it’d mean that somebody at this table is going to die.
(Much later after two of the four predictions come true . . . )
Joe Wyatt: If you keep looking you’ll find everything in the tarot cards, one way or another. It’s a carnival act from a circus.
(At the end, as Joe lays dying and all the predictions have come to pass, he gives the tarot to Lily):
Joe Wyatt: Might even make a man think there was something to all those cards. But don’t you pay any attention to them, Lily. They only tell you what you want them to tell you.
Joe Wyatt: Might even make a man think there was something to all those cards. But don’t you pay any attention to them, Lily. They only tell you what you want them to tell you.
Thanks to Paul Nagy I’m adding the Have Gun—Will Travel episode, “Everyman” from 1961 (Season 4, Ep 27) that starts with a Tarot reading featuring “The Drowned Sailor, the Phoenician” (the card is never shown, but according to A.E. Waite, it’s the true name of the Hanged Man). Could “Everyman” refer to the Fool?
Name that deck!
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September 7, 2015 at 2:56 pm
Paul Nagy
Actor who played Joe Wyatt: Robert McQueeney after IMDb
Biography: Date of Birth 5 March 1919, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA ; Date of Death 24 April 2002, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA
After leaving acting, Bob McQueeney became a golf pro. After he and his wife separated, he studied to be a Catholic priest. He was ordained and for the last twenty years of his life served as the director of the Padre Pio Foundation in Cromwell, Connecticut. His wife Patricia became one of Hollywood’s most popular agents.
Trivia: Ironically became a writer as per his duties as spiritual director of Padre Pio of America. Padre Pio is based in Italy. The same country where his TV character war correspondent Conley Wright was based in the The Gallant Men (1962).
September 7, 2015 at 3:06 pm
mkg
Paul –
Thanks, as always, for the info. People are so interesting.
September 7, 2015 at 4:08 pm
kamikazezealot
This reminds me of an episode of “Have Gun Will Travel” that I watched a few years ago. A fortune teller read the main character’s cards in one, maybe two of the episodes. Tarot pops up in old westerns when we least expect it. 🙂
September 8, 2015 at 7:34 am
Paul Nagy
Have Gun – Will Travel: Season 4, Episode 27 Everyman (25 Mar. 1961)
In the prolog Paladin entertains Fortune teller Madame Destin, [played by 1940’s B-Movie regular, June Vincent] in his suite, to humor her he allows her to casy Tarot cards for him. The Wheel of Fortune, the Grim Reaper, and the Drowned Sailor face Paladin’s Chevalier of the Swords.
With possible death in his near future, perhaps his only hope will be the drowned sailor. Paladin visits his pal Cus Mincus in the desert town of Temple City the next day, where it seems unlikely that he will find sailors, drowned or otherwise. However, threat of death awaits, as he meets Danceman, who has removed weapons in the town, vowing he will kill any gunfighter he meets. Danceman tells Paladin that ‘nobody owns life, we just rent it’.
October 3, 2015 at 3:45 am
The Hit List - Ben Franklin Is My Homeboy - The Tarot Lady
[…] Mary Greer found Tarot on TV with this episode of Lawman. […]