I’ve been on a then came Bronson kick lately. I can’t find any of the TV shows on YouTube but the website Dailymotion has a few complete episodes available free online and I’ve been watching them one a day for a week or so. A bit of backstory for motorcyclists under the age of 105: then came Bronson was an episodic, 1-hour TV drama about a guy traveling the country on his Harley Davidson Sportster. It was sort of like Easy Rider but without the drugs. This was in the era before Sportsters were considered a girl’s bike. In the late 1960’s the Sportster was a high performance motorcycle that ran with the best of the British bikes…in a straight line.
When tcB was a new show I watched it on a black and white television with maybe a 19” diagonal measurement. I was 12 years old and a TV show about motorcycles and motorcyclists not depicted as Hells Angels had never been done. I remember watching the TV show but I can’t remember specific episodes. In those pre-internet, pre-DVD recorder days if you missed the air date it was gone forever. Watching the old show on the Dailymotion site has been like seeing them for the first time.
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Bronson was from The Bay Area and he chucked it all to cruise around the California backcountry meeting interesting characters and saving damsels in distress. Watch the classic opening scene on YouTube: nobody wanted to be that guy in the station wagon. I guess distress is too strong a word. The damsels were more dissatisfied than distressed. They were small town girls trapped in boring lives and Bronson represented a different ending to the story. Bronson was their ticket to Any-where-else, USA.
Lord knows Bronson never went out of his way to encourage the girls but when you look like James Dean you don’t have to try very hard. Bronson’s sure-fire method for attracting women was to do exactly nothing. He wouldn’t talk unless really pushed into it. He never tried to get fresh or make the first move. Often he would fall asleep on a date with a beautiful woman who was holding up a cardboard sign that said, “Take me now, you idiot!” written in red lipstick. His method may have been sure-fire but his actual success rate was low. It wasn’t long before the girls would get frustrated, give up, and go back to their small town boys
Of course I didn’t notice this strangeness when I was 12 years old. It was enough to see a motorcycle on the television. Looking at the show today it is clear than Bronson suffered from narcolepsy and possibly landed on the high end of the autism spectrum. At times it seemed painful for him to speak, he would grimace before he could manage to drag the gut-hooked words out of his mouth. Sometimes when another character would ask Bronson a question his answer would be to turn away and look off into the distance. It was all too much for him.
It seemed like in almost every episode Bronson’s motorcycle would be wrecked. A car might back into him, he might run into a ditch and bend the forks or a friendly local might ride it into the lake. These crashes were a way to hold Bronson in a town long enough for the local women to throw themselves at him; normally it took two or three days for all of them to have a go at Bronson. If you’re a nitpicker for accuracy the scenes of Bronson repairing his bike will have you yelling, “That’s the fifth time you’ve put the gas tank bolt in!” or, “There’s no way you got that fender straight with two rocks!”
I’m poking fun at then came Bronson but it really was a great show that had a huge influence on my generation of motorcycle riders. Hell, it’s still a great show. Bronson came along at the exact right time to catch the first big wave of what we think of as modern motorcycling, when you could meet the nicest people on a Honda or a meanie on a Yamaha. The show still holds up well to re-watching if you can suspend logic for an hour. And who doesn’t love a show with a bronze-head Rudge in it?
As you can see in the photos above, watching then came Bronson had absolutely zero effect on me. I was lucky to travel around the country in 1975, only a few years after Bronson aired. The small towns in America still looked like scenes from then came Bronson. Today many of the towns I saw in my travels are boarded up and abandoned. Thriving businesses where I bought gas and a RC cola have crumbled into the ground. Turns out none of those people Bronson met and befriended really wanted to stay in their little towns. They didn’t know where they were going but they ended up somewhere.
After my Bronson binge I’ve been thinking about getting a jet-style, open face helmet like the one Bronson wore in the show. I know a full helmet is safer but I want more interaction with the environment, but not like my face on asphalt interaction. Maybe getting a few bugs in my teeth would be a good thing, and maybe I do talk a little too much. I’ll practice my pained looks and concentrate on the horizon. I wonder if I ignore CT long enough she’ll hold up one of those lipstick-lettered cardboard signs. That would be cool. Go check out then came Bronson on Dailymotion, and hang in there.
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I really need to watch some of these now. One of my buds i bet a few years ago as i was a fulltime moto traveler (I guess i sorta still am but…) said that show is about me. LOL. Nice write up
Great story Joe, I’m a long time Bronson fan myself. I really enjoyed the show and was heartbroken when it was taken off the air.
I also enjoyed hearing Michael Parks sing the tunes in the background that were always part of the story. I’m a member on the “Then Came Bronson” page on facebook, and something that I just found out is that he had a son named James Dean Parks!
When I joined the Navy in ’77 I think the greatest thing was being issued my “Watchcap” I was convinced that I looked just like Bronson in it…..
I dig the modified Sporty you had btw
I remember seeing the shows and now I have to find episodes. Thanks for the article. Yes, to pull off the Then Came Bronson you need to ditch the full face helmet. Thanks for the reminder of one of the best motorcycle shows. Actually the second best, following CHiPS.
