The Great Adventure - Six Wagons to the Sea

CBS The Great Adventure - Six Wagons To The Sea (1963)
Directed by: Richard C. Sarafian
Written by: A. I. Bezzerides
Starring: Lee Marvin as Misak Bedrozian, Walter Koenig as Cy Bedrozian
This rare television episode is a fictionalized telling of an incident involving the Seropian Brothers, pioneers of the San Joaquin Valley fruit packing industry. The story by A. I. Bezzerides takes a 1894 event and places it in 1907. Lee Marvin stars as Misak Bedrozian, an Armenian raisin grower who led a rebellion against the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and their the inflated freight rates.
Bezzerides, grew up in Fresno to a Greek father and an Armenian mother and had been a neighbor (possibly a relative) of the Seropian family.
What would compel an actor of Lee Marvin’s stature to take on this role? According to Lee Marvin himself, after reading the script he flat out rejected it. This was not the role for him. But A. I. Bezzerides and Richard Sarafian had other ideas and were set to convince him, they invited him to dinner at the Seventh Veil.
The Seventh Veil was a Armenian themed restaurant and nightclub in Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd. Opening in 1963, owned and operated by Leila Badalian and her family. Leila was also a dancer with a few television credits herself. And it was a popular spot for many of Hollywood’s actors and entertainers. It was also at this venue where in 1964 Oudi Richard Hagopian records his first album, “Live at the Seventh Veil” accompanied by Kanounist Jack Chalikian, percussionist Tsolak Sanasarian and Leila on the cymbals and tambourine.
Lee Marvin’s dinner turned into a night of eating, drinking, singing and dancing. “The next morning,” said Marvin, “I felt I had made a complete fool of myself the night before. But Sarafian said I made a perfect Armenian and told me I had to take the role”
Later, Marvin, would say he never enjoyed a television role more.
The story Bezzerides has woven, though fiction is based on factual events. The Seropian’s a band of brothers who settled in the Fresno in 1881, the eldest was Hagop followed by Garabed, Simon and half brothers, George and John. (In 1880, there were approximately 1000 residents in Fresno, by 1890 there were 360 Armenians)
They endured some hardships, like a fire burning down their first business. But they persevered and were impressed with the new land, Hagop and George started the Seropian Brothers company and in 1883 they enabled approximately 40 Armenian immigrant families from Marsovan to settle in Fresno.
The Seropians prospered in the fruit packing and shipping business, packers and commission dealers, they were the first to ship oranges and figs to the eastern markets from Central California. But then came the Southern Pacific R.R. Company who began to raise their freight rates to amounts the Seropians and the fruit-growers found unfair.
In November of 1894, the Seropian Bros. hired a driver and two freight wagons to be drawn by mule from Fresno to San Francisco. An experiment for an alternative to the shady dealings of railroad company. The San Francisco Examiner covered the story extensively, in an article titled “Result of Railroad Greed” dated Sunday November 18, 1894, it’s reported, “The experiment of Seropian Brothers will be watched with a great deal of interest by merchants of this city, as well as by the farmers and businessmen generally in the San Joaquin valley. If it shall prove successful, as is expected, residents of the valley may obtain not only a small measure of relief, but receive the benefits of a competing road much sooner the might otherwise have been the case.”
The Seropian Brothers’ experiment was a success, the fruits were delivered on time and the cause gained national attention. Within a few years the San Joaquin Valley Railroad was built and later sold to the Sante Fe R.R. Co. In 1898 the Seropians made arrangements to purchase land near the Santa Fe’s tracks and built a large frame packing house on “G” Street in Fresno. They’re one act of defiance caused positive changes in the legislature of California. The Seropians along with many other helped build California.
Nearly 69 years later, a story based on the 1894 incident was written by A. I. Bezzerides and was made into “Six Wagons to the Sea” starring Lee Marvin and directed by Richard Sarafian, airing on CBS.
Nearly 126 years after the Seropian Brothers protest, we present to you Six Wagons to the Sea
Article and episode restoration by: H. Arakelian