WB westerns galore this past week...
Lawman
2.2 "The Hunch"
2.3 "Shackled"
2.4 "The Exchange"
2.5 "The Last Man"
A nice range of stories here. Deputy Johnny McKay takes center stage in the tense "Shackled," while Henry Brandon ("Scar" in John Ford's The Searchers) turns in a terrific performance as the white blood brother to Chief Iron Cloud, who tries to sabotage his people's surrender to an Army general. Brandon is given some choice dialogue here, courtesy of scriptwriter Clair Huffaker, who was a real dab hand at westerns (aside from 18 Lawman episodes, she wrote scripts for Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Colt .45, The Virginian, and the big-screen westerns The Comancheros, Rio Conchos and The War Wagon, among others. Quite a talented lady.) And Mike Road (voice of Race Bannon) shows up in "The Exchange," as Lily's sleazeball estranged husband, who uses their young son as leverage to force her to help him pull a bank job. Needless to say, glowering Marshal Dan Troop (John Russell) puts a stop to that sort of nonsense.
Cheyenne - 3.4 "Devil's Canyon"
A pretty average episode, this, but still an enjoyable enough meller, anchored by the ever-watchable man mountain Clint Walker. Cheyenne leads a group of fortune hunters deep into hostile Indian territory to find a treasure buried in a cave...but will he survive to collect his share? Takes a while to get started, but picks up once things hit the trail. With Joanna Barnes, Robert Foulk, Jack La Rue and Myron Healy.
The Lucy Show
4.9 "Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty"
4.24 "Lucy and Clint Walker"
Found these two very funny episodes on YouTube, with big ol' Clint Walker as a brawny construction foreman who romances Lucy. "Sleeping Beauty" has two very funny setpieces, one where Frank (Clint's character) takes Lucy on an impromptu picnic high up on some girders, and another where Frank, exhausted from working 48 hours straight, comes to Lucy's apartment to take her out to dinner, but ends falling asleep on top of her, pinning her to the sofa. Clint plays it straight, but shows some adept - if rarely displayed - comic chops. Lucy must have enjoyed working with him, because he returns for more shenanigans in "Lucy and Clint Walker," in which Lucy invites Frank to her company picnic, and stays up all night to knit him a massive red sweater for his birthday...only to find out that he hates the color red.
Gunsmoke - 16.6 & 16.7 "Snow Train, Parts 1 and 2"
John Hopper, Randall and others have given justifiably enthusiastic praise to this epic two-parter, shot on location in Black Hills, South Dakota. A party of Sioux warriors, led by Red Willow (X Brands, mostly known to me as Jock Mahoney's lethal pal Pahoo in Yancy Derirnger), stop the titular "snow train" upon which Matt, Doc and Festus are traveling and demand two passengers - who sold the tribe poisoned whiskey, resulting in several Indian deaths - be turned over to them, or else they will torch the train and kill everyone on board. The problem is, no one knows just who the guilty two are. Matt takes off across the snowy pass on a desperate gambit to reach a telegraph relay station 20 miles away, a trio of braves hard on his trail...while the various passengers bicker among themselves, eventually reduced to tossing two likely culprits to certain death to spare themselves...
Perhaps just a trifle padded out in the first half (you could tell that the producers were really excited to be out on location with a period-accurate train), but overall, this is engrossing stuff, nicely acted, beautifully photographed (with real snow!) and blessed with a fantastic musical score by John Parker. With Dana Elcar, Gene Evans, Ken Lynch, Clifton James, Tim Considine and Loretta Swit.
Bronco - 1.14 "Belles of Silver Flat"
Bronco (Ty Hardin) meets up with friendly but mysterious preacher (played by Pernell Roberts) who turns out to be more than he at first seems. Together they clean up the rough and tumble town of Silver Flat. As is often the case with these WB western series, there's a lot going on in this episode: we get Dave trying to build a church and forced to hold sermons in a gambling parlor, Bronco hired to ride shotgun to protect a large mining payroll, Chubby Johnson and Hank Worden as miners who try to force some newly-arrived saloon girls to marry them, a seemingly benign dentist (Vaughn Taylor) who's actually a criminal mastermind plotting the robbery of the aforementioned payroll - plus the revelation about preacher Dave's gunslinger backstory. A very entertaining and lively episode, which benefits from some welcome exterior filming and good chemistry between Hardin and Roberts. Also with Veda Ann Borg.