It’s a wonderful show. I have the entire thing, including the pilot where Bonnie Bedelia rips off her wedding dress at the beach, on DVD. It’s superb. Thoroughly enjoyable. And yes, nobody wants to be the guy in the station wagon.
“Taking a trip?”
What’s that?
“Taking a trip.”
Yeah.
“Where to?”
Oh, I don’t know. Wherever I end up I guess.
“Man, I wish I was you.”
Really?
“Yeah.”
Well hang in there.
The show was so good it got canceled after one season .
Yeah I watched it.
I don’t think Parks looked like James Dean . Unless of course one thinks all Chinese look alike .
But no matter . Dean was gay so maybe the Bronson character was too.
Or his healthcare plan didn’t cover STD.
Truth is anything with a sportster is great . Especially Bronsons being that it was re-engineered to have a kick start . E start only may have added to the notion he wasn’t interested in girls. So the production team seemed to think .
I have a poster of the Mad Magazine cover of the issue that lampooned TCB and ER. Great stuff .
Long lonesome highway indeed.
Full of face helmets not required.
The all seeing eye . Ra will protect you!
Now if there only were women that talked less than Bronson, I would happily ride an iron head Sportster .
If you listen you can hear the electric starter when Bronson kicks his bike over. They probably did it to make starting more consistent for shooting. Can’t have Bronson cussing and kicking for 5 minutes.
My Sportster was a XLH when I got it. The first thing I did was get rid of the electric start and convert it to kick. Pretty stupid in retrospect.
Idk that joe. I didn’t hear well even back then .
But that was the spirit of the times.
So I don’t criticize you for ditching estart .
Estart was considered less reliable .
But as far as sportsters go, the starter , bigger bsttery , toothed clutch basket and the rest was added weight back when an xlch was still used in a variety of club races.
I did it for weight reduction. The huge battery and starter must have added 25 pounds.
It kick started pretty easy unless something was wrong.
I never saw the show or even heard of it, although that title has a slightly familiar ring. I’m not sure it aired in my area. I did, however, take off and travel around the country on a bicycle, and did meet a lot of people, but a hairy-looking lone wolf on a bicycle didn’t inspire women all that much in the 1970s. I did have two women offer to follow me by car, just before I left on my adventures, but one had three kids, and the other had a husband. I joined a bicycle group after some time, and they had pre-arranged places to stay, so then I met women who found me intriguing, at least at first. But, like Bronson, I was on my way very soon. I did inspire one woman to join the bicycle group, but I had just met another woman and had to make a choice. So, I guess I did attract women, but not while on my own. Too scary, I think. Eventually, settling down, the bicycle led me to consider getting a faster means of travel, one that could travel in the same lanes as cars, instead of in the gutters. Sadly, the bicycle became abandoned as I rode my iron horse everywhere, every day.
Well any show with used Sportster has my attention!
I admit to wanting watch the show as very young lad and remembering my parents would not let me watch it. It was too adult for me, they said… maybe now I am old enough to watch it!
My first thought when I read Gresh’s post was that Bronson could have bought a new Chinese motorcycle for less what a used Sportster went for back then, but in the story he got it for free in the first episode.
I never missed an episode. Loved it. It made me want a Sportster until I actually rode one years later.
Parks passed away in 2017 at the ripe old age of 77. Here’s a link to Parks’ Wikipedia page. He did a lot more than just that one series.
When Bronson was made China was a sleepy agricultural society. They’ve advanced 200 years since then.
I tried to watch every episode back then but we only had 1 television and sometimes other people wanted to watch ice skating or pig wrestling.
What?
Lol.
I hope you are joking .
I wish.
well misheal kwan actually chinese?
For more information, check out http://www.jimbronson.com (I’m Billy on that site) or http://www.thencamebronson.tv
both of those sites have DVD’s of the episodes for sale, which are made from VHS tapes when the show re aired on TNT in the 80’s.
The show definitely had a huge influence on a lot of future riders. I was 14 when the pilot movie came out, and 15 when the TV Series came out. I (and several others) have replicas of the Sportster in the show.. We way deep into the show and the motorcycles used to film it.
I’ve taken several coast to coast motorcycle trips because of Then Came Bronson. I got to meet Michael Parks shortly before he passed, and had him autograph the tank of my Replica Sportster. One of the cameramen from the show gifted me with the helmet he wore while filming the show..
cool. although i dont recall him ever wearing a helmet.
I had looked for a free site with the show before without luck I’ve been watching a few now and it’s all new to me. TV wasn’t a big part of my life growing up. Outdoors life, bicycle, tennis, hiking and shooting beat the poor reception and 3 channels. Now its not a thing, but I remember people who would rush home to see some program. Sad to me
If they got enjoyment from watching a TV show I don’t think it was sad.
People have different interests, one interest is as good as another. There isn’t a Nobility Scale to rank pastimes.