Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies – Volume 152: “The Rockford Files – The Queen of Peru”

• Today’s Movie: The Rockford Files – The Queen of Peru
• Year of Release: 1977
• Stars: James Garner. Noah Berry, Jr., Ken Swofford
• Director: Meta Rosenberg

This movie is not on my list of essential films, largely because it’s not a movie at all.  It’s an episode from the fifth season of my favorite television show ever.

That’s because this installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called The Tenth Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blog-A-Thon, which is being hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. Thanks to his devising and hosting this event, I get another opportunity to write about The Rockford Files.

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

• Days One, Two, and Three

The Story:

Fans of this show will understand exactly what I mean by this. Jim Rockford never goes looking for trouble.; he doesn’t need to. It finds him. The Queen of Peru is the classic example. While Rockford is up to his lapels in a case for an insurance company client recovering a stolen diamond, the Wronkos (an “RV” family from Peru, Indiana) sets up camp at Paradise Cove…right next to Jim’s trailer.

Before I go any further with this, there’s some “housekeeping” of the “full disclosure” kind which needs to be addressed. This was always one of my favorite episodes, but now that I live in Indiana, I’ve picked up a whole new level of appreciation.

For starters, anybody who knows “The Hoosier State” is acutely aware that nothing in Indiana is pronounced they way you think it would be. For example, I knew right away Carl Wronko (played by Ken Swofford) wasn’t really from Peru, Indiana because he didn’t pronounce it like a true Hoosier would. Despite what the rest of the world does, in Indiana it’s “PAY-roo.”

Not to mention, I know the Wronkos. They’re the typical Indiana, middle-class family. In fact, if you replace the 1970s RV with today’s AirBnB in Florida, I don’t have enough toes to count how many Wronko families I know. I even have Carl Wronko’s hat. I never bought it, one just showed up in my mailbox with a note that said every middle-aged guy in The Hoosier State who isn’t a farmer or a truck driver is required to own one.

As far as the episode goes, the two things happening in Jim’s life at the time intersect on the morning he’s supposed to make the cash swap for the diamond. One of the thieves pulls into the parking lot on which Jim’s trailer sits, but what he does remains a mystery. Closer to dawn, Jim is awakened by the exceptionally noisy Wronko family.

At first, the the Wronkos seem to be little more than a series of annoyances. But as the diamond swap goes awry, Rockford is told the thieves hid the stolen jewel in the ashes of his charcoal grill. The twist is when Jim returns home to verify the thieves’ story, the the grill is gone…and so are the Wronkos.

Turns out in their hurry to depart, Wronko’s son broke their grill, so he stole Rockford’s. Carl Wronko dumps the ashes out of the grill (and the $2 million Borland Diamond) in a trash pile at one of hundreds of state parks along the California coast. Even if you have the best Rockford crystal ball out there, there’s no way you saw that coming.

Here’s the point when The Queen of Peru becomes a combination homage to a It’s Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Smokey and the Bandit. Rockford’s search for the Wronkos is an amazing 70s CB-Radio festival dripping with Indiana references (all while nobody uses the “Hoosier” pronunciation of Peru, by the way). Once he finds them, Rockford and Wronko chase one way along the coast looking for the diamond…putting them on a collision course with the jewel thieves.

That inevitable collision serves as the denouement delivered as as only Rockford episode can. There’s the suspense of a car chase spiced with some shotgun blasts, all topped with Jim Rockford getting behind the wheel of Wronko’s “Road Queen” RV to discover the combat value delivered by it’s sheer size.

While the actual recovery of the Borland Diamond is not shown, the end comes with a meeting in Rockford’s trailer between Steven Calipher (played by George Wyner) who represents the insurance company, Carl Wronko, and the series’ title character. The ironic twist comes when Wronko uses his involvement in the insurance business to force Rockford into an agreement to split the reward for recovery of the diamond. But it actually turns out to disqualify him from any such claim.

But the capper comes at the moment when Rockford thinks he’s rid of the Wronkos. Their “Road Queen” suffers a catastrophic breakdown, thus guaranteeing a few more days in Paradise Cove.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Maybe it wads a function of the 1970s, but the characters then were just so much better. There never will be a better TV detective than Jim Rockford, and there was almost nothing better for pure entertainment value than “old-school” pro wrestling. After Vince McMahon, Jr. took over the wrestling world, it became more “big business” and the product in general settled into global mediocrity. Before that, it was about regionally-based operations featuring larger-than-life characters who created larger-than-life stories both in and out of the ring. To that end, there was almost no better definition of larger-than-life than Virgil Riley Runnels, Jr.

You may not recognize that name, but if you were a fan of “old-school” pro wrestling, you can’t help but know his character because “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes was one of the largest ever.

Ironically, the Texas native got his start in the “squared circle” in a place very much outside the city limits of his hometown of Austin. Runnels ran all the way to Boston in 1967 to become “The American Dream.” It wasn’t long after that when Rhodes crossed paths with another son of the “Lone Star State.” Once he met “Dirty” Dick Murdoch, one of wrestling’s most famous “tag-team” duos came about.

Together as the “Texas Outlaws,” Rhodes and Murdoch enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top of the wrestling world in the 1970s. They became such a draw that they employed a rather large…and living… prop.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce “Zeb the Donkey.” According to Dusty Rhodes, Zeb was “a very entertaining son of a bitch.” Rhodes expounded on Zeb’s talents.

“He could take a handkerchief off his back leg and untie it. He could kneel down and bow, and he was a rodeo donkey,”

~ Dusty Rhodes

Now, being as “character-driven” as pro wrestling was in those days, you know there were some stories surrounding Zeb. But the best one didn’t happen in the ring. While details are sketchy, and may vary depending on the version of accounts you can find, the common theme is Dick Murdoch rode Zeb into a bar going full “Yosemite Sam” emptying a pistol into the ceiling.

But the story that fits our “smuggling” theme took place in a high-rise apartment building in a Minneapolis suburb. Obviously, it doesn’t require advanced degrees in zoology or urban planning to grasp the idea that quartering a large mammal might present some challenges to a couple of city-bound wrestlers.

It’s best to leave this in the original words of “The American Dream.”

“We had a brand-new apartment house in Edina, and me and Hoyt Richard Murdoch tried to keep it in our new apartment. But it would go down the hall and proceed to just go to the bathroom. Eventually, the guy came to kick us out. Murdoch had the greatest face of all, and he looked at the guy and said, ‘Well, what for?'”

‘What for? The donkey crapped all over the hallway!’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, you can’t have a donkey in a place like this!’ True story. I’ve got pictures too!”

~ Dusty Rhodes

I know that apartment building. I’m pretty sure lived in that apartment building. Knowing when it was built, it had to be the only one that tall in that suburb at the time. If I’m right, the lease I signed didn’t allow dogs over 80 pounds, let alone a full-grown donkey, which could easily top half a ton.

But that’s what takes a tale from “story” to “legend,” especially when it’s told by a legend.

The Moral of the Story: Be it diamonds or donkeys, smuggling is a business best done by the discreet…not loud RV families or pistol-packing wrestlers.

---

Check out Dubsism’s Movies and Blog-A-Thons page for a full schedule of projects past, present, and future!

Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at  dubsism@yahoo.com, @Dubsism on Twitter, or on our Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.