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Wagon Train: The Countess Baranof Story (1960)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 8
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 8
Trial for Murder: Part 1 Apr 27, 1960
Trial for Murder: Part 2 May 4, 1960
The Countess Baranof Story May 11, 1960
In "The Lita Foladaire Story Jan 6, 1960", Wagon Train became a precursor to 'Burke's Law', with Major Adams marching around to interview murder suspects. In "Trial for Murder", it becomes Perry Mason, with the major becoming the judge, Henry Daniel, in a very different role than he had in The Christine Elliott Story (Mar 23, 1960) as Hamilton Burger and Henry Hull for the defense. It seems the wagon train is full of suspects who have been hiding their identity, as was the murder victim. All you have to remember is that when someone is demanding there be a lynching instead of a trail, he often has an ulterior motive. The trial is full of smiling endorsements for the greatness of our legal system, from the judge to the prosecutor and the defense attorney and enables Daniel to play a nice guy and real 'gentle man' for once, even though he has to act as prosecutor here. Both he and Hull give hammy "finger-waggling" performances. Hull, in particular, sees no point in taking 10 seconds to say something when he could take several minutes.
The Countess Baranoff Story is a far-fetched tale of a Russian countess, accompanied by an arrogant Cossack who, initially, are traveling to California in a single wagon to get to California and then to Alaska to "claim her family fortune" there. Flint discovers them and takes them to the wagon train, which is "too slow" for them as Seward is about to complete the purchase of Alaska. The seductive Countess tries to get Flint to break off from the train and get her to San Francisco more quickly. When he declines, she seduces a farmer away from his wife for the same purpose. It turns out the Cossack is also a revolutionary who wants to obtain the Countess's fortune to pay someone to assassinate the Czar! Meanwhile the Countess is accused of stabbing the farmer's wife! If it was so important to get to San Francisco, why weren't they on a stagecoach?
Rawhide: The Peddler (1962)
Rawhide Season 4 Disc 4
The Long Count Jan 5, 1962
The Captain's Wife Jan 12, 1962
The Peddler Jan 19, 1962
Clay Forrester, (Charles H. Gray), reappears. (See "The Inside Man", 11/3/61.) Now he's a US Marshal of all things, in charge of taking the census. But he's just as devious. He suspects an apparently gracious lady rancher, (Bethel Leslie), is employing a cadre of wanted men to do her bidding. He wants to 'count them. He lies his way in to gaining the assistance of Favor's men, (and then Favor), to do his 'counting'.
Not a bad episode, despite still another unlikely plot.
The Captain's wife is what you think it is. It's the old one about the officer's wife who is stick of living in a remote fort and wants to get her husband prompted to go to Washington. Here she's Barbara Stanwyck, so conniving she'd make Phyllis Dietrichson blush. When her husband, (Robert Lowery), takes half the command out after a band of Comancheros, she tells the second in command that her husband wanted him to lead the remaining forces from the fort to trap the group. This guy, (John Howard), is stupid enough to believe that. Barb thinks this will produce the great victory her husband needs. Favor arrives with a small group of his drovers to pick up supplies: his supply wagon has overturned in a stream. When he finds the fort undefended, he takes command of the situation. It's a good trip through familiar territory.
I didn't have high hopes for The Peddler. I always found comedian Shelly Berman to be an acquired taste I'd never acquired. But he's good here as a Jewish peddler the drive encounters who then helps Mr. Favor out when money gets tight. He winds up owning part of the herd and goes along with the drive. A dispute with George Kennedy over some money Kennedy owes causes his step-daughter to leave Kennedy in favor of Berman, who falls for her. She's played by the extraordinarily beautiful Vitina Marcus. I thought she was Saundra Edwards, the most beautiful actress I've ever seen. Look Saundra up - she had quite a story. So does Vitina, whose daughter was later voted "the most beautiful showgirl in Vegas". Berman shows in this story that it doesn't pay to underestimate people, although his characterization, (as written), might be seen as a Jewish stereotype by some.
Wagon Train: The Amos Gibbon Story (1960)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 7
The Joshua Gilliam Story Mar 30, 1960
The Maggie Hamilton Story Apr 6, 1960
The Jonas Murdock Story Apr 13, 1960
The Amos Gibbon Story Apr 20, 1960
The train discovers Joshua Gilliam, (Dan Duryea) lying at the bottom of a cliff, having been whipped. His story is that he's a school teacher who had to whip the son of a powerful rancher, who then did the same to him. We never meet these 'bad guys' and it turns out Duryea is the real bad guy, (as he often is - nobody's better at it). When we hear that Bethel Leslie is rich - she has an inheritance that includes a plot of prime land in California, his ears perk up. Gilliam has the ability to hypnotize people and he does that to both Bethel and her disapproving mother, (Irene Tedrow). He drives the latter woman crazy, or at least makes her seem so to the other members of the wagon train. He even convinces the kids, whom he has been teaching, that she's a witch and Tedrow is made up to look an awful lot like the Wicked Witch of the West, or perhaps one MacBeth's tormentors. She winds up running off to a ghost town, where Gilliam follows her on the pretense of rescuing her when he really wants to kill her so she won't prevent him from getting her daughter to marry him. It's a bit far-fetched but Duryea makes it work.
Maggie Hamilton is the excellent Susan Oliver, here playing a rebellious teenager, (she was probably about 27 when this was made, so she's playing a about a decade younger than she actually was). Les Tremayne plays her arrogant father well, although I don't know why someone who considers himself superior to everyone else on the train is on it. Maggie escapes from the train and her parents and Les hires Flint to go find her. The result is a "Taming of the Shrew" story that includes a rescue from a gang of bandits that includes Leonard Nimoy as an Indian who doesn't think much of his companions. Oliver would be the "Green Woman" in the Star Trek pilot with Nimoy playing Spock four years later. Flint and the Indian have a fight which Flint wins. At one point, the Indian has an arm lock on Flint's head. But he doesn't use the Vulcan neck pinch. I guess he hadn't learned it yet.
Noah Beery Jr, (Rockford's Dad), gets a wonderful role as a guy, (Jonas Murdock) who's spent his life on the frontier and hasn't learned much about living with people and their rules. He's helping out the wagon train and trying to learn. He's a hunter who keeps the train supplied with game. And he's become a close friend of Bill Hawks, with whom he plays cards and swaps stories. But, (for the second time in the series), Major Adams has had to make a deal with a local Indian chief that they won't kill any of the game in his territory so he will allow them to pass through. The consequence of breaking this rule is an attack on the train by a large enough body of Indians to wipe them out. The train runs out of everything but hard tack and Murdock decides he can kill some rabbits and get away with it without the Indians knowing about it. He agrees to do it when a young girl complains that her grandpa is too weak to survive on hard tack.
Charlie Wooster spots him hunting, (after being confused by tracks that seem to lead up a barren tree). Murdock knocks him out with the butt of his rifle and Charlie barely makes it back to the train on his own. A furious Major Adams goes after Murdock but in the fight, Adams is knocked backwards and "speared in the back by a spit", (I wasn't sure what it was - I'm still not sure). Murdock now has to leave in a hurry and steals a horse to do. A furious Bill Hawks, who had trusted his promise to not violate the agreement with the chief, goes after him. This now becomes a great episode for Terry Wilson, who plays Hawks. Wilson and Frank McGrath, (Wooster), were stunt men who graduated to speaking parts and this is the biggest role Wilson/Hawks has had in any episode. McGrath/Wooster gets another shot at running the wagon train, instead of being a comically lousy cook. Meanwhile Hawks starts out with an advent age over Murdock when the latter's horse goes lame. But it swiftly turns around. Murdock ropes Bill from a cliff and drags him halfway up it and steals his horse. Then the fills hit canteen at a nearby spring but fills the water with locoweed. Bill frees himself, staggers through the desert, finds the spring, drinks and becomes delirious, shooting at imaginary Murdocks until he collapses. Murdock then takes his gun and his knife and leaves him, looks down and says "Sorry, Bill" as he leaves. Hawks eventually brings him to justice but we are left with the notion that what we are seeing is a tragedy: a guy who didn't know how to follow the rules tries to help someone and becomes a fugitive as a result. One of the more memorable Wagon Train episodes, for several reasons.
