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Date Posted: 21:32:21 07/18/12 Wed
Author: SWC
Subject: The Glory Era: 1965-69

I'll post this in sections. First, the ranching shows:

THE BIG VALLEY

This was largely “Bonanza” with women. Barbara Stanwyck was the head the family, running the Barkley ranch in Stockton, California. The extended family included Nick, (Peter Breck), the hard-boiled foreman of the ranch. Richard Long, (recovered from the heart problems that had sidetracked his Warner Brothers’ career), was his brother Jarrod, who was a lawyer, allowing them to have some courtroom episodes. Lee Majors was Heath Barkley, a half brother, who showed up demanding his share of the ranch but was eventually welcomed into the family. Then there was Audra, played by Linda Evans long before she was a member of another rich family on Dynasty. Initially there was another sibling, Eugene, variously described as “introspective” and “sensitive”. He quickly disappeared without explanation, as did an elderly black butler named Silas. The stories could have been done on Bonanza or The Virginian: the quality was pretty high. There was a rousing musical theme. There were even a couple of guest appearances from Pernell Roberts after his Bonanza days. It’s a wonder we didn’t see the other Cartwrights. After all, their spread wasn’t that far away.

Here is the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTlzIjhLl3c
Lee Majors looks amazingly like a blonde Elvis in this episode at the beginning of his career.


SHANE

Before he became Kwai Chang Caine, David Carradine was a TV version of Shane, for 17 episodes, anyway. The bad guy Rafe Ryker, was still around, (although he was killed in the movie) but Joe Starrett, the farmer Shane helps out in the flick, was deceased, leaving his widow, (played by Jill Ireland) and her young son to fend for themselves until Shane comes along.

Here’s the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkgFwZeDo9c

THE MONROES

An interesting offering, (shot in the Grand Tetons, where Shane was, and that film is obviously a strong influence on the story here) about a family who had bought a plot of land in Wyoming and piled into a wagon train to find it. The mother and father died along the way, leaving their five children, age 6-18, to fend for themselves. The second oldest was played by a young actress named Barbara Hershey, who is still around today, having played Natalie Portman’s mother in “Black Swan”, quite a distance from that plot of land in Wyoming.

Here is the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AETe9Dgh3Dk

THE HIGH CHAPARRAL

In the beginning of Bonanza, the Cartwrights were a rather wild clan, full of rough edges. Ben went around bellowing like and Old Testament Prophet. Adam and Joe feuded over the Civil War and even Hoss was a bit cruder than he later became. As a family, they had a fearsome reputation to everyone else, fueled by their xenophobic reaction to any visitors. Lorne Greene went to producer David Dortort and said they can’t continue that way. How were they going to have any stories if they scared everyone away? The characters were softened to make them more palatable to both the cast and the audience and the show went on for 14 years.

But the original Cartwrights were probably closer to what a western ranching family would actually be like. They had to claim the land and defend it from all comers, (including those who already lived there). They would have to have a single-minded toughness and a ruthlessness with any opposition. Ben Cartwright would have been closer to Rafe Ryker than the Father Knows Best of the West, as he became. I think that was probably in the back of Dortort’s mind when he created his second ranching show, The High Chaparral in 1967.

Leif Erickson, (real name William Anderson: there was probably already one of those in union and “Leif Erickson” was a name they’d remember), played John Cannon, who had all the sentimentality of an artillery piece. He chose to create a ranch in the middle of Apache territory, which failed to please Cochise, (Paul Fix of all people: he was the crippled Marshal on “The Rifleman”) or Don Sebastian Montoya, who owned the Mexican spread that was across the river and how claimed Cannon’s land or various banditos and other varmints who traveled through the territory. Helping him, (sort of) was his brother Buck, (Cameron Mitchell), a rather loose Cannon, and his sensitive, (weak?) son, Billy Blue (Mark Slade). John had a wife, Billy Blue’s mother, who gets killed in the first episode. John then made a dynastic marriage to Don Montoya’s beautiful daughter, Victoria, (the equally beautiful, Linda Cristal), which insured that the Cannon family would inherit both ranches but the Don’s daughter would have a strong husband who could hold onto them and run them with authority. Victoria’s brother Manolito, moved into the Cannon household to look after his sister. Their various problems provided enough fodder for four years of stories.

