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Date Posted: 10:13:48 05/25/12 Fri
Author: SWC
Subject: The Glory Era: 1958

1957 had been such a success with westerns that 16 more were trotted out for 1958. As a group they were not as distinguished, didn’t last as long and are not as well remembered. But some are remembered today and one of them was a definite classic.

Bat Masterson
This is another western series from the classic era with a musical theme I’ve been able to hum all my life, even if I hadn’t seen the show in decades. Here is my review of it on the IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052445/board/thread/155024340?d=155024340#155024340
Here is the premiere, “Double Showdown”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQQm4d33Jw
…complete with a lecture from Gene Barry on what Masterson was like and two alternative endings to the story.

Bronco
Clint Walker, like all the Warner Brothers TV stars, resented two things: (1) he was stuck in a TV series when he had hopes of being a movie start and (2) Warner Brothers paid him just as one of their contract players- because that’s what he was to them. He received no more in pay than any other actor on the show even thought he was the star. Like many of his colleagues, he rebelled and was placed on suspension. But a bunch of scripts had been written for Cheyenne episodes and Warners had to do something with them. So they created another character, Bronco Layne, who also wandered the West doing whatever job suited him. The Cheyenne scripts were recycled with the hero’s name being changed. To play Bronco they assigned another of their contract players, the handsome but talent-challenged Ty Hardin. He preformed well enough to get a following of his won and the show continued even when Walker came back, with Cheyenne, Bronco and Sugarfoot alternating in another of Warner Brother’s “wheels”. Bronco kept on the horse until 1961.

U-Tube doesn’t have the premiere but here’s an early episode with guest star James Drury, called “Freeze Out”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MQt_jK4is
Note how easily Drury dominates ever scene he’s in while Hardin kind of fades into the background. Soon Drury would have a show of his own- a much better one.

Buckskin
This was an unusual series in that all the action in a typical western town was seen through the eyes of a kid, played by Tommy Nolan who narrated each episode when not playing on his harmonica. The music ended after one season and U-Tube hasn’t a trace of this one.

Cimarron City
George Montgomery who had made a career in movie westerns, came to TV to star in this ambitious series as the mayor of the title town. Most westerns to this point had been half hour shows but this was an hour show with a big budget and high hopes. Montgomery narrated the episodes from the perspective of an older man remembering all the action. The show was a battleship NBC built to compete with Have Gun Will Travel and Gunsmoke on Saturday nights. It went the way of the Bismarck. Dan Blocker had a supporting role as “Tiny” Budinger, who started out as a crude bad guy but was rehabilitated to become Montgomery’s occasional assistant as well as a town character. The cancellation of the show left him free to take another role the next year.

U-Tube had an episode of this show last year when I did Dan Blocker’s pre-Bonanza career but it has been dropped. Now all we have is the opening credit sequence from the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtS8SMDMo5s
Oops: I found this clip of Pernell Roberts’ appearance on the show, with Dan Blocker the year before Bonanza!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtS8SMDMo5s

Jefferson Drum
This show was like the Rifleman in that the hero is raising his young son in the West. But his weapon of choice is not a rifle but a newspaper. Like Chuck Connors, series star Jeff Richards had played professional baseball - in the minor leagues, (Chuck at least made the majors for a spell).
U-Tube whiffs on this one, too.

Lawman
Warner Brothers, noted for it’s off-beat westerns, decide to produce a more conventional one, about a tough but honest Marshal, starring Clark Gable look-alike John Russell and Peter Brown as his deputy. He’s got plenty of trouble cleaning up the town in the first episode with Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam and a moonlighting Edd “Kookie” Byrnes in the premiere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWBsTjqW-wE

MacKenzie’s Raiders
This was supposedly based on the exploits of real-life Colonel Ranald Mackenzie. Mackenzie had a similar resume to George Custer’s, having become one of the “boy generals” of the Civil War and then a noted “Indian Fighter”. US Grant described him as “the most promising officer in the Army”. Unfortunately he fell from a wagon, hit his head and after that exhibited “odd behavior”, which caused him to be retired from the Army for “general paresis of the insane” and he died a few year later in the home of his sister:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranald_S._Mackenzie

“Classic TV Westerns” says that Mackenzie, after the war, was Colonel of the US Fourth Cavalry” but also an “undercover agent” with secret orders from the President to go into Mexico to chase “marauding Mexican renegades“ without creating an international incident. I’m not sure how you go “undercover” as a Cavalry Colonel. MacKenzie was noted for being willing to command the “Buffalo Soldiers”, a regiment of black soldiers, which other officers declined to do. None of the literature I have read on the show says whether the Buffalo Soldiers were represented in this show. I suspect they were not, (and neither was the fall from the wagon or it’s aftermath). The show is unrepresented on U-Tube. It does seem to have been internationally popular as 2 of the 5 IMDB reviews are from Australia and Argentina:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051292/reviews
I love the description of the cavalrymen charging “sable in hand”. At least they were stylish.

