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

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By my reckoning, not counting child actors there are four stars left from the golden age of TV westerns:

Clint Eastwood - Rawhide
Robert Fuller - Laramie/Wagon Train
Will Hutchins - Sugarfoot
Clu Gulager - The Tall Man

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Lee Majors?

And Mark Slade (Blue Boy from The High Chapparal) is still alive (he's 83). He was a distant relative of Henry Ford, which I didn't know until I just looked it up.

ETA: Oh, and Buck Taylor is still alive.

Crikey - Kafka, you're going to have to define "Golden Age" for me, just from The Big Valley there is Lee Majors and Linda Evans.

Regarding "The Rebel" and that gun-confiscation plotline, it popped up in various other tv-westerns and even some B-westerns from time to time. Didn't even the classic "Law and Order" (1932) with Walter Huston incorporate it, or am I misremembering? It's an annoying plot premise, although it never got under my skin too much, because the scripts were never really selling gun-control in most of these. It was just a narrative device for the new 'outsider' lawman to take charge, and use the law to winnow down the outlaw elements' stranglehold on a town (who themselves are often headed by corrupt officials 'corrupting' law-and-order), and eventually provoke a confrontation. Tactics, not ideological messsaging.

But by the 1960s-era TV-westerns, you do admittedly have to keep your eyes open for the occasional instances of squirrely social messaging by Camelot-teethed screenwriters thirsting to 'educate' the unwashed masses. Even when the calculated messages are innocuous, they can still be irritatingly hamfisted. Although I admit I have a bit of a nostalgic affection at times for "Bonanza," it can be one of the most egregrious examples. I recall an episode "No Less a Man," about Sheriff Coffee being questioned about his effectiveness in office. The episode involved a roving band of murderous bank-robbers heading toward Virginia City. The script had Coffee demonstrate his wileyness by being unarmed and welcoming the outlaws as they rode into town (yeah, right!), and basically handing over the town's bank to them. Which, turned out to be fixed-up like a mechanical mouse-trap, imprisoning the outlaws inside. This whole thing was eye-rollingly ludicrous, but the all-important 'message' (against age-discrimination) had to take center-stage.

Messaging and symbolism also ran riot in the short-lived "The Loner" series from the mid-1960s, which is why I found it hard to take. I recall one episode, "The Burden of the Badge," which should have been great, as it employed a sure-fire old western plotline of a stern cattle-baron wanting a wagon train of settlers off land he deemed his own. But no. The producers couldn't just go with that. They had to make these settlers into some kind of specifically oppressed 'group.' Ex-cons and their wives, trying for a fresh start. And to prevent their menfolk from getting violent, the wives had them all give up their weapons to be locked up in a black iron box (yeah, right). Again, too much 1960s-era drama, always veering into symbolism, subtexts, psychology, self-consciousness, and liberal 'messaging.' Yeah, I like TV-westerns. I like them a lot. But what I really relish are the older, more straight-arrow westerns, before anyone thought to use them as a subtle soapbox. The fans and cultural observers who objected when they started noticing in the mid-1950s the advent of the 'psychological western,' taking over from the classic traditions and purity of the genre, were correct in the long run.

Upon reflection, it's perhaps rather poor form on my part to jump into a thread and have my first post seemingly reflect a bit of negativity on the subject. Even more so as I'm actually a fan of TV-westerns and have great regards for them. So anyway, I'll make amends by listing my faves:

1. Gunsmoke
2. Have Gun Will Travel
3. The Dakotas
4. Restless Gun
5. Stoney Burke (modern)
6. The Rebel
7. Maverick
8. Yancy Derringer
9. Tales of Wells Fargo
10. Rawhide

It's good that so many came out on dvd. Although, there were still many others I wanted left behind, like "The Outlaws," "Buckskin," "The Rough Riders," "Black Saddle," "Temple Houston," and such. Not to mention the Civil War themed "The Gray Ghost." On the other hand, it was great that even some of the short-lived gems like "Tate" and "The Westerner" were released on disc.

Three repliers in one day... I may not recover from the shock

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And Alan Hale from Gilligan's Island fame

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He was the star of Casey Jones






And he guest starred in many westerns, including this classic moment

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Black Saddle

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Watched this on YT. It's not bad; it has a great theme song

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This episode has quite a guest cast: James Coburn and Warren Oates, as well as Scott Forbes, the English-born star of Jim Bowie

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the classic "Law and Order" (1932) with Walter Huston

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Whoa -- someone else here has seen Law and Order?