I always wondered what it would be like to be a traveler, (maybe a Mark Twain style journalist) who visited the various ranches of the TV West: the Ponderosa, Shiloh Ranch, the Barkley spread and the High Chaparral and the others. I think I would probably enjoy my visit to the Cartwrights the most because of the atmosphere of warmth that prevailed. I felt I would have enjoyed the High Chaparral the least. Despite the desert heat, it seemed it could be a rather icy place to be. Sixties audiences must have agreed because Bonanza was still on the air when The High Chaparral was canceled. But in some ways, this show anticipated a show that was also on for 14 years in a later generation: Dallas, with all it’s family squabbles. The series had considerable continuity to it with one episode building on the action of the previous one. And unlike Bonanza, but similar to Ponderosa, it told the story from the beginning.

The first two episodes were edited from the original pilot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLPUJQ9NMUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wRzeA_rbDE&feature=relmfu

HONDO

One of John Wayne’s most famous films is “Hondo” (1953), which also has Wagon Train’s Ward Bond and Gunsmoke’s James Arness. Paul Fix, (the Marshal on The Rifleman), plays a cavalry major. Terry Wilson and Frank McGrath of Wagon Train are also in it. Both were stunt men and McGrath is given a speaking part. Geraldine Page, a Broadway actress making her film debut, played the love interest.

The film has been compared to Shane although the resemblance is only superficial. Hondo is a loner who works as a scout for the Army. His only companions are his horse and his dog. He comes upon a woman and her child trying to keep a small farm going. Her husband is constantly “away”. Later Wayne kills a man in a dispute only to find out that he was the husband. Wayne gets captured by Apache Chief Vittorio, who has been friendly to the woman, (she lets them use her well). Vittorio thinks Wayne is the long-lost husband and releases him to return to his “family”. But Wayne and the woman, (page) fall for each other and have plans to become a family when war breaks out between the Army and the Indians.

Fourteen years alter, Wayne’s Batjac Production company did a TV version of Hondo starring Ralph Taeger, who had starred previously in “Klondike”. They spiced it up a bit by making Hondo the former son-in-law of Vittorio who had lived with the Apache and seen his wife killed in a raid by the cavalry, for whom he reluctantly works. He was also a former Confederate officer. Kathie Browne was in the Geraldine Page role. Vittorio is played in both the movie and TV series by the Australian actor Michael Pate. Noah Beery Jr., (later Jim Rockford’s father), had the Ward Bond role.

The show only lasted 17 episodes and is represented on U-Tube only by three brief clips, the longest one of which is this one, (in French):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhtZlanT1c

Here is the trailer of the 1953 movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez-PxYIF3Tw
The kid is Lee Aaker of “Rin Tin Tin. The performances of Wayne and Page in their love scenes were highly praised: she got an Oscar nomination. But Page later accused Wayne of trying to get her blacklisted for her liberal political views.

LANCER

The decade ended with still another ranching show, “Lancer“, which also took place in Stockton California, the location of “The Big Valley“. Murdoch Lancer never met Victoria Barkley, however. We also never saw Ben Cartwright, who would have been just over the mountains. Ben had three sons. Murdoch had two: college educated Scott Lancer, (Wayne Maunder of “Custer”, with less hair), and Johnny Madrid, a gunslinger played by James Stacy. He also had a pretty ward, Teresa, played by Elizabeth Bauer, (later on Ironside). Paul Brinegar, “Wishbone” from “Rawhide”) played Jelly Hoskins, Murdoch’s aging ranch foreman. Bauer was the daughter of the previous ranch foreman who had been murdered. Murdoch was always fighting “land pirates” who had their eye on his holdings. (The Big Valley was based on the story of the Hill Ranch whose owner, Lawson Hill was murdered in 1861. That ranch wound up at the bottom of the Camanche reservoir. You wonder if Lancer was partially based on the same story. Murdoch and Victoria had similar problems: maybe they should have married and combine their holdings as on The High Chaparral.)

The show went on for three years but the last year was all re-runs from the first two seasons. (CBS was known for that at that point: they did the same thing with \Jackie Gleason’s Show). There’s a note on the IMDB saying that Lancer was filmed in the same area where MASH was alter filmed. Here is the premiere, “The High Riders“:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-jcpZljyaw

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