Amos Gibbon is a relatively minor character in "his story". Played by Charles Aidman, he's a man who has earned the respect of his fellow prisoners and has escaped to get help, (they are prisoners of a phony judge who condemns men to work on a tunnel he will sell to the railroad when it comes through). He is later returned to prison a broken man, his spirit beaten down and his ability to think clearly compromised. He even informs on them to prevent an escape plot "because he doesn't want anyone to get hurt". He has a heroic moment in the end but is otherwise in the background. The prisoner with the most screen time is veteran "old coot" Francis McDonald. William Schallert is another prisoner. Flint winds up in their group when after, for the second time in the series, leaving the train after an argument with Major Adams, the gets lipped a mickey in a salon and finds himself in chains. The plot is similar to many western episodes, especially an early Cheyenne, ('The Trap', 12/16/56), written by Leo Gordon. The hero gets Shanghaied and leads a rebellion. It's an OK episode if not very original. Did people really build tunnels and sell them to the railroad?
Rawhide: Twenty-Five Santa Clauses (1961)
Rawhide Season 4 Disc 3
The Little Fishes Nov 24, 1961
The Blue Spy Dec 8, 1961
The Gentleman's Gentleman Dec 15, 1961
Twenty-Five Santa Clauses Dec 22, 1961
The Little Fishes are Shad, native, it says here, to the East that Burgess Meredith wants to bring to the West, specifically California as game fish. He figures he could make a fortune. He has them in two cannisters and also in a small jar, which he calls the "control group". His wife, (Phyllis Coates, the original Lois Lane on the Superman series), has fallen in love with his assistant, (Richard Webb, who played Captain Midnight), and they plan to run off with the fish and his money and make the money by themselves. But they are careless and one of the cannisters stays out in the sun too long. They knock him out and just leave with the money.
Meanwhile, Gil Favor finds out that there's been a financial panic back east, (again- that happened at the end of their first drive), and that he might get some money for their herd if they can beat the news to Abeline. But that means a dry drive through some bad country. They pick up Meredith and his fish. Trialing him are Webb and Coates, who want the remaining fish. It all comes together in the end, although we never get to Abeline. It's another weird but interesting episode with a good performance by the always interesting Meredith, who never loses faith in his project, despite everything. I do think the real story, (see Trivia) of the shad probably belongs on Wagon Train, not Rawhide.
The blue spy is the, (real life) Pauline Cushman, a southern actress who was a union spy during the Civil War, (Phyllis Thaxter), doesn't come off as a Shakespearean but plays a woman in a dilemma well. The drovers come upon her after she's the only survivor of a stagecoach accident and are delighted to have an attractive woman along on the drive until they get to the next town, moreso when she reveals herself as an actress and performs for them. But they all, save one, fought for the south and when they find out she is THAT actress, their attitude changes. By happenstance that could only occur on TV, one of them, (Lyle Bettger), is a former lover who spent two years in a federal prison camp after his unit was ambushed, thanks to information Cushman gave the federals. Deep down, he still loves her- when he isn't hating her. He leads a rebellion in favor of leaving her alone on the prairie. They ride away with the drive's water barrels, (are they still on the 'dry drive' from The Little Fishes?). Favor refuses to give into the rebels.
Bettger has way too much authoritative presence to just be a drover. The lone Yankee is played by Charles Aidman, a folksy harmonica player, very much like the character he played in "Incident at Sulfur Creek" (3/11/60). But here he's 'Bert Pearson' and there he was 'Waltzer'. I thought maybe this episode was something left over from the previous year and that Aidman's character was originally going to become a regular, (he would have been a welcome addition, offering a good nature, some gentle humor and brief musical interludes), but a year and a half interval makes that unlikely. I thought perhaps Aidman, who adapted Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology for the stage), wrote this character for himself. But his name doesn't appear on the writing lists for either episode.
The Gentleman's Gentleman is a rather silly episode saved by the talent of Brian Aherne. He's the manservant for an English Lord, descended from a line of manservants to that family, who knows no other occupation. Lord Ashton, (John Sutton), has come to hunt a rumored albino buffalo. They encounter a group of artless buffalo men led by Richard Shannon, who kill them by stampeding them with explosives and fire, then take the hides to sell in a local town while leaving the carcasses to rot. Lord Ashton is appalled, and the resulting dispute gets him shot and left for dead. His dying words to Aherne are that Mr. Favor who found him, is a gentleman and that he should now be Favor's 'gentleman' from now on. This results in a series of mildly humorous scenes of Favor being grudgingly taken care of by his new-found servant while his men suffer Wishbone's care. When Shannon and his men plan a big fire for the buffalo, Favor realizes that will stampede and maybe wipe out his herd with them. They could do battle with the buffalo men but how many men would they lose? So they go into the town to get the sheriff, only to find out that buffalo skins are the major part of the local economy so they can't expect help. But the people there are fascinated by Aherne, whom they manage to confuse with Lord Ashton. British interests were behind many of the big cattle ranches in the old west and they link 'Lord Ashton' might be scouting out their territory as a likely place for one. Favor decides that Aherne should impersonate his former employer long enough to get the town behind his cause and have the authorities get rid of the buffalo hunters. This ruse gives us something that looks more like an episode of Maverick. Aherne is what makes it work.
Ed Wynn was on Wagon Train in "The Cappy Darrin Story" (11/11/59) playing a dreamer who created an imaginary past for himself and future for himself the nephew he was caring for. It was kind of silly but had a good, wistful ending as reality had to be dealt with. Now, two years later, he's on rawhide, playing a fake Santa Clause. He's a slow-talking conman who has apparently been all over the world with his wife, (Anne Seymour), pulling various cons. They've picked up a Mexican orphan and are teaching him the business. The kid has to pretend to be dying to draw sympathy and allow them to get their hands on gifts people give him. But the wife has come to doubt their cavalier lifestyle and the values they are teaching the kid. Ed shows up in a Santa Clause outfit, even though it's not Christmas: the sick kid will never make it to Christmas. The drovers, to Mr. Favor's consternation have fallen or the ruse and are neglecting their duties to make or obtain presents for the kid. Rowdy even goes to the nearest town for a doctor, which ruins the scam when he pronounces the kid healthy. But Seymour has been having fainting spells for several months. The doctor determines she has a fatal heart condition: she's the one who won't see Christmas. So they are having it now. I preferred this one to the Wagon Train story.
Wagon Train: The Christine Elliott Story (1960)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 6
The Tom Tuckett Story Mar 2, 1960
The Tracy Sadler Story Mar 9, 1960
The Alexander Portlass Story Mar 16, 1960
The Christine Elliott Story Mar 23, 1960
So I go from Rawhide's version of I Pagliacci to Wagon Train's version of Great Expectations in The Tom Tuckett Story. Ben Cooper plays "Tuck", (Pip) who, as a young boy aids a fugitive, Nat Burkett, (Magwitch, played by the under-rated Robert Middleton in escaping the authorities. Years later, Tuck is now a somewhat arrogant young gentleman whose life has been funded by an anonymous benefactor. She also is in love with "Elizabeth", (Estella, played by Louise Fletcher 15 years before she won an Oscar playing Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), who has been taught to break men's hearts by withholding her affections by her employer, Miss Stevenson, (Miss Havisham, played by Josephine Hutchinson), to avenge herself against men who broke her heart. Tuck is appalled that his benefactor is an escaped convict, (who made a fortune in Canada after his escape), but when he gets to know him - and gets rejected by Elizabeth, comes to like him. Burkett has a backstory: he refused to obey a bigoted military officer's orders to attack the nearest Indian encampment and was convicted of treason. He had escaped to save his life. He's come south for a reunion with Tuck but the Army catches up with him - until they are surrounded by the Indian tribe he saved. I guess the moral is that good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds have no reward. This all occurs on Major Adams wagon train but they have little to do it. Everything's well done except that I found Ms. Fletcher's performance to be rather flat.
