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Date Posted: 20:54:04 05/19/12 Sat
Author: SWC
Subject: The Glory Era: 1957

The western really exploded onto the TV screens in 1957. No less that 15 new western series appeared, including several of the most famous and best remembered ones. No other year produced such quantity and quality in the genre.

Casey Jones
A syndicated show primarily for children, I remember this as being on when I was a small child and my father came home: it was shown just before the local news and Dad and I would sit down and watch it. Alan Hale Jr., often typecast as a buffoon was a strong father figure here, engineer of the Cannonball Express, who would battle rivals, robbers and Indians. The theme song is one of those you can remember years later. I was interested to see that virtually every review on the IMDB of this show is by someone my age who remembers it from when they were little boys, including people from the United Kingdom and Australia, (that’s my review first):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051263/reviews

Here is part one of the premiere episode, “Night Mail” on U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQDpN_EFozk
In you pay close attention, you’ll see that in the climatic race, they seem to pass the same tree several times.

The Californians
A Desilu production about early San Francisco, it had two heroes. The first one was a gold miner played by Adam Kennedy, who becomes a member of the Committee of Vigilance. Sponsors got nervous about having a hero who was vigilante so Richard Coogan was introduced as a town marshal after the first 22 episodes. The whole show disappeared after two seasons and there isn’t a trace of it on U-Tube.
http://www.westernclippings.com/remember/californians_doyouremember.shtml

Colt 45
One of the less remembered Warner Brothers westerns, this was about Christopher Colt, a pre- James West federal gent posing as a gun salesman. It’s star, Wayde Preston, is more famous for his appearance in an episode of Maverick, “The Saga of Waco Williams”, as a hopelessly naïve character for whom everything always seems to work out in the end. This episode was alter remade as an episode of “The Rockford Files” starring Tom Selleck and that appearance, in run got Selleck the lead in “Magnum PI”. By then, Preston was long forgotten. He rebelled against Warner Brothers and his acting career suffered as a result. A licensed pilot, he wound up flying planes in Australia.

U-Tube has no episodes but this is the theme song from the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlD_GYIoqII

Frontier Doctor
Starred Rex Bell as the title character of this syndicated series, who went beyond the practice of medicine, “providing spiritual strength and establishing a high moral code”. Bell was the veteran of many “B” westerns over the years. He was the last of the singing cowboys in 1954’s “The Phantom Stallion”. He could put holes in the bad guys and then patch ‘em up.
This is the premiere: “Queen of the Cimarron”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UKcHgfFF4Y

The Gray Ghost
Not technically a western, it’s still mentioned in the book I’m basing this on: “Classic TV Westerns”. I remember seeing it as a kid. Todd Andrews was Major John Singleton Mosby, who headed a Confederate cavalry battalion behind Union lines during the Civil War. Like “Tales of the Texas Rangers”, this show opened with a shot of the hero who was joined, one by one by his men. I used to remember Robin Hood as opening like this but It doesn’t: this was what I was remembering. Andrews was considered to play Perry Mason but got this show as a consolation prize when Raymond Burr got that gig. It didn’t last long as northerners didn’t take to a series with a Confederate hero.
This is the premiere: “The Humanitarian”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FSpdHRcWBI


Have Gun Will Travel
An enduring classic of the TV western. Richard Boone created Paladin, a “knight without armor” whose gun- and brain was for hire and who viewed himself as a problem solver rather than a mercenary. He often turned against his employer when Paladin felt he was the one in the wrong. The show was the #3 show on TV, behind Gunsmoke and Wagon Train, for three years in a row from 1958-1961.
This is the premiere: “Three Bells to Perdido” with Jack Lord, 11 years before Hawaii Five-0, as the villain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiHyRdaHzpI

Maverick
Another classic that made a star out of James Garner. The jewel in the crown of Warner Brother’s westerns. The story of a gambler, Bret Maverick, (later joined by his brother Bart so they could film different episodes at the same time and keep up production schedules), who wanted to mind his own business and stick to what he did best but who keeps getting drawn into other peoples problems- or have problems created for him by the other people.
Here is the premiere, “War of the Silver Kings”, (which features a more proactive Maverick than you may remember):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIQ04UO3vhc

The Restless Gun
This was David Dortort first series, starring John Payne as Vint Bonner, a famous gunman tired of his reputation. The series was not Dortort’s original idea. When he got a chance to create his own series, “I wanted to do something besides the gunfighter myth, which was only a small portion of western history. What about the real people who settled the West, who struggled with all the hardships?” What about the Cartwrights?
Here is the pilot, which appeared on The Schlitz Playhouse on March 29, 1957:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjg2a06POxs
“Vint Bonner” is named “Britt Ponsett” in the pilot. Yes that’s Michael Landon in a early role. That’s also William Hopper, (Paul Drake on Perry Mason: the first season had been filmed in 1956 but the show wouldn’t premiere until the fall.)

Sugarfoot
This was the other well-remembered Warner’s western of 1957. Clearly based on “Destry Rides Again“, it was about a young man studying the law who preferred to solve problems in non-violent ways. Nobody knew it but his father had been a famous lawman and he knew perfectly well how to handle a gun. Will Hutchins played Tom Brewster. “Sugarfoot” is a step below “Tenderfoot” but this hero considered that reputation as an advantage of sorts. He liked being underestimated.
Here is the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Z8UxO8JnY

Tales of Wells Fargo
Dale Robertson played Jim Hardie, a “special investigator and trouble-shooter for Wells Fargo”. Basically he had to make sure shipments got to their destination without trouble. But there was plenty of it and the show lasted five years and 167 episodes.
U-Tube doesn’t have the premiere but here is an early episode: “The Hijackers”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doNYqD5lLy8

Tombstone Territory
This was a Gunsmoke clone, except the Marshal’s best friend wasn’t a doctor or dance hall girl but rather a newspaper editor named Harris Claibourne, who each week assured the audience that the stories were based on actual incidents that happened in Tombstone, Arizona in the 1880’s, even though both he and the main character, Sheriff Clay Hollister, were fictional characters. The show started on ABC but was then cancelled. In an unusual move, they kept making more original episodes for syndication after the cancellation.
Here is the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQwNFX7mLNo

Trackdown
This was the show that first brought Robert Culp to the public’s attention. He played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman and like “Tales of the Texas Rangers“, this was supposed to be based on the “official files” of that organization, although he never seemed to encounter the time-traveling “Jace Pearson” and “Clay Morgan” from that show. Hoby was stuck in the 1860’s and 1870‘s. Culp played him in the same casual manner as he later played Kelly Robinson in his most famous series “I Spy” several years later. The show’s pilot was an episode of “Zane Grey Theater” and , in turn, one of it’s episodes was a pilot for “Wanted Dead or Alive”, Steve McQueen’s star-making show. Culp’s casual air and McQueen’s flint-eyed intensity made an interesting contrast. But we’ll get to that later.
Here is “Badge of Honor” from “Zane Grey Theater”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tAdXzYDv9A
This includes “One of Colonel Mosby’s Men” but Todd Andrews doesn’t show up.

Twenty-Six Men
That was the number of men in the Arizona Rangers, an organization formed in 1901 along the lines of the Texas Rangers. Captain Tom Rynning, (Tris Coffin) was their boss and, again the episodes were based on their “official files”. The series was at least shot on location in Arizona. Lane Bradford was up for the role of Captain Rynning but lost out to Coffin and continued playing bad guys.
Here is the premiere, “The Recruit”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUPdGN0doLk
They even have their own “Doc Adams”


Wagon Train
From 1957-1967 four shows were ranked #1 in the Nielsen ratings as the most popular show in America. One was the Beverly Hillbillies, which as #1 from 1962-64. The other three were westerns: Gunsmoke, Wagon Train and Bonanza. Wagon Train was on for 8 seasons, a number topped only by Gunsmoke, Bonanza and The Virginian. Every season the wagon train would start out from Missouri and make it’s way west to California. They even did a show to open the second season about the major characters sailing from California “around the horn” to New Orleans before starting a new journey in the second episode.

The inspiration for the series was John Ford’s 1950 film “Wagon Master”, which had Ward Bond in it, but not in the title role. In that one Ben Johnson was the wagon master and Bond played the head of a group of Mormons. (James Arness was a bad guy.) Ford later came back to direct an episode of the series and used stock footage from his film, (requiring the regulars to change clothes for the first time since they set out to match the footage). It was called “The Colter Craven Story” (11/23/60) and featured a cameo by an actor billed as “Michael Morris”, also known as John Wayne.

Most of the episodes were called “The (Somebody’s Name) Story” as the show was really an anthology series about the travels on the Wagon Train or people they encountered on their way west. The regulars, Bond as ’Major’ Adams, (all wagon masters were called that), Robert Horton as scout Flint McCullough, Terry Wilson as Bill Hawks and Frank McGrath as comical cook Charlie Wooster, often were supporting players in the story of the guest star. This gave the writers greater latitude in the stories they could come up with, (which often involved extensive flashbacks), than a typical lawman or ranch type series.

Bond died suddenly of a heart attack on November 5, 1960, (he never got to see The Colter Craven Story), and was eventually replaced by John McIntyre as Chris Hale the new wagon master. I actually preferred McIntyre, one of my favorite actors but Bond is the one most people remember in the role. McIntyre was good enough that the show went on for another five seasons and was the #1 show for the 1961-62 season. Strangely, the show switched networks from NBC to ABC, (which had fewer stations) the next year and fell to #25. Then they experimented with a 90 minute format, (which The Virginian had had success with) but the ratings continued to fall and they went back to 60 minutes for it’s final season.

Wagon Train had three different musical themes:

The first was a sort of fanfare that was good as far as it went:
http://www.televisiontunes.com/Wagon_Train_-_1st_Series_-_Ending.html

The second was a show tune they probably thought they could sell records with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjOBOp1qY9s

Then they got it right. Jerome Maross was hired to give them something that sounded like a wagon wheel turning over and over and underscored the drama of the their journey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=mnya8qw8cHo

Ernest Borgnine, not long after winning his Oscar for “Marty“, appeared in the opening episode, “The Willy Moran Story”, as a drunken ex-fighter who comes through as a hero when the wagon train is attacked by robbers. Years later, when he was doing “McHale’s Navy”, he heard they were filming their last show and asked to be in that, too. He played an Indian chief, then went back to being McHale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwlZoEhN3uU

And just last month, somebody posted “The Vivian Carter Story” (3/11/59), featuring Lorne Greene as a widower with three, (unseen) children traveling west to find a place to settle down. David Dortort saw Greene arguing with Bond, (who was something of a blowhard) and concluded he had the intelligence and authority to play Ben Cartwright.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCdLqexEUlM

Zorro
In 1919 a pulp fiction writer named Johnston McCulley created a new hero, a Spanish nobleman Don Diego living in California who secretly battles injustices created by the local regime as Zorro, the finest swordsman in all California. As a cover, he pretends to be an inept fop who couldn’t care less about the poor and downtrodden. The character was obviously inspired by The Scarlett Pimpernel and also by a legendary, (and possibly fictional) bandit named Joachim Murrieta and in turn Zorro inspired the creators of Superman and Batman.

In 1957 Walt Disney sponsored a half hour series based on the character with Guy Williams in the starring role. The show got good ratings but was canceled in a dispute between Disney and ABC, (which now owned by Disney). Walt wasn’t through with the series and did four more hour-long episodes in 1960 as part of his Disneyland series.

Here is the premiere, (which was colorized in 1992):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVqFbWvDVjw

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[> Re: The Glory Era: 1957 (with: Dale Robertson) -- Joe H., 16:50:27 05/22/12 Tue [1]

Thanks SWC, of this interesting war story about the actor Dale Robertson over at: http://www.chuckhawks.com/combat_vet.htm = "During this operation they were under 88mm artillery fire and Dale Robertson told me he was wounded by shrapnel. I asked him about receiving the Purple Heart. He told me he dressed his own wounds and got on with the mission. He never reported to a military medical unit. With no official record, you get no official recognition." - Joe


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