“Think less hippie, more Hells Angels”

“Think less hippie, more Hells Angels” is Sam Wanamaker’s concise direction for shaping Caleb DeCoteau’s look in the Lancer pilot. Spoken while Rick Dalton is being prepared for the role, it refines an initial suggestion of a hippie hairstyle into something more menacing, and captures the show’s attempt to bring the harder visual and moral atmosphere of contemporary Westerns to television.

The Direction on Set

Wanamaker first tells Rick that he wants Caleb to have a different hairdo, moving him away from the Brylcreem look associated with an older generation. When Rick asks how different, the director suggests “Something more hippie-ish.” Rick responds skeptically, asking whether he is meant to look like a hippie. Wanamaker corrects the image: “Think less hippie,” he says, “more Hells Angels.”

The distinction is a matter of emphasis, not a rejection of the original idea. Wanamaker explains that he wants a long-haired Indian wig, which he will cut into a hippie hairstyle, then quickly assures Rick that the result should read as a “scary hippie.” The proposed hair is therefore designed to carry two associations at once: the visible countercultural style of the late 1960s and a more intimidating, outlaw presence. The direction gives Rick a usable physical concept for Caleb without treating the character’s appearance as a simple imitation of hippie fashion.

Rick’s Place in the Pilot

The exchange takes place as Rick begins work on the Lancer pilot, where he plays Caleb, the heavy opposite Jim Stacy’s Johnny Lancer. Rick has read the script closely enough to recognize that the series is not merely repeating the familiar Western formula. He sees a family-and-ranch premise with some resemblance to Bonanza and The High Chaparral, but considers Lancer darker, more violent, and more cynical.

That contrast also shapes Rick’s understanding of the characters. He regards Murdock Lancer as a hard, uncompromising patriarch rather than a reassuring, fair-minded father. Scott Lancer fits more readily into the likable-good-guy tradition, though his Eastern-dandy clothes and former service with the Bengal Lancers give him a distinctive profile. Johnny, by contrast, is written with the secrecy and doubtful moral character usually given to a guest star who arrives in a Western town with a hidden past. Rick recognizes the unusual choice of making that kind of figure the series lead.

Caleb’s appearance belongs to the same effort to distinguish the pilot from a conventional television Western, but it serves a different dramatic function. Johnny is the series’ antiheroic lead; Caleb is the formidable opponent whose presence helps define the danger against which that lead will be measured. The hair direction makes Rick’s villain part of the show’s new visual register rather than a standard, interchangeable heavy.

A Television Western Recast

Wanamaker had considered casting Joe Don Baker, whose size appealed to him, but chose the more recognizable Rick instead. The decision offered a chance to take a known television cowboy and turn audience expectations against themselves: Rick, familiar from roles such as Bounty Law and The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, would now be the heavy facing Jim Stacy’s hero. The casting made Caleb’s menace part of the pilot’s larger contrast between established Western stardom and a new kind of lead.

For Wanamaker, that newness was not just a matter of hairstyle. He did not want Lancer to look like Bonanza, The Big Valley, or the many other Western series of the 1960s. Italian spaghetti Westerns had helped establish a grittier style, while American Westerns were increasingly featuring younger stars, more striking costumes, and morally ambiguous heroes. Earlier villain players such as Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef, and James Coburn were becoming heroes and movie stars; villains, meanwhile, could be sadistic and their violence more graphic. Wanamaker could not reproduce that full level of brutality in a CBS series airing on Sunday evenings, but he could pursue its atmosphere through appearance and character.

The line about hippies and Hells Angels is a small, practical expression of that strategy. It converts a broad cultural reference into a specific acting and design instruction: Caleb should carry enough of the period’s long-haired look to feel current, while reading as dangerous rather than merely fashionable. The phrase marks the point where the pilot’s countercultural surface is made to serve the Western’s conflict.

What the Phrase Reveals About Lancer

Rick’s response shows that the direction is not self-explanatory to him. He questions the proposed look rather than simply accepting “hippie” as a clear description, and Wanamaker answers by narrowing the target. The exchange turns style into a negotiation between director and actor: a recognizable trend is offered, challenged, then recast as a threat-bearing image that Rick can play.

The scene also distinguishes Caleb from Johnny. Wanamaker’s broader ambition is to make Johnny the closest thing to an antihero among the Western leads on television, while Rick’s look is being adjusted for the antagonist. The direction does not make Caleb the show’s version of Johnny; it helps establish a world in which the hero and the heavy both depart from the softer conventions of older television Westerns. In that sense, “Think less hippie, more Hells Angels” is both a grooming note and a compact statement of Lancer’s tonal ambition: contemporary in its visual vocabulary, but sharpened toward menace.