The Tracey Stadler Story was a revelation for me. I've heard of Elaine Strich for years: she's a theatrical legend on Broadway and in London, too. But her appearances in front of the camera were rare. She seems to have been less comfortable in that medium. I'd seen her in just two things: playing the original Trixie Norton in a single episode of the Honeymooners, ("The New Television Set" 11/2/51 - it's on TUBI) and defense attorney Lanie Stieglitz in two episodes of Law & Order ("Point of View", 11/25/92 and "Working Mom", 2/26/97). That's a 40+ year gap. In the Honeymooners episode, Stritch looks like a Roller Derby Queen, with few lines but a big smirk. In Law & Order she's more dignified and smarter but a hardened veteran of many legal battles and a gravelly voice. In this Wagon train episode, she's much attractive, 'womanlier' and more vulnerable, a far more sympathetic character. It has to do with being younger, in better health and being a fine actress who can ply many roles.
Tracey Stadler has been in jail for killing her husband. She's out now, (it must have been manslaughter). She's hired a man of dubious morals, (the great Elisha Cook Jr.), to help her find her son, who is being taken west by his paternal grandfather. She's operating under an alias. She wants to avoid the grandfather and see her son and talk to him without revealing who she is just yet. Cook wonders why she doesn't want the grandfather killed. It all works out in the end.
Peter Lorre appeared in both series I'm reviewing, essentially playing the same character. On Rawhide, he would play a Confederate Officer, (from Louisiana), who used to run a prison camp in Incident of the Slavemaster (11/11/60) and doesn't regard the war as being over. He now runs a ranch that is like a prison camp. Yet he's a very cultured man who covers his anger with an elegant speaking style. In this Wagon Train episode, he's an under-appreciated employee of the British Museum in search of the "treasure of Montezuma", which he figures would cause the museum to create the 'Alexander Portlass Room'. He's so obsessed with this that he's hired a bunch of nere-do-wells to help him find and transport the treasure. They run into Flint McCullough, scouting for the train and hijack him as he knows the territory. Predictably, the bums the obsessed Lorre has hired fight with each other and rebel against him, wanting the treasure for its monetary value. The treasure exists and is found in a cave made of sands tone. It's more like a sandcastle at the beach, which tells you how this will end. Alexander Portlass gets finds his own room and gets buried in it. (The 'treasures' look like something you'd buy in a dollar store.)
The Christine Elliott Story is a lot of fun. Phyllis Thaxter plays a woman who inherited 12 homeless boys of various ages, (Don Grady, soon to be on "My Three Sons", is the oldest), from her dying father who could never say "No" to them. They seem like nice kids but get into various mischief, aggravating Major Adams. She tries to educate them. There's a great sequence where Bill Hawks, Charlie Wooster and Major Adams try to teach them about various threats to their existence out west, only to produce nightmares Ms. Elliott has to deal with. Eventually, she finds suitor in Donald Woods, who as a child was one of the orphans her father cared for. But the boys have to be able to accept him. The villain of the piece is the head of an orphanage, played with Dickensesque coldness by the wonderful Henry Daniel, whose posture suggests that, as an actor, he's just picking up a paycheck but whose wonderful grating voice does all the work for him.
Rawhide: The Prairie Elephant (1961)
Rawhide Season 4 Disc 2
The Lost Tribe Oct 27, 1961
The Inside Man Nov 3, 1961
The Black Sheep Nov 10, 1961
The Prairie Elephant Nov 17, 1961
The Lost Tribe has another weird premise - but another good episode. Here we learn that Pete Nolan once lived with the Cheyenne and had an Indian wife. The band he lived with has broken the reservation and is headed for Mexico based on stories Pete once told them of a play where it's never winter. Cheyennes in Mexico? They are starving and have stolen 30 head of Mr. Favor's cattle, creating a strong conflict of interest for Pete. Pete has to play both ends against the middle until a parting with his old friends, both of them knowing that the Army is after them and the ending will not be a happy one.
The Inside Man is "Clay Forrister", (played by Charles H. Gray - the middle initial added to distinguish this guy from a British actor of the same name because their acting resumes were often mixed together, including by the IMDB at one point), who will become a regular later in the season. Here, he's an advance man for a gang, led by Chris Alcaide, (who should have had a show of his own: tall, handsome, deep-voiced and a good actor; at some point but several pilots were never picked up), who wants to take over the whole herd. Forrister joins the drovers and proves to be better than any of - up to a point. He has a decision to make about which side he should be on. Anne Helm shows up as a runaway bride in a mostly irrelevant story - but the beauteous Anne is never irrelevant.
The sheep are white in The Black Sheep. They are led by Richard Basehart, who gets the better of Favor's men in a battle to see who is going to get to the water and a meadow first. He and Rowdy start out as enemies but after Basehart gets injured, Favor orders him to take the sheep and Basehart, (with the help of his sheepdog, away from the herd. They grudgingly gain respect of each other. Basehart's father is organizing a big herd for a trip to Montana, making confrontation inevitable. Rowdy finds the sheep men just as prejudiced toward the drovers and the drovers are toward them and attempts to negotiate the situation. The trend in these episodes seems to be divided loyalties.
The Prairie Elephant is a typical circus story, having nothing to do with the drive after the opening sequence when a traveling circus that has lost it's way crosses paths with the drive, making the cows fearful of the circus animals, including a caged lion that is more symbolic of the story than the elephant. The excellent Lawrence Dobkin plays a classic sad clown. He's a legend in his profession but also very jealous of his beautiful young wife, (Gloria Talbot) such that he's run off any man he imagines is after her. He winds up getting shot but surviving to give one final performance before dying on stage. The comparison to I Pagliacci is apt - it all has an operatic tone to it but without the music. The tenuous connection to the trail drive is that Favor assigns Pete Nolan to guide the troop to the next town - then Wishbone convinces him to send him instead. I wonder if Paul Brinnegar pulled rank on Sheb Wooley for this episode.
Wagon Train: The Ricky and Laurie Bell Story (1960)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 5
The Larry Hanify Story Jan 27, 1960
The Clayton Tucker Story Feb 10, 1960
The Benjamin Burns Story Feb 17, 1960
The Ricky and Laurie Bell Story Feb 24, 1960
Tommy Sands was a 'teenage idol' who came in the wake of Elvis Presley, (in fact his debut was in a TV show of that name. He was handsome. He could sing and he could act, all of which he does very well here. He plays the son of an old friend of Flints who asks Flint to tame him. Tommy likes to steal things and lie about things and has Baron Munchausen's syndrome: he presents himself as a character for whom one must always have sympathy. He winds up stealing money, killing an old man and beating his wife and trying to blame Flint for it. After his demise, (the pitchfork throw seems pretty good to me), Flint declares "Yeah, Larry Hanify was my responsibility, all mine, right from the beginning. Until the day I die, I'll go cold inside whenever I hear his name."
The Clayton Tucker Story is about an ordeal and is an ordeal to watch. A former military officer, (Jeff Morrow) takes over a small three wagon train when the wagon leader dies from a snakebite and he becomes it's dictator. At gunpoint, he orders all the water barrels put onto his wagon, so everyone will have to follow him. He destroys the rifles of everyone else by shattering the stocks. The other people want to proceed directly across a desert for a panned rendezvous with the Adams train but Morrow wants to take the long route around because they will never make it if they go across the desert. But they barely make it by the route they go with Morrow being found by Flint and Bill Hawks, who are searching for the party. He's fallen down in the desert and surely would have died if found, as would the survivors form the other wagons who he has left behind. One woman has gone insane after her husband has stumbled toward a mirage with a canteen and is surrounded by her unconscious children. Another man has watched his big, muscular son die, (the implication is that a large person will go first in this situation, needing more sustenance), and is now full of hate. Nothing that a canteen of water won't cure.
Once you've survived the episode, you start to think about it and it kind of falls apart. The purpose of going the long way around is to avoid exactly this fate. Why do they seem to be suffering exactly what they would suffer going directly across the desert? Why would they have brought along a pet cat knowing that animals would deplete their supplies and might become food sources themselves? They kill a cow who can no longer give milk and yet are starving. Does destroying the stocks of rifles make them unusable?
Ironically, one of the survivors, Louis Jean Heydt, (the father who lost his son), had died 12 days before The Clayton Tucker Story was broadcast of a heart attack. He never got to see the happy ending.
The Benjamin Burns Story is another 'dry run', with some of the same plot elements in a different story that is one of the best in the history of the show. James Franciscus, fresh from The Naked City but before he became Mr. Novak, plays a greenhorn, (Jim Collier) in a tight spot. This time the whole Adams train is running out of water but an old braggart named Benjamin Burns, (J. Carol Naish), claims he knows where a mountain spring is. He, Flint and Franciscus, who is his son-in-law, go looking for it with Bill Hawks and this week's trouble-making wagon train member, Jack Lambert, (who looks like he could have played linebacker for the Steelers but instead played bad guys for years before that). Burns suffers a serious injury from a fall and it appears he's going to die. Lambert says they should just leave him there, rather than die of thirst waiting for him to do so. Everyone rejects this. Flint and Collier decide to stay with him. Flint gets bitten by a snake and becomes feverish. Collier panics and asks the feverish Flint if they should leave Burns - or even kill him. That puts the idea in Flint's feverish mind. Finally Collier tried to do it with Flint's jacket, which he had helped remove earlier. Burns struggles and pulls a button off Flint's shirt. Collier manages to render him unconscious and, thinking him dead, buries him under a pile of rocks. He puts Flint on a horse and they make their way back to the wagon train. Then we see a hand emerge from the pile of rocks. Burns shockingly stumbles into the camp. He accuses Flint of trying to kill him. Lambert is shocked and wants to string up McCullough? Collier has to decide if he's going to tell everyone - including his wife, the truth.
The Ricky and Laurie Bell Story is also about people facing death. It's the viewing audience - from boredom. The Bells are an eastern couple who have wasted a fortune and are moving west to 'start over'. Mrs. Bell becomes pregnant just as they are about to join the train, (in a flashback). Mr. Bell doesn't want a child and hates the timing of it. Their relationship suffers and Mr. Bell started feeling ignore and flirts with other women on the train. Then, in the grand Wagon Train tradition, a fever strikes. Mr. Bell is isolated. Mrs. Bell is torn between caring for her baby and going to him. That's the only time this one becomes interesting. One interesting note about is that there are a couple references to "Mrs. McQueeny's girls", indicating that this episode was supposed to be shown after "The Elizabeth McQueeny Story" (10/28/59) but was shoved toward the end of the season because of its poor quality. Fall episodes tend to determine the success of a season.
Rawhide: Judgment at Hondo Seco (1961)
Rawhide Season 4 Disc 1
Rio Salado Sep 29, 1961
The Sendoff Oct 6, 1961
The Long Shakedown Oct 13, 1961
Judgment at Hondo Seco Oct 20, 1961
Several interesting developments to open the fourth season: 1) The print of the episodes isn't as sharp as the first three seasons. Obviously, they had to have used a second-hand source for it. The picture is a bit fuzzy but watchable and it gets so you don't notice it. 2) The episodes are no longer "Incident of". It gives the writers a little more freedom to come up with good titles. {The 'Incidents', will, however, return the next season.) 3) They finally realized it should make sense to have each season be the story of a specific trail drive, as each Wagon Train episode is the story of a separate trip to California. Their first drive lasted from the premiere in January of 1959 as a replacement series, all the way through the middle of the third season. Then they started a new drive, the terminus of which was never shown. At the beginning of the fourth season, they are starting a new drive. 4) Their destination is now Abilene, (Kansas, I presume, not Texas), not Sedalia, Missouri. 5) when cattle owners back of the deal in the opener, Mr. Favor decides to do something he's always wanted to do: build a her from free roaming cattle they can still collect from the bush country of Texas. This season, he owns the herd and the men have a stake in the profits, not just a salary.
One theme of the early episodes is a backstory for the regulars. In Rio Salado, Rowdy meets his ner-do-well father, played by Tom Tully. Rowdy used to think the world of him, but then he abandoned the family to "look for riches that will set us all up". He's never found them. He decides to fulfill his promise by getting a reward for a famous and popular outlaw by shooting him in the back. Rowdy gets blamed for it. Tully's always excellent in roles like this and he dominates the episode.
The Sendoff features the always excellent Darren McGavin, fresh off his stint on 'Riverboat' (1959-61), as a haunted man who abandoned a small wagon train that got raided and burned to a crisp, killed everyone on it. He's especially haunted because he was its wagon master. He also has a knack for rounding up cattle from the bushes, which Favors' men are finding very difficult to do. He agrees to help them. But then a wagon shows up with Claude Akins and Lillian Bronson. Lillian's a nice old lady looking for the place where he son died and was buried. He was in the wagon train. Claude is not a nice guy, (he rarely was in this part of his career). He was the kid's partner and he was carrying a box full of money he wants. When finds out who McGavin was he forces him to take him there and to dig up the money, which has now been buried, (by whom?). Predictably, Claude comes to a bad end but Lilliam is a forgiving soul. McGavin, usually a tough guy actor, plays a broken man looking for hope just as well. This is one of the most highly rated episodes of the series. I'm not sure it would make my top ten but it's very good.
The Long Shakedown is Favor's attempt to see which of his drovers is up to the task. He's got his old ones, who aren't getting any younger, some new ones who haven't done this before and then a group enthusiastic ranch hands whose youth and enthusiasm sems to put the others to shame. His old ones eventually quit on him - or seem to. The ranch hands, led by Skip Homeier keep going -but them make a big mistake that causes the herd to bolt and head back to the bushes. It looks like Favor has lost his herd. But the old hands come to the rescue. Why Favor would suddenly decide that his old hands might not be up to it anymore and had to do through this test is not very clear, although Jim Quince seems to justify it when he falls off his horse, asleep at one point. But at least it's an actual episode about a trail drive, probably inspired by 'Red River', which in turn, had been inspired by 'Mutiny on the Bounty'.
Judgment at Hondo Seco gives some back story on Jim Quince, played by Steve Raines. Steve was a rodeo rider and stuntmen who graduated to speaking parts in westerns. He's never had as much of a part to play as he does in this episode and he's paired with the distinguished stage and movie actor Ralph Bellamy, who plays his brother, who is a judge. Steve stays afloat in all the dialog and holds his own in the scenes with Bellamy. Bellamy has become a very unpopular hanging judge in the wake of his wife being killed by a stray shot from a drunk. He also has daughter, Jim Quinces' favorite niece, (and his only one), who is in lover with a gambler who has been sentenced to hang for killing a man who had bene sent out with some other men to stop him from eloping with his daughter, who considers living in her father's house to be a 'prison'. He decides to help her escape and it winds up with poor Jim climbing up the steps to be hung - at the order of his own brother!
Wagon Train: The Maidie Brant Story (1960)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 4
The Ruth Marshall Story Dec 30, 1959
The Lita Foladaire Story Jan 6, 1960
The Colonel Harris Story Jan 13, 1960
The Maidie Brant Story Jan 20, 1960
Ruth Marshall, (Luana Patten), is the sole survivor of a wagon train massacre and her father, (Mike Keen), has joined Major Adams train to find her. He gets wounded by a Sioux arrow and wakes up in the hut of a young woman, surrounded by her wolves. There's an implication she has been raised by them (?). She's silent and uses Indian sign language to talk. She's rather like Rima, the Bird Girl, from "Green Mansions", (the movie of which, with Audrey Hepburn, came out in 1958). Flint survives and desires to bring her out into the big world, but then decides not to: "I understand these hills are your boundary and you feel safe behind them. It is like a kingdom, isn't it? A kingdom of trees, waters, and stars. And here you're completely free. You'll never live behind fences, never be bound by conventions, never be trapped by laws. Maybe you're wiser than any of us. I was only in your world a little while. I'm sorry that I, I, well, have to leave."
Lita Foladaire's story is over very quickly as she died in the pre-credit sequence. The rest of her story is told in flashback. It's a story that has nothing to do with wagon trains. It's a murder mystery, sort of 'Burke's Law' with the charmless Major Adams instead of Amos Burke and without the eccentric suspects that made that show so fun. Adams is an old friend of Lita' husband, (Kent Smith) and goes around interviewing people to re-create her last day before the husband returns. He finally figures out who did it and finally tells the sheriff about it. Back to the wagon train.