Man Without a Gun
This was a syndicated clone of Jefferson Drum with Rex Reason, (that’s his real name) as a western newspaper editor demonstrating the “power of the pen”.
U-Tube has the opening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceyOpYg4hGE


The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca
This, like Texas John Slaughter, (but unlike Zorro), was never a regular series in it’d own right. They were presented as episodes of Disneyland. Both were based on real people. Baca was young resident of New Mexico who was tired of the lack of law and order in the region and, at age 19, bought a mail order badge and appointed himself a deputy sheriff. He arrested a drunken cowboy and fought a group of his friends, (one of them ironically, John Slaughter’s ranch foreman), and survived what came to be represented as a fusillade of 4,000 bullets that destroyed the adobe house he was holed up in but never hit Baca, giving him the reputation of being indestructible, which gave him an edge over the superstitious outlaws of the area. Baca was portrayed by one of my favorite actors, Robert Loggia. Here is a Wikipedia article on Baca:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceyOpYg4hGE

It looks like all ten episodes are on U-Tube, and in color:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Elfego+Baca&oq=Elfego+Baca&aq=f&aqi=g3g-m1&aql=&gs_l=youtube-reduced.12..0l3j0i5.1248702.1251681.0.1255360.11.10.0.1.1.0.185.1092.4j6.10.0...0.0.oC3txwqoLZU
Disney deserves some credit for providing two series, (this and Zorro) that provided positive roles models for Hispanic Americans. Baca here faces his own version of the Alamo. Like the fictional Sugarfoot, he studied to become a lawyer. Ironically, Baca was called “El Gato”: The Cat. In Loggia’s next show he plays a cat burglar named “T.H.E. Cat”. It’s also interesting that there are ten episodes of “The Nine Lives of ElFego Baca”.

The Rifleman
This is the pick of the 1958 litter, a true classic that everyone remembers today and which has never really been off the air since it‘s debut. It was originally the idea of Sam Peckinpaugh, who had been writing for Gunsmoke and created a character, Lucas McCain, who was an expert with a rifle but also a father trying to raise his young son the right way. Peckinpaugh wrote a script for Gunsmoke introducing McCain and his son but it was rejected. (much to the relief of the bad guys, who would have had to face Matt Dillon and Lucas McCain at the same time!) Peckinpaugh sold his idea to Four Star Productions, a group founded by Dick Powell. The four stars were Powell, Ida Lupino, Charles Boyer and David Niven. Here is a rare and awkwardly recorded clip of David Niven, of all people, introducing Chuck Connors as “the Rifleman”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58FsVffVQk

This was the most violent of all western series and yet the most sentimental and morally noble of them, as well. McCain, in classic western fashion, was a man who didn’t seek out violence but instead had it seek out him, courtesy of the bad guys, who wound up outgunned at the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xXBAoxHYpM&feature=related
Elfego Baca could have used him.

Each show would end with Lucas McCain explaining his actions and those of the bad guys to his son, trying to teach a moral lesson. Some find the combination of violence and moral posturing intolerable but it was certainly a potent brew and produced a series that is still vividly remembered decades later. I’ve always thought that The Rifleman, even more than Superman, (who was, after all, an alien), represented America’s view of itself: highly moral, not starting fights but more than capable of ending them decisively and kind and respectful to those who deserve it. That may not be the reality all the time but it’s very much what we see as a nation when we look in the mirror.

The series was tremendously helped by the musical score by Hershel Burke Gilbert, who has studied under Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland. He wrote of main theme that perfectly expressed Lucas McCain’s pride and strength, accompanied by a sound like a horse’s hoofs to underscore that it was a western. He also wrote many musical cues for danger, for Mark McCain, Lucas’ s son, a humorous one, a sentimental one, etc. that comprise the best overall score ever written for a western series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RWtRUuslNw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXW96_Urn0s
By the way, in that opening sequence- Chuck Connors gets off 12 shots. That type of rifle only held 11.

The pilot was shown as an episode of Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater on March 7, 1958 and was then re-broadcast, with some editing, as the premiere of the new series on September 7, 1958. A young Dennis Hopper as a role as a reluctant gunman. U-Tube doesn’t have the whole thing but it has some chunks of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkI2-Eb-dMo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxj-I9BVCg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pn6HMwzNUg

By the way, Chuck Connors did appear on Gunsmoke as a very different character:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mACJaZZX8M
Connors wore elevator shoes to look taller than James Arness. He was actually ½ inch shorter. Arness liked having tall actors on the show so it wouldn’t look like Matt Dillon was bullying smaller men. Chuck Connors filled the bill.

The Rough Riders
This was an unlikely entry about two ex-Union soldiers, (a captain and a sergeant) who join a former Confederate soldier, (a lieutenant), who roam the west looking for a place to settle down while righting wrongs and meeting famous westerners. It is unrepresented on U-Tube.

The Texan
Rory Calhoun got his own “Restless Gun” type of series, playing the real-life gunman Bill Longley, who was hardly a good guy when he actually lived. “Wild Bill” Longley was a racist with a preference for killing freed blacks in the name of the long-lost Confederate “cause”. He’s said to have killed more than 40 men. He was hanged in 1878 at the age of 27, telling the assembled crowd, “I deserve this fate. It is a debt I owe for a wild and reckless life. So long, everybody!”

That slate was pretty much wiped clean for the TV series. All that was left was that Longley was a feared gunman trying to out-run his reputation. His back story is that he was a Confederate officer who came home from the Civil War to find his wife dead and decided to wander the west in search of a new life. (Longley was born in 1851 and was age 14 when the war ended and 27 when he died. Calhoun was 36 when this series premiered.)
U-Tube doesn’t have the premiere but here is an early episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=qe7c-oG3_SY
(Ray Teal must have set some kind of record for playing lawmen.)

Texas John Slaughter
This was another Disney mini-series starring Tom Tryon as the title character. The real TJS was a former confederate soldier and Texas Ranger who became a cattleman, gambler and lawman in New Mexico and Arizona. He was 5-2 and a stutterer with a white beard and moustache, not much like the 6-3, dark-haired Tom Tryon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Slaughter

Here is the first of 17 episodes in which “he made ‘em do what their oughter“.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cyb9rtlUOg
I wonder if this is the where the tradition of the hero wearing a white hat comes from.

US Marshal
This show isn’t listed in “Classic TV Westerns” until it becomes “US Marshal” in 1958. It had actually began as “Sheriff of Cochise” in 1956. It’s hero, Frank Morgan, played by John Bromfield, had been promoted from a county law officer to a federal one. It was strictly a modern western. I always thought a modern western was a good concept for a show because you could do almost any plot from a 19th century western, (except for ones involving Indian wars), but also any plot form a modern law enforcement show.

U-Tube does not have the premiere of “Sheriff of Cochise” but here is an early episode, “Red-Haired Visitor”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKdi9FW-wEU
Note how this modern Sheriff wears an old-fashioned western holster.

U-tube also doesn’t have the premiere of “US Marshal” but here is an episode from the first season with the new job and title.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoAyV5og3EY
He now has a modern-looking shoulder holster. This one was directed by none other than Robert Altman.

Wanted: Dead or Alive
This series made a star of Steve McQueen as Josh Randall, a bounty hunter with a conscience. He was introduced in an episode of Robert Culp’s show, “Trackdown”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyJ6uObQjE8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H0h24D-s1Q&feature=endscreen&NR=1
It’s interesting to contrast Culp’s laconic acting style with McQueen’s tight-lipped intensity. It was becoming traditional for the lead characters in these shows to have their own special weapon. With Randall, it was a sawed-off shotgun he called a “mare’s leg“.

Yancy Derringer
Jock Mahoney, a legendary stunt man turned actor, (and step-father of Sally Field), played the title character, a “gentleman adventurer” living in New Orleans after the Civil War. He works as a secret agent for the “city administrator”, (this was reconstruction), which must have been kind of awkward as he was a Confederate officer during the war. Derringer was assisted by a native American, Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah, (Wolf-in-the-water),who was unable to speak, (much like Zorro’s companion). They communicated by hand gestures. Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah communicated with the bad guys with a knife and a sawed off shot gun he carried under the blanket he always carried, (he didn‘t call it anything). Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah was played by an actor named “X Brands”. You can decide for yourself which name is more bizarre. (His full name was Jay X. Brands.)

This is the one episode I could find on U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbu0clrrLPM&feature=related
Derringer’s dress and manner along with the opening scene suggests he’s patterned after Rhett Butler in “Gone With the Wind“. Bridgett is played by Jock‘s wife, Margaret Field. That‘s Sally‘s mother. “Madame Francine” is played by Frances Bergen, Candice’s mother.

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Replies:

[> Re: The Glory Era: 1958 [ MacKenzie's Raiders ] -- Joe H., 09:22:58 06/02/12 Sat [1]

Thanks SWC, of I wonder how the actor Richard Carlson, in the title role here, would compete with today's Mexican cartel into Texas.

The one season series narrated by Art Gilmore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Gilmore [1912-2010] who I see was also the announcer for Herbert W. Armstrong's "The World Tomorrow".

-- JOe


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