I don't remember if L&O uses the gun-free zone bit, but Errol Flynn's Dodge City (also based on Wyatt Earp) definitely uses it. I believe both Earp and Wild Bill Hickok used the tactic IRL.

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the 1960s-era TV-westerns, you do admittedly have to keep your eyes open for the occasional instances of squirrely social messaging by Camelot-teethed screenwriters thirsting to 'educate' the unwashed masses. Even when the calculated messages are innocuous, they can still be irritatingly hamfisted. Although I admit I have a bit of a nostalgic affection at times for "Bonanza," it can be one of the most egregrious examples.

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I recall one Bonanza about a new schoolteacher who is giving the smartest kid in class lower grades b/c he's a Mexican. Lorne Greene has an endless speech near the end about how this is a no-no.

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Messaging and symbolism also ran riot in the short-lived "The Loner" series from the mid-1960s, which is why I found it hard to take.

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You're burying the lead here. The Loner was created and produced by Rod Serling, and if Rod was not tightly reined in he would go berserk with the liberal platitudes (try watching his Night Gallery episode w/Vincent Price and Brandon de Wilde set at a college in the future. 5-2 you won't be able to sit though it).

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too much 1960s-era drama, always veering into symbolism, subtexts, psychology, self-consciousness, and liberal 'messaging.' Yeah, I like TV-westerns. I like them a lot. But what I really relish are the older, more straight-arrow westerns, before anyone thought to use them as a subtle soapbox. The fans and cultural observers who objected when they started noticing in the mid-1950s the advent of the 'psychological western,' taking over from the classic traditions and purity of the genre, were correct in the long run.

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Subtexts and symbolism were part of the genre almost from the beginning. The Virginian (1902) can be read as capital vs labor with its big ranchers vs little ranchers story (author Owen Wister sided w/the big boys, a view that would soon go out of fashion).

Indians of course are not Indians in westerns, not when they're prevented from buying stuff at the general store or robbed of their land. They're blacks. Lynch mobs in westerns are Southerners who want to hang black people (or an occasional Leo Frank).

The "psychological" or adult western followed film noir, and is basically the old westerns stories w/some noirish motivation and handling thrown in.* One reason I prefer tGOoTVW is the heavy-handedness is generally kept at a minimum, while the basics of sound storytelling are usually at the forefront.


*The aforementioned Law & Order is a precursor of this. Not coincidentally it was based on a novel by W.R. Burnett, author of Little Caesar and other gangster stories.

Speaking of the classic version of "The Virginian" (1929), which made Gary Cooper a big star, it really needs to be restored and officially released on disc. Crazy shame that it isn't. I have a copy of the 1923 version with Kenneth Harlan, which is a fairly routine retelling, but I like it because of my fondness of Florence Vidor, and get a kick out of Russell Simpson (of all people) playing Trampas.

Oh, there's symbolism/subtexts to be found in some of the older material, and there's nothing I enjoy more than William S. Hart's apocalyptic finale in "Hell's Hinges" (1916), and the siege of the church in John Ford's "Three Bad Men" (1926). I'm also not entirely immune from an enjoyment from the underlying messages in some of the hard-edged early-talkie westerns, like "Gun Smoke" (1931), about modern-day gangsters encroaching the idyllic west, and a blatantly pro-vigilante message about the only way to deal with killers is "to kill them." But in the endless scores of westerns headlining Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, Jack Hoxie, all the way down to names like Leo Maloney and Pete Morrison, all coupled with slews of western pulp magazine stories I've read in issues of "Dime Western," Western Story Magazine," and the like, western tales were just not big repositories of ideologically charged messaging. Most commercial fiction wasn't back then. Not until the post-war years, and the cultural changes in aesthetic evaluations and criticism. A lot of these subtexts layed onto past artifacts by modern film theorists are just hairbrained reflections of their own ideologically charged worldviews. Just like that goofball notion that the old Universal horror monsters reflected 'gay' subtexts, which I recall often being bandied around in academic circles thirty to forty years ago. Ugh.

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I'm pretty fond of Wagon Train but they had one really nutty episode called Princess of the Lost Tribe. I don't think they aired it very often because it was pretty bad.

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This happens to be one of the very few Wagon Trains I've never seen.

I just looked it up on IMDb. The distinguished Raymond Massey (Dean's father in East of Eden) is the guest star, and guest babe Linda Lawson is supposed to be pretty hot.

Rawhide also did an Aztec story, and seeing it a few years ago is how I learned there are still over a million Aztecs in Mexico, speaking the Aztec language (Nahuatl).

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