Lita is played by Diane Brewster, who has three famous roles in TV history: Samantha Crawford, the bane of the Maverick brother's existence, Miss Canfield, Beaver Cleaver's nice teacher and Helen Kimble, who was killed by the on-armed man, a role where she also died at the beginning and, as with this episode, was shown in flashbacks. Maybe this episode made the producers of 'The Fugitive' think of her for that part.
The inspiration for The Colonel Harris Story may have been The Caine Mutiny. Harris is an old friend of Flint's but he's gone off his rocker due to the death of his wife in an Indian attack. His job is to keep the peace but now he wants war. John Howard gives a terrific performance in this role, finally breaking down after ordering his out-numbered troops out of the fort to attack his enemy. His second in command is Ken Mayer, who I just saw playing a vile bad guy on 'Rawhide'. Here he's a highly principled man who feels bound to follow orders. Also very good is James Best, who I would not have through of as an Indian Chief, (and even older friend of Flint), but he pulls it off very well.
In James Rosen's book on this series, Maidie Brant, (Jean Hagen, after she left the Danny Thomas Show) is referred to as 'Maria' but every other source, including the characters in this story, call her Maidie. She's a woman who has had a rough life, caring for a dying husband, making ends meet by being a salon girl and has developed a really fatalistic view of life. She has a son, played by Richard Eyer, (the kid in 'Friendly Persuasion'), who is rebelling against her negativity, especially after she shoots and kills his horse and pet dog after a mountain lion attacks them. She's against trivial things like love and sentimentality and if anyone attempts to help them, even inviting them to share a meal, she insists on paying for it so they won't be indebted to anyone. Eyer eventually gets to her to reveal that the death of his father is a mercy killing she committed after getting tired of years of caring for him.
Meanwhile she has to deal with Edward Platt, (yes, Maxwell Smart's boss), as a philosopher and follower of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) who "emphasized appreciating and valuing life for ourselves and others." (Wikipedia). It's fun to see Platt discussing Spinoza with Major Adams. It's likely the only episode of a western series in which this philosopher's name came up. The authors, Oliver Crawford and Milton Krims must have been Spinoza fans. I wonder if they thought of the possibility that the wounded mountain lion, made more dangerous by his wound, was a symbol of what Maidie Bryant had become.
Rawhide: Incident of the Wager on Payday (1961)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 7
Incident of the Blackstorms May 26, 1961
Incident of the Night on the Town Jun 2, 1961
Incident of the Wager on Payday Jun 16, 1961
These three episodes ended the third season of Rawhide. The Blackstorms started out as a doctor and his family, with the problem that Dr. Blackstorm, (Stephen McNally) was an Indian. He got so sick of the prejudice he faced, including the failure of the law to act against his wife's murderer, that he turned to crime. Now he and his gang are on the lam, (and the gang is splintering). He wants to see his son, (Bobby Crawford - Johnny's older brother), one more time. When Pete Nolan and Mushy, (why he is along is not clear) come across them, Blackstorm kidnaps Mushy and forces Nolan to try to get him his son. He also stages a gunfight with Nolan that Nolan 'wins', (with blanks) so the law will stop looking for him. Virginia Christine, (much later Mrs. Olson in those ubiquitous Folger's commercials), plays McNally's sister-in-law, who has been caring for the boy, who doesn't know that his father is alive and has turned to crime. It's all very melodramatic but McNally, a fine, intense actor, makes it work. Sheb Wooley, (who plays Pete), co-wrote it.
Eric Fleming, (who plays Gil Favor), wrote the next one. It's also very melodramatic. It turns out one of the cattle owners who financed Gil's drive didn't have the right to sell 750 of the 3,000 cattle in the herd: it was actually owned by a Mrs. North, (Margaret Hayes), who sues Gil for stealing them. He logically offers to simply pay her what the man who pretended to be the owner would get when the drive is over. The perverse Mrs. North doesn't accept that. He wants the 750 cattle returned to San Antonio. Favor couldn't get the rest of the herd to Sedalia on time if he split his troop to do that. At the urging of her lawyer, Favor romances the vain woman and gets her to change her mind. She winds up buying the whole herd. She and Favor seem headed for eventual matrimony, to the displeasure of their gunslinging foreman, (James Drury). She winds up dying him Favor's arms. I was unable to tell if the stone-faced Favor ever really loved her and he seems to recover from the tragedy rather quickly.
The season finale is another "day in the life of Rowdy Yates" episode. The son, (Stephen Porter) of a bank president who has never thought much of his son, convinces a greedy pal, Stapp, (Ken Mayer), to help him rob his father's bank and embarrass the old man by giving the money back tgo him. They get away but their horses are spent. They try to steal horses from the remuda, but Rowdy comes by, only to be knocked out by them. They take his horse and also steal the drive's payroll box. Stapp has no plans to give any money back. Wishbone and Jim Quince come along just as Rowdy gets up and grabs the closest horse: Quinces to go after the thieves but all Wishbone and Jim see is Rowdy riding off and the empty pay box. Rowdy has been romancing a young lady and several members of the crew think he stole the money to spend on her. Some of them, including Gil Favor don't feel that way and Gil takes bets that Rowdy will be back with the money, thus the title.
Rowdy corners the two thieves but Stapp gets the drop on him and Porter shoots him to save Rowdy, then escapes. Rowdy gets his horse back follows him to town and finds himself jailed not only for the robbery, (the bank money is in his saddlebag along with the drive's payroll) but charged with murder, not for Stapp but for the bank guard to what knocked unconscious and died. Pete rides after Rowdy and helps him get out of trouble and return the payroll so the bets can be paid off. It's a good dramatic episode with a nice payoff as Favor collects the bets.
None of this has much to do with the problems of driving a herd of cattle 1,000 miles.
Wagon Train: The St. Nicholas Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 3
The Jess MacAbee Story Nov 25, 1959
The Danny Benedict Story Dec 2, 1959
The Vittorio Bottecelli Story Dec 16, 1959
The St. Nicholas Story Dec 23, 1959
Starting with season 2, Wagon Train had more and more episodes geared to the talents of comedians or comic actors with predictable stories. Andy Devine plays Jess MacAlbee, who had 5 daughters and who basically kidnaps Flint McCullough to be a potential husband for his daughters. He's feuding with another family a few miles way who has 6 sons. (Why 6? I don't know.) When Indians attack, Flint goes to the other family's farm and comes riding back with the 6 sons who route the Indians and celebrate by spending some time with Jess's daughters, making Flint's continued presence -and the continuation of this episode - unnecessary.
Danny Benedict is young Brandon de Wilde, (the little kid in Shane - 1953), now grown into a handsome teenager. Major Adams finds him on his own, going east. He offers to take the kid to their next destination, where he can get a stage going back east. The problem is that next destination is a fort, where his father is a colonel, who just had him whipped for stomping on a US flag at a funeral for a popular officer. Danny doesn't tell the Major this and wants to stay on his own but when he nearly drowns and loses his outfit in a thunderstorm and flood, he has little choice. Seth finds the Colonel, (Onslow Stevens), an old Amy friend, on a week-long drunk that began with his ordering the whipping of his son. Danny, an excellent violinist, takes after his artistic mother rather than his militarist father. He actually liked the deceased officer and stomped on the flag in frustration and protest that the Army got him killed. In the end, thanks to an excellent speech about the military life from Seth, he reconciles with his father. Disappointingly, he smashes his violin and says he wants to be a soldier. I would have preferred he stay true to his nature, while respecting his father.
Vittorio Bottecelli, (no, not Botticelli the 15th century painter), is an absurdly handsome Italian noble man who for some reason had been ordered by his father to join Major Adams' train to San Francisco. He has his loyal manservant with him and does things like practicing jousting with him. All the single women and some of the married ones on the train fall for him. One of the former is played by Elizabeth Montgomery, playing the daughter of an old friend of the Major's whom he has promised to take care of. She likes him but is very practical and wants love, not just...ahem, sex. That makes her even more attractive to him. I love seeing Liz dominate the screen with her intelligent, reasoned performance surrounded by all the silliness.
