re: They went thataway, so let's go thisaway: the TV Western thread

My mom will be devastated.

Every time I go to her house, this or Gunsmoke is on.

quote:

---

Just seeing this thread. The first link (Rawhide) in the OP looked intriguing. Alas, it has apparently been removed.

---

Rawhide - "Incident with an Executioner" (DailyMotion)

A mysterious gunman follows the herd, but no one knows who his target is.

The plot strongly resembles the classic Audie Murphy movie No Name On The Bullet, but the treatment here is much more noirish, with even some supernatural overtones.

The Restless Gun - "The Way Back"

Directed by Edward Ludwig
Written by Robert Leslie Bellem and Frank Bonham
Dec 29, 1958

A big-hearted but naive cowboy sells his herd for $3,000 and is determined to take his money back to Minnesota and help out on his father's farm. One of his drovers and a crooked saloon owner are just as determined to take it away from him.

The Restless Gun was a run-of-the-mill oater in the 'drifter" format, notable for only one thing: it's producer David Dortort would go on to create a little thing called Bonanza.

Lorne Greene, Michael Landon and Dan Blocker all first worked with Dortort on Restless Gun -- indeed, Dortort specifically created the role of Hoss Cartwright for Blocker after working with him here.

This episode is almost a run-through for Hoss: Blocker plays a big, likable Scandinavian-American (the character's name is Olaf Berland), though he's a lot more boisterous and impetuous than Hoss would be. Co-starring two mainstays of TV westerns, the great James Coburn and perennial heavy Morgan Woodward.

Dan Blocker as Olaf Berland







More about David Dortort and The Restless Gun

Rawhide - "Incident of the Pale Rider"

Written by Dean Riesner
Directed by Christian Nyby

Season 5 Episode 22
March 15, 1963



In town to collect money at the local Wells Fargo office, Rowdy kills a man in black who tries to rob him. Or does he...?

More than any other TV western, Rawhide often touched on themes with supernatural implications. Here Rowdy comes face to face with a man that he had apparently killed. The atmosphere is as much Twilight Zone as Gunsmoke, and some of the campfire scenes are as moodily dark as a horror film.

Two decades later Clint Eastwood would appropriate the title for a film of his own.

I think I remember reading a long time ago that Jerry Lewis got into fast draw shooting, too.

Rawhide - "Incident of the Lost Idol"



Season 3 Episode 24
April 28, 1961

Directed by Ted Post
Written by Albert Aley

The drovers come across a teenage brother and sister and their ill dying mother, alone on the trail. The family had planned to relocate to the East to elude the outlaw father who had just escaped from jail and is evading bounty hunters.



Pete Nolan: [after burying Mrs. Manson] It don't seem right, though. Maybe it's because she's a woman.

Gil Favor: What do you mean, a woman dying?

Pete Nolan: No, I mean being left alone out here in the middle of nowhere like this. Different with a man; man's pretty much of a loner anyhow. A woman ought to be left with her folks.

Rowdy Yates: You know, when... when I was a kid, my pa used to take me out to the churchyard now and then to pay respects to his ma. She was... she was buried right there with her ma, and sister, and some other kin I never even heard of. It all seemed kind of right that way, ya know? All being buried together.

Pete Nolan: That's what I mean. It oughta be that way with her, too.

Wishbone: Aren't you both forgettin' somethin'? I mean, uh, a woman don't just lie there in the ground, any more 'n a man does. She's not off in those cottonwoods. And your pa's ma, and those others, they're not in that churchyard. They're with their family and friends, where they oughta be.

Rowdy Yates: Yeah, well, that's all according to how you believe.

Wishbone: Well, no, I'm not givin' ya any preacher talk, Rowdy. Heaven, and hell, and the hereafter, I don't know anything about that. What I mean is... right here, on this Earth, I don't think anybody ever really dies. Don't make any difference what happens to the bones. They'll be alive in the minds and the hearts of the livin'. You talk about your kin in that churchyard, don't that keep 'em alive?

Rowdy Yates: I suppose so, yeah.

Wishbone: Same with that woman out there in those cottonwoods. She won't be alone. She'll be with her children.

The Virginian - "Showdown"

Part 2

April 14, 1965

Written by Gene L. Coon
Directed by Don McDougall

In Arizona to buy cattle, The Virginian gets caught in the middle between a ranching family and hard-nosed marshal brothers.

A blatant reworking of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, even using the jurisdiction dispute between town marshal and county sheriff as a plot point.

This episode is also interesting for its Star Trek connections: writer Gene Coon (who wrote the best Audie Murphy western, No Name On The Bullet) would later beam aboard the Enterprise enterprise as writer-producer (he created the Prime Directive, among other things). William Shatner has called him the unsung hero of the Star Trek saga.

Also, Trekkies may recognize an actor playing one of the marshals.

2nd most interesting thread about law enforcement officers I’ve read today

quote:

---

I will check out Mel Torme

---

He also appears as a quick draw artist in an episode of The Virginian (which he wrote)