Maverick - 3.17 "Cruise of the Cynthia B"
Atmospheric riff on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, as Bret (the wonderful James Garner) somewhat uncharacteristically gets swindled by an old Scottish sharpie into buying an old paddleboat, only to find out that he is one of seven other proud new "owners" of the dusty old barge - including Modesty Blaine (Mona Freeman), an old femme fatale Bret's tangled with before. Together, the owners hatch a scheme to take the boat down the Mississippi River to Memphis to collect and split a $20,000 fee...but then someone starts bumping them off, one by one. Maverick's actions frequently belie his constant refrain that he's a coward: he not only fights off a knife-wielding killer, but dives from the formidable height of the deck into the murky nighttime waters to rescue a woman who's been pushed overboard. This is a fun one, capped off by a nifty climactic cameo by brother Bart.
The Dakotas - 1.13 "Reformation at Big Nose Butte"
Jack Elam takes the lead in yet another gripping outing of this short-lived but gritty western, as reformed outlaw turned deputy marshal, J.D. Smith, is pulled back into the orbit of his old reprobate mentor, Volet (Telly Savalas, replete with a bushy grey beard, in an attempt to make him look a couple of decades older than Elam, who was actually two years his senior). Volet has just been released from prison, and is planning one last big score, which he expects J.D. to go along with. I tend to agree with those who think this show might just be Elam's finest hour...he's very, very good here. Savalas has fun with a showy part, despite being slightly miscast, and it's cool to see a pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelley show up as an old rival who hates J.D.'s guts. Also with Sue Randall and Hayden Roarke.
Sugarfoot - 2.11 "Return of the Canary Kid"
Since Warner Archive hasn't seen fit to put any of Colt. 45 out on DVD, I cheated a bit and chose this crossover episode that features a good ten minutes or so of Wayde Preston as Christopher Colt. Another idiosyncratic gem written and directed by Montgomery Pittman, this sequel features the return of Tom Brewster's outlaw doppleganger (a mere six episodes later in the season!) Tom agrees to pose as his ruthless "cousin" while the Canary Kid is cooling his heels in prison, in order to help stop the cattle rustling activities of the Kid's gang. Things go pretty smoothly until the real Canary Kid escapes from prison and turns up at the gang's camp. Even better than the first Canary Kid tale. Don "Red" Barry and Doye O'Dell provide amusing comic relief as the Kid's cheerfully homicidal compadres...and once again, mega-hot Saundra Edwards is on hand as the Kid's sultry, perpetually barefoot, cheroot-smoking girlfriend, Prudence, whose affections begin to sway towards the more gentlemanly Tom.
Lawman
2.2 "The Hunch"
2.3 "Shackled"
2.4 "The Exchange"
2.5 "The Last Man"
A nice range of stories here. Deputy Johnny McKay takes center stage in the tense "Shackled," while Henry Brandon ("Scar" in John Ford's The Searchers) turns in a terrific performance as the white blood brother to Chief Iron Cloud, who tries to sabotage his people's surrender to an Army general. Brandon is given some choice dialogue here, courtesy of scriptwriter Clair Huffaker, who was a real dab hand at westerns (aside from 18 Lawman episodes, she wrote scripts for Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Colt .45, The Virginian, and the big-screen westerns The Comancheros, Rio Conchos and The War Wagon, among others. Quite a talented lady.) And Mike Road (voice of Race Bannon) shows up in "The Exchange," as Lily's sleazeball estranged husband, who uses their young son as leverage to force her to help him pull a bank job. Needless to say, glowering Marshal Dan Troop (John Russell) puts a stop to that sort of nonsense.
Cheyenne - 3.4 "Devil's Canyon"
A pretty average episode, this, but still an enjoyable enough meller, anchored by the ever-watchable man mountain Clint Walker. Cheyenne leads a group of fortune hunters deep into hostile Indian territory to find a treasure buried in a cave...but will he survive to collect his share? Takes a while to get started, but picks up once things hit the trail. With Joanna Barnes, Robert Foulk, Jack La Rue and Myron Healy.
The Lucy Show
4.9 "Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty"
4.24 "Lucy and Clint Walker"
Found these two very funny episodes on YouTube, with big ol' Clint Walker as a brawny construction foreman who romances Lucy. "Sleeping Beauty" has two very funny setpieces, one where Frank (Clint's character) takes Lucy on an impromptu picnic high up on some girders, and another where Frank, exhausted from working 48 hours straight, comes to Lucy's apartment to take her out to dinner, but ends falling asleep on top of her, pinning her to the sofa. Clint plays it straight, but shows some adept - if rarely displayed - comic chops. Lucy must have enjoyed working with him, because he returns for more shenanigans in "Lucy and Clint Walker," in which Lucy invites Frank to her company picnic, and stays up all night to knit him a massive red sweater for his birthday...only to find out that he hates the color red.