Wagon Train is good a real heart-tugging episodes and the St. Nicholas Story is one. The train I preparing for Christmas and they have the two perfect guys to help them celebrate it: an old, bearded man played by J. M. Kerrigan who loves telling stories to the children and a roly-poly German doll-maker played by Robert Emhart. Then the Indians attack and several members of the train, including both of those two, are killed. Nobody's in the mood for Christmas and they are wondering what their fate will be. One little boy wanders off and meet a little Indian boy, (it's the Utes this time), who has done the same a befriend same. Seth goes out to search for his missing boy and the Ute chief, (played by perennial Indian chief Henry Brandon), does the same - the Indian boy is his son. It winds up with Seth dressing up as Santa Claus and the Utes coming to help them celebrate. It's better than that sounds and the expression on Ward Bond's face and the spring in his step shows that this is the kind of episode he liked.
Wagon Train: The Felizia Kingdom Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 2
The Elizabeth McQueeny Story Oct 28, 1959
The Martha Barham Story Nov 4, 1959
The Cappy Darrin Story Nov 11, 1959
The Felizia Kingdom Story Nov 18, 1959
Bette Davis returns to Major Adam's train as, supposedly, the proprietor of a finishing school who is actually the proprietor of a proposed dancing emporium. The other women in the train don't think much of her. But when am outbreak of spotted fever occurs, It's Ms. Queeny's girls who volunteer to nurse the victims, at the cost of one of their members. The remaining members of her group wind up putting on a show for the now appreciative wagon train. This was shown 11 days after Bonanza showed "The Julia Bulette Story", based a real woman who ran a brothel in Virginia City, Nevada. She and her girls nursed people there through a epidemic. It's ironic that Wagon Train's rival show used their title template "The.... Story" to tell a similar story. Bette looks like she's having a good time dancing around in the finale.
Next Ann Blyth returns as a former girlfriend of Flint McCullough's with a high degree of prejudice against Native Americans, especially when her military officer father's fort gets over-run and she sees him killed. Her fiancé, played by Mike Road, (why didn't he become a big star - very handsome and a great voice, which he used for cartoon characters), has been captured by the Indians and Flint and an old Indian friend try to find him and free him. Annie hates both of them but softens her attitude when she sees their bravery. It's a solid drama with its heart in the right place.
Staring with the second season, Wagon Train began creating episodes for various comic actors, crafted around their personalities: Lou Costello, Wally Cox, Mickey Rooney and, here, Ed Wynn. They may have bene good episodes for the performers but that doesn't automatically make them good Wagon train episodes, as the regulars become supporting or bit players and the show it turned over to the guest star, (even moreso than normal).
Wynn plays "Cappy Darrin" a supposed former ship's captain, (James Rosin's book on the show says that he's a riverboat captain but in the episode he seems more like a sea captain), escorting his grandchild to a rendezvous with an uncle who is going to care for him. He's enthralled the boy with tails of the sea and he wants to go to sea with his grandfather. Wynn and the buy unwisely try to leave the wagon train to get to San Francisco and avoid the uncle so they can go to sea. Once again, illness is injected into the story for instant drama as the kid becomes ill and Wynn prays for his survival. It turns out Wynn is a fake: he's never more than imagined being a sea captain. The ending is touching and Wynn's acting is very good, without all the silly flourishes he usually uses. But the whole thing really lacked any credibility.
The last of the four more than makes up for it. Dame Judith Anderson, (she was created that the year after this show was broadcast), has a tour de force as a domineering woman rancher whose ranching empire lies on the only place the wagon train can cross the now mountainous area. Flint tries but fails to get permission for the train to cross from the imperious woman, with her henchman laughing at him. He handles them with courage and impresses her so much that she decides he will marry her daughter and leave the ranch in his capable hands when she dies. He refuses the offer - but it wasn't an offer. The key for him is her failing help - to the point where she has to ask for help, something she hasn't done in years.
Rawhide: Incident of the Phantom Bugler (1961)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 5
Incident of the Boomerang Mar 24, 1961
Incident of His Brother's Keeper Mar 31, 1961
Incident in the Middle of Nowhere Apr 7, 1961
Incident of the Phantom Bugler Apr 14, 1961
The drive crosses paths with an Australian, (Michael Pate finally gets to play someone form his own country), looking to buy cattle for his ranch in that country. He uses a boomerang rather than a gun or bow and arrow to resolve disputes, as does his assistant, played by Woody Strode, (is he supposed to be an aborigene?). James Drury, a year away from the beginning of 'The Virginian' plays an old flame of Pate's fiancé. He's not a nice guy where and conspires with the local Indian tribe to attack the drive. They take Favor, Yates and the Aussies prisoner. Drury wants Pate killed but instead they put him through "the gauntlet, (a ritual more known to European armies and navies and to the Iroquois in the east). Pate does this with courage, causing the Indian to side with him v. Drury's character, suggesting that the title is a metaphor.
'Incident of His Brother's Keeper' is another story having nothing to do with a trail drive but it's a good one. Wishbone hurts his back, (with Mushy's assistance). Pete Nolan accompanies him to a nearby town to get a doctor's help. There they meet a young rancher in a wheelchair, (Jack Lord, a year away from Stoney Burke and six from Hawaii Five-O), who is there because his horse fell on him. He's got an ambitious brother, (the rather stiff Jeff Richards, an ex-baseball player who wound up being a studio carpenter), and a wife, (the wonderful Susan Oliver, later a famous aviatrix), who is sick of caring for him and has fallen for the brother. Lord asks Nolan to take his wife to a dance so she can have a good time. There he has a confrontation with Richards and then with Oliver on the way home. It becomes a sort of combination of 'Othello' and "The Taming of the Shrew" with an explosive ending. Wishbone seems to have healed up at the end of it.
Favor and Rowdy, (this one was obviously made while Sheb Wooley and Paul Brinnegar were making 'Brother's Keeper') are looking for water and a way through some mountains, (don't they know- they've been through here before), when the encounter the surreal site of an old man watching a bunch of ballet dancers. Favor calls them that but Rowdy wonders why he doesn't see their bellies. "No- b-a-l-l-e-t!"). This odd opening has nothing to do with the plot. The old guy, (Cecil Kellaway), can afford whatever entertainments he wants, (the episode ends with him watching some can-can girls), because he's got a source for gold, (in Texas, Kansas or Missouri?) and figures anyone who comes near is after his gold, which he has arranged with the local Indians to mine, protect and share with them. Favor and Yates go to a nearby town where Elisha Cook Jr. (Wilmer in the 'The Maltese Falson' and the guy Jack Palance shoots down in 'Shane'), says he can lead them through the mountains. Fay Spain asks them to take her with them in search of her husband and slimy James Griffith and Charles Fredericks overhear them talking about gold. It's a potent stew of characters - and actors.
'Incident of the Phantom Bugler' is a nice title. It's promising episode with a weak ending, similar to 'Boomerang' but not as convincing. The drive encounters a bunch of Jayhawkers at a river. They claim to own the rights to the river and are led by a former military officer played by Jock Mahoney. He's married to Kathie Browne, the daughter of a Judge, (Vaughn Taylor), who assures everyone that this claim of ownership over open range is legally valid - especially when it's backed up by Mahoney's men. Browne is sick of the ambitions of both men and convinces Favor to take her with her and use her as a hostage. Favor and Mahoney wind up duking it out in one of the best choreographed fight scenes I've seen. In an upset, the bad guy wins but the good guy wants to continue, even though he's been thoroughly beaten up. Somehow this convinces Mahoney that Favor must be in the right or he wouldn't keep fighting. The judge who is one with the cynicism to be the real bad guy just rides off. It's just not very convincing.
Rawhide: Incident Near Gloomy River (1961)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 5
Incident on the Road Back Feb 24, 1961
Incident of the New Start Mar 3, 1961
Incident of the Running Iron Mar 10, 1961
Incident Near Gloomy River Mar 17, 1961
Gil and his main men are driving a herd of horses back to Texas, (they are cheaper in Missouri). They get accused of stealing one and the money Gil has for the investors in his recently completed drive is stolen while he's in jail. To add to the mix, the Sheriff is a reasonable guy and very good with his gun - especially for a man who has gone blind and is hiding it. He also has a wife who aided her lover in stealing the money.
They get to Texas and are preparing for a new drive when Gil finds out that he will not be the trail boss this time. John Dehner plays a rancher who wants to prove he is still up to the task, even though he's in his 50's. His age is not his problem. It's his refusal to listen to people, including Favor, who is now his ramrod, making Rowdy just another drover. But what resolves the problem is not a disaster on the trail. It's a domestic one back at home.
Gil connects with an old friend, Frank Miller, (no, not the bad guy in High Noon), played by veteran character actor Addison Richards, who helps him by spotting brands that are not supposed to be in his herd - strays from local ranches who joined the herd. He invites Gil to his house to meet his son Andy, (Darryl Hickman- Doby Gillis', err Dwyane's brother). There are some rustlers in the area and drover Jim Quince finds one, preparing to change the brand on a steer. That man runs off and a vigilante committee arrives, (Led by Frank Williams, Elliot Ness' boss). They want to hang ol' Jim but Rowdy and some of the boys arrive in time. Williams insists on taking him in for trial and Rowdy follows to make sure Jim winds up safely in jail. Favor encounters a persnickety military officer played by William Schallert, (Dobie's high school teacher), who is checking everything in the sutler's store item by item. He jokes that he's the type of guy who likely has his own hands in the till - and he's right. It turns out Andy isn't all his father had hoped he is. Never have so many 50's TV characters met in one episode.
Two pieces of advice for bad guys: don't pick a fight with the hero if it's at the end of an episode, (unless it's a two-parter), and don't fight the good guy next to something you wouldn't want to fall into.
John Ericson and John Cassavetes are gloomy because they are related to each other but don't much like each other. John C. Had already started his career as an independent film maker with 'Shadows', (1958), and was doing a lot of TV work to pay the bills. He'd just finished playing Johnny Staccatto in a private eye/jazz musician show and was now doing guest shots. Here he's playing the older brother of John E, who looks younger, (and hunkier), but is actually 3 years younger. John E.'s career got off to a great start with the movie 'Theresa' in 1951 and then played the William Holden part in the original Broadway production of 'Stalag 17'. Ericson could have made it big but he refused to sign a studio contract. Most of his work after that was on the small screen, including as Honey West's brawny partner in the short-lived but iconic 1960's series.
Here the older brother is the wild sibling and the younger one the solid citizen. The plot starts out as the traditional big rancher who wants to become richer, (Leif Erickson - no relation to John E but his character has a secret relation to John C.), who wants a smaller ranch and tried to force the people out by damming up a stream, (which impacts the trail drive and gets them tangentially involved in the story). Now the smaller ranch house has burned to the ground and the big rancher seems an obvious candidate. But the boy's mother, (Rosemary DeCamp), isn't so sure. Meanwhile both brothers want Erickson's beautiful daughter, Anne Helm. They will get back to the actual trail drive next week.
Wagon Train: The Estaban Zamora Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 3 Disc 1
The Stagecoach Story Sep 30, 1959
The Greenhorn Story Oct 7, 1959
The C. L. Harding Story Oct 14, 1959
The Estaban Zamora Story Oct 21, 1959
The show now introduces its most well-remembered musical theme, written by Jerome Moross, which was used for seasons 3 through 8. The first season used a brief fanfare which was fine, as far as it went. The second season was a snappy show tune, which they probably thought they could make money with. But the classic Moross theme, (which was the subject of a lawsuit as he's used part of it for a 1959 film called the Jayhawkers), is perfect for their show. It's onomatopoetic, suggesting a wagon wheel turning over and over, with a background theme suggesting hope and drama.
Season three begins as Season 2 did with a trip back to Missouri to form the next wagon train. But instead of going by sea, this time Major Adams, Bill Hawks and Charlie Wooster are taking the stagecoach - driven by Flint McCullough! Also along are Debra Paget, in her second appearance, playing a different character this time- a Spanish dancer who is smuggling guns for the Mexican revolution on the coach, which she and her associates want to divert the coach deliver to representatives of Porfirio Díaz. This seem doubly strange: how many guns could be transported in a coach? And how much difference would that amount of firepower have made in a revolution? Gold to buy guns with might have made more sense. And the hero of the revolution, (I assume against European import Maximillian), was Benito Juarez. Diaz was the dictator of Mexico from 1877-1911. Yet the Wagon Train heroes agree to help them and we, the audience, are supposed to root for them. Then, after delivering the guns, Debra and her grateful minions escort the stage to St. Louis: quite a trip. It's an exciting episode unless your demand it makes sense.
The Greenhorn Story features Mickey Rooney as an author who has written about the west but has never been there. This episode is instructive as to what preparations are necessary for a wagon train, (what to bring and not bring, how to handle wagons and the procedure for circling them. Unfortunately the rest of it is about the unfunny and painful to watch the author makes in trying to learn about the west. He falls for a young woman on the train who quite suddenly contracts cholera and even more suddenly, fully recovers. It's intended to inject a serious note in a comic episode but doesn't come off seriously.
CL Harding is a reporter Major Adams has allowed on a train under the assumption that she is a man. She's played by Claire Trevor. This set sup a predictable conflict between he old-fashioned major, who has strong ideas about "a man's job" and the woman reporter. Why he would think it took a man to report on things I don't know. Ms. Harding proceeds to organize the train's women and get them to strike, Lysistrata-style. The episode is full of 'Goll-darns' from the perpetually fuming major, who in between his outbursts he begins to fall for the lady and is disappointed when she leaves the train, potentially to become the wife of her editor. A key point is that once the reach Wyoming, they are in a state where women have the vote. In 1969, the all-male legislature become "the first place in the world to incorporate women's suffrage" per Wikipedia.
Ernest Borgnine returns to the show, not as Willy Moran, (from the 1957 premiere), but as Esteban Zamora, a Basque sheep famer who ahs joined the wagon train to rendezvous with his three sons who have, (for some reason), preceded him to America to set up the family to work for a big sheep rancher, (Robert Armstrong). But one son has been killed by another, (he's played by Leonard Nimoy). The other living brother, Phillip Pine, convinces him not to confess to the tragedy. Esteban wants to go after the murderer of his son but the older brother tries to convince him that things are different in this new country: a family is not obligated to seek revenge on a murderer. This is strange when you think of all the westerns where the hero is seeking revenge for the murder of a close relative. This one is a good character study with fine acting by the principles.
Wagon Train: The Jenny Tannen Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 10
The Rodney Lawrence Story Jun 10, 1959
The Steele Family Story Jun 17, 1959
The Jenny Tannen Story Jun 24, 1959
Dean Stockwell returns: he was in "The Juan Ortega Story" in the second episode of this season. There he was a young Mexican seeking revenge for the death of his father. Here we see him as a child, (the outstanding child actor Roger Mobley - 'Mob' is pronounced like 'Bob' - who later became a Green Beret) surviving an attack by horse thieves who have killed his parents. He never catches up to them but is taken in by a philosophical old Indian, (Frank DeKova), who teaches him all about life. When he reaches adulthood, DeKova says he much return to his own people - and here comes Major Adam's wagon train. There he meets and falls for the beauteous Cindy Robbins. Also there are a couple of crooks, (Theo Marcuse and John Milford), who want to steal people's money and blame it on somebody else, using a pair of moccasins.
The Steele Family is a total departure for the series. Lee Patrick plays a sort of Aunt Pitty Pat character, (she's from Gone With the Wind), with four beautiful and unmarried daughters. She wants Major Adams to help her find husbands for them. He bothers him so much that he takes them to a party at a mansion on Lake Tahoe, (no, it's not the Ponderosa, where the Cartwrights would have been just the thing), to meet a millionaire bachelor who has a nephew and a couple of other male relatives. Eventually they all get hooked up, although the major turns down Lee's advances. (Eighteen years before, they were both in the Maltese Falcon - Ward Bond was the policeman who likes Sam Spade and Lee was Sam's loyal secretary, a very different performance by a fine actress.) his one isn't really for Wagon Train fans but Bond seems to enjoy playing comedy for a change.
The season ends with the Jenny Tannen Story, a soapy melodrama with an O Henry twist to it. The remarkable Ann Blyth plays a dual role, a popular San Francisco songstress and her abandoned daughter, now grown, who has come to see her and has romantic notions that her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and really loves her very much. Both have been the victims of accidents. The mother fell down a staircase with a champagne glass in her hand and sustained a cut to her face which makes her now supposedly ugly to look at. (Ann looks just fine as she always turns away from people to hide the scar.) Her daughter, (also Ann), has had an accident on the train and bumped her head. She is now going blind, meaning that when she sees her mother, she will not know that she has lost her beauty to the scar. But the mother has become an embittered recluse and doesn't want to see anyone, least of all the daughter she abandoned. Major Adams tries to act as a go-between.
The Rodney Lawrence Story Jun 10, 1959
The Steele Family Story Jun 17, 1959
The Jenny Tannen Story Jun 24, 1959
Dean Stockwell returns: he was in "The Juan Ortega Story" in the second episode of this season. There he was a young Mexican seeking revenge for the death of his father. Here we see him as a child, (the outstanding child actor Roger Mobley - 'Mob' is pronounced like 'Bob' - who later became a Green Beret) surviving an attack by horse thieves who have killed his parents. He never catches up to them but is taken in by a philosophical old Indian, (Frank DeKova), who teaches him all about life. When he reaches adulthood, DeKova says he much return to his own people - and here comes Major Adam's wagon train. There he meets and falls for the beauteous Cindy Robbins. Also there are a couple of crooks, (Theo Marcuse and John Milford), who want to steal people's money and blame it on somebody else, using a pair of moccasins.
The Steele Family is a total departure for the series. Lee Patrick plays a sort of Aunt Pitty Pat character, (she's from Gone With the Wind), with four beautiful and unmarried daughters. She wants Major Adams to help her find husbands for them. He bothers him so much that he takes them to a party at a mansion on Lake Tahoe, (no, it's not the Ponderosa, where the Cartwrights would have been just the thing), to meet a millionaire bachelor who has a nephew and a couple of other male relatives. Eventually they all get hooked up, although the major turns down Lee's advances. (Eighteen years before, they were both in the Maltese Falcon - Ward Bond was the policeman who likes Sam Spade and Lee was Sam's loyal secretary, a very different performance by a fine actress.) his one isn't really for Wagon Train fans but Bond seems to enjoy playing comedy for a change.
The season ends with the Jenny Tannen Story, a soapy melodrama with an O Henry twist to it. The remarkable Ann Blyth plays a dual role, a popular San Francisco songstress and her abandoned daughter, now grown, who has come to see her and has romantic notions that her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and really loves her very much. Both have been the victims of accidents. The mother fell down a staircase with a champagne glass in her hand and sustained a cut to her face which makes her now supposedly ugly to look at. (Ann looks just fine as she always turns away from people to hide the scar.) Her daughter, (also Ann), has had an accident on the train and bumped her head. She is now going blind, meaning that when she sees her mother, she will not know that she has lost her beauty to the scar. But the mother has become an embittered recluse and doesn't want to see anyone, least of all the daughter she abandoned. Major Adams tries to act as a go-between.
Rawhide: Incident of the Fish Out of Water (1961)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 4
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 4
Incident Near the Promised Land Feb 3, 1961
Incident of the Big Blowout Feb 10, 1961
Incident of the Fish Out of Water Fri, Feb 17, 1961
Wagon Train had been depicting one trip form Missouri to Californian each season, with a last episode at their destination the premiere of the next season getting back to Missouri to organize a new trip. Rawhide premiered in January, 1959 and they'd been on the trail to Sedalia, Missouri ever since - until they decided, in mid-season, to show them finally reaching their destination. Unfortunately, they find that the market for cattle - and everything else- has collapsed due to a market panic. Favor has to graze the cattle on the only area suitable for it- owned by Mary Astor, who hates drovers because her son was killed by one. She drives a very hard bargain, one that makes it impossible for Favor to deliver a profit to his investors, which will ruin his reputation. Then Rowdy Yates gets hurt and Astor cares for him. She gets won over by his boyish charm. Meanwhile the government needs 'beeves' to deliver to some reservation tribes to keep them on the reservation.
The Big Blow Out, is a mostly comic episode about the celebration once the cattle is sold. There's a sub-plot about nasty bounty hunter Myron Healy, who thinks that his query is one of Favor's drovers. Gil insists he died on the trail, drowning during a river crossing, but Myron isn't buying it. The men start to wonder what they are going to do next. Gil gets an offer to be a partner in a ranch - and a telegram from Philadelphia.
The fish out of water is an episode out of water. It seems almost from another show. It has a certain charm but the situation makes little sense. It seems Gil has two daughters, (their other is deceased), who live with an aunt in a rather ritzy-looking neighborhood of Philadelphia. Gil apparently intended to visit them at the end of the drive but the telegram was from the aunt who told them not to come. He comes anyway. Gil's two daughters are played by cute-as-a-button Candy Moore and Barbara Beaird. The main conflict in the story is that he and the aunt, (Dorothy Green), don't see eye-to-eye on how the girls should be raised. He wants to be the 'cool Dad' and have fun. She wants to be strict and turn them into 'respectable' young ladies. They quarrel and she leaves, forcing Gil to raise his daughters himself. Apparently, his career as a trail boss is over. Then, for no apparent reason, Wishbone and Pete Nolan show up. Wishbone takes over the household.
There's a subplot about an Indian chief who agreed to join a 'wild west' show to earn money to help his people. Gil met him on the train from Missouri. It turns out the show's owner has put him in a cage and is presenting him as if he was a dangerous savage. He now hates all whites. Gil wants to find him a lawyer, as that's how they do things in Philadelphia. Pete and Wishbone have a more 'western' solution in mind.
But don't worry, both problems will be resolved and it ends with little Barbara Beaird shouting "Head 'em up! Move 'em out!" But...Does it make any sense that a guy like Gil Favor has rich relatives in Philadelphia? Would he leave these cuties to drive cows from Texas to Missouri? Think about all those soliloquies Gil did at the beginning of episodes about how hard his job was. Wouldn't he rather have been in Philadelphia?
Wagon Train: The Andrew Hale Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 9
Chuck Wooster, Wagonmaster May 20, 1959
The Jose Maria Moran Story May 27, 1959
The Andrew Hale Story Jun 3, 1959
As TV series evolve, players of clichéd supporting characters tend to get episodes focusing on them, either by the demands of the actors playing them or the desire of the writers or the producer to flesh out their characters to improve the series and find more story lines. After being a sort of court jester for most of two seasons, Frank McGrath gets to do some serious emoting as the wagon train, once again stuck in the mountains in the winter, mysteriously loses first their scout, Flint McCullough, then their wagon master, Major Adams and then their second in command, Bill Hawks, leaving Charlie Wooster in charge. Charlie has some 'help' from the garrulous Douglas Kennedy and asks for help from the man upstairs, with whom he hasn't had much contact over the years, in a well-played scene. Unfortunately, this one has an unconvincing B-movie ending. Kenedy, a perennial bad guy, is part of a plot to take the entire train prisoner and sell them to some group in Canada as slaves! (I've never heard of this.) Charley doesn't get much help from the man upstairs but manages to free the hostages, resulting in a battle that the good guys, unsurprisingly, win and gruesome end for Kennedy's villain after he takes on Major Adams for the second time in the series, (see season 1's "The Major Adams Story") and loses for the second time. But it was nice to see Charley Wooster prove to be more than a clown.
Jose Maria Moran is played by Robert Loggia and somewhat resembles ElFego Baca, the legendary New Mexico lawman Loggia had been playing for Disney. He's the son of a California rancher who rode with Joachim Murieta after his father's ranch was destroy when the US took over and, to escape the law lived with the Pawnees and now identifies himself as a Pawnee. He's been captured by the Shