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Date Posted: 19:06:47 05/06/12 Sun
Author: SWC
Subject: The Glory Era: 1955

Early TV westerns had been low-budget “kiddie” shows, some of them very well remembered by the baby boomer generation, such as “The Lone Ranger”, Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid. The movies had already grown out of that, westerns becoming a major dramatic genre after the war thanks to the films of John Ford, Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann with stars like John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. Television grew out of that in one week in September, 1955.

On September 6, 1955, “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” premiered. Hugh O’Brien played an idealized Wyatt Earp. The show was based on the idealized “Frontier Marshal” by Stuart Lake, which was, in turn, based on the reminiscences of Earp’s widow, Josie. The show had an advanced narrative structure, telling continuing stories and letting the action of one episode build on the previous one. They also stuck closely to history, starting with Earp getting his first job as a lawman in Ellsworth Kansas, moving on to Dodge City and then to Tombstone where they ended the series in 1961, after six successful seasons with a detailed re-creation of The Gunfight at the OK Corral”. They took some liberties with the truth at times and Earp was not the fully heroic character he is portrayed as here but it was high quality story-telling and helped pave the way for the many western series to come.

Here is the opening of the premiere episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhECAZMcKI

U-Tube doesn’t have the whole premiere but it does have certain episodes in their entirety, such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2mNEnYpsXo .

Four days later, on September 10, 1955, Dodge City got another Marshal, a fictional one who’s fame came to rival that of the real thing. “Gunsmoke” began it’s incredible 20 year run. It had actually begun on the radio three years earlier. The radio show was a classic in it’s own right, running nine years with the great William Conrad as Matt Dillon. But Conrad, as short, very stout man, (he was later “Cannon”, the 70’s TV detective), was described by one CBS executive as “non-visual” and 6-6 James Arness got the role and made it his own. They filmed a pilot, “Hack Prine” in 1954 and another, “Matt Gets It” in 1955 and used the later, (which to me is the inferior episode), as the premiere. “Hack Prine” was later shown in the spring of 1956.

The show became the flagship of TV westerns, eventually outlasting the other such shows of it’s era by several years. It was the #1 show on TV for four years from 1957-61, fell back to #36 by 1966-67 and was actually cancelled when CBS head William Paley was on vacation. When he got back, he reinstated it but the Saturday time slot was already filled by “Mannix” so it was switched to Tuesday where, against all predictions, a new generation of younger viewers discovered it. It rose all the way back to #2 and went on for another 8 years.

Hack Prine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrNR4v6zvhQ

Matt Gets it, (including the famous introduction by John Wayne):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIdbIGcfY3k

In my view, “Hank Prine” does a better job of introducing the characters and situation while “Matt Gets It” has some logical problems, (Why does Grat let Matt walk around the streets to recover so he can kill him?) You can be your own judge. By the way, the famous gunfight with the man in black wasn’t filmed until 1959. Before that the show opened with Dillon’s monologues on Boot Hill, as here. (The 1959 opening is sometimes edited into the beginning of previous episodes)


Three days later, on September 13, 1955, Warner Brothers, who had avoided TV, plunged into it with “Warner Brother’s Presents”. This was the first “wheel” show on television. A “wheel” shows features alternating series on the same time slot. Their minds were still in the movies and two of the ‘spokes’ were TV versions of famous Warner Brothers’ movies, “Casablanca” and “King’s Row”. For the third spoke they created a new character, a western wanderer named Cheyenne Bodie who could be involved in various professions in various locations and have various adventures. This opened the way for various “wanderer” shows like Warner’s later “Maverick“, “Sugarfoot” and “Bronco” as well as David Dortort’s “The Restless Gun” and others. I’ve always thought it even led the modern “wanderer’s” series, such as “Route 66”, “The Fugitive”, Run for Your Life, “Then Came Bronson”, etc.

Even here, Warner’s kept thinking people wanted to see their movies. Several episodes of Cheyenne’s first season, (which I have on DVD), are clearly hour long remakes of their films, including “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, (Cheyenne becomes the Walter Huston character), and “To Have and Have Not”, (This time Cheyenne is the Humphrey Bogart character). Eventually, they found out that stories written for the show and the main character were more appropriate than movie remakes.

The best episode of the first season is called “Decision”, which is a western version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” featuring, among others, Ray Teal as a drunken cowardly military officer, Michael Landon as a nervous soldier and James Garner, who with Cheyenne, leads the mutiny. Unfortunately, this episode, which was on U-Tube when I did my series on Bonanza actors before they became famous last year has been pulled. The longest U-Tube segment for Cheyenne is this second season episode with a pre-Maverick Garner, (who appeared several times on Cheyenne, including the premiere), in a rare bad-guy role:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBGoCTIKI24

The other network western that debuted this year was “Tales of the Texas Rangers” starring Williard Parker and Harry Lauter. The oddity is that the time period of their adventures changed but they didn’t: the stories could be from any era of the Texas Rangers, from the rebellion against Mexico to the present day and these two guys, playing the same characters, would lead the investigation into the crime committed, none the less. Joel McCrea had played the lead in a radio series of the same name.

A modern episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpzf1U6c148

An “historical” episode: with the same main characters!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLon3ve59uQ&feature=relmfu


Several syndicated shows started this year. One was Fury with Jim Arness’s younger brother Peter, (who had changed his last name to Graves) taking care of the titular horse along with his adopted son, played by Bobby Diamond. Edgar Buchanan played “Judge Roy Bean“. Keith Larsen was heroic Indian Chief “Brave Eagle” and Dick Jones played “Buffalo Bill Junior”.

Fury: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1TRfOt1WGI

“Judge Roy Bean” was in color:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDZvEnWYwM

The only example of “Brave Eagle” I could find was in Spanish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zppf_ldhFq8

Buffalo Bill Jr.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUNUJW5C84g

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Replies:

[> One more comment -- SWC, 18:43:59 05/07/12 Mon [1]

Check out the "Big One" at 20:47 of the 'historical' Texas Rangers episode. He looks kinda familiar. (The IMDB does not note this appearance. The broadcast date was 11/17/57. It would have been one of his earlier appearances but not the earliest.)

Also all those rangers we see at the beginning and the end of those episodes seem like the Ponderosa ranchhands: you don't see much of them in the episode. I gather the budget for this show was pretty limited.


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[> [> Re: One more comment [ "Fury" ] -- Joe H., 09:08:58 06/02/12 Sat [1]

Thanks SWC, of just seen this Saturday morning western of "Fury" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047734/ again after all these decades! - - today, Saturday, June 2nd. Of 7:10 minutes, seen 49,779 times, with old "Pete"* who said of the horse with Fire and Fury!

* Pete = Wm. Fawcett (Thomas, Ph.D.) [ 1894 - 1974 (79) ]

with Joey = Bobby Diamond, born: 1943 in TV from 1959-90 = 42 including two episodes of: "Mr. Ed".

- - Joe


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