Gunsmoke - 16.6 & 16.7 "Snow Train, Parts 1 and 2"
John Hopper, Randall and others have given justifiably enthusiastic praise to this epic two-parter, shot on location in Black Hills, South Dakota. A party of Sioux warriors, led by Red Willow (X Brands, mostly known to me as Jock Mahoney's lethal pal Pahoo in Yancy Derirnger), stop the titular "snow train" upon which Matt, Doc and Festus are traveling and demand two passengers - who sold the tribe poisoned whiskey, resulting in several Indian deaths - be turned over to them, or else they will torch the train and kill everyone on board. The problem is, no one knows just who the guilty two are. Matt takes off across the snowy pass on a desperate gambit to reach a telegraph relay station 20 miles away, a trio of braves hard on his trail...while the various passengers bicker among themselves, eventually reduced to tossing two likely culprits to certain death to spare themselves...
Perhaps just a trifle padded out in the first half (you could tell that the producers were really excited to be out on location with a period-accurate train), but overall, this is engrossing stuff, nicely acted, beautifully photographed (with real snow!) and blessed with a fantastic musical score by John Parker. With Dana Elcar, Gene Evans, Ken Lynch, Clifton James, Tim Considine and Loretta Swit.
Bronco - 1.14 "Belles of Silver Flat"
Bronco (Ty Hardin) meets up with friendly but mysterious preacher (played by Pernell Roberts) who turns out to be more than he at first seems. Together they clean up the rough and tumble town of Silver Flat. As is often the case with these WB western series, there's a lot going on in this episode: we get Dave trying to build a church and forced to hold sermons in a gambling parlor, Bronco hired to ride shotgun to protect a large mining payroll, Chubby Johnson and Hank Worden as miners who try to force some newly-arrived saloon girls to marry them, a seemingly benign dentist (Vaughn Taylor) who's actually a criminal mastermind plotting the robbery of the aforementioned payroll - plus the revelation about preacher Dave's gunslinger backstory. A very entertaining and lively episode, which benefits from some welcome exterior filming and good chemistry between Hardin and Roberts. Also with Veda Ann Borg.
Maverick - 3.17 "Cruise of the Cynthia B"
Atmospheric riff on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, as Bret (the wonderful James Garner) somewhat uncharacteristically gets swindled by an old Scottish sharpie into buying an old paddleboat, only to find out that he is one of seven other proud new "owners" of the dusty old barge - including Modesty Blaine (Mona Freeman), an old femme fatale Bret's tangled with before. Together, the owners hatch a scheme to take the boat down the Mississippi River to Memphis to collect and split a $20,000 fee...but then someone starts bumping them off, one by one. Maverick's actions frequently belie his constant refrain that he's a coward: he not only fights off a knife-wielding killer, but dives from the formidable height of the deck into the murky nighttime waters to rescue a woman who's been pushed overboard. This is a fun one, capped off by a nifty climactic cameo by brother Bart.
The Dakotas - 1.13 "Reformation at Big Nose Butte"
Jack Elam takes the lead in yet another gripping outing of this short-lived but gritty western, as reformed outlaw turned deputy marshal, J.D. Smith, is pulled back into the orbit of his old reprobate mentor, Volet (Telly Savalas, replete with a bushy grey beard, in an attempt to make him look a couple of decades older than Elam, who was actually two years his senior). Volet has just been released from prison, and is planning one last big score, which he expects J.D. to go along with. I tend to agree with those who think this show might just be Elam's finest hour...he's very, very good here. Savalas has fun with a showy part, despite being slightly miscast, and it's cool to see a pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelley show up as an old rival who hates J.D.'s guts. Also with Sue Randall and Hayden Roarke.
Sugarfoot - 2.11 "Return of the Canary Kid"
Since Warner Archive hasn't seen fit to put any of Colt. 45 out on DVD, I cheated a bit and chose this crossover episode that features a good ten minutes or so of Wayde Preston as Christopher Colt. Another idiosyncratic gem written and directed by Montgomery Pittman, this sequel features the return of Tom Brewster's outlaw doppleganger (a mere six episodes later in the season!) Tom agrees to pose as his ruthless "cousin" while the Canary Kid is cooling his heels in prison, in order to help stop the cattle rustling activities of the Kid's gang. Things go pretty smoothly until the real Canary Kid escapes from prison and turns up at the gang's camp. Even better than the first Canary Kid tale. Don "Red" Barry and Doye O'Dell provide amusing comic relief as the Kid's cheerfully homicidal compadres...and once again, mega-hot Saundra Edwards is on hand as the Kid's sultry, perpetually barefoot, cheroot-smoking girlfriend, Prudence, whose affections begin to sway towards the more gentlemanly Tom.
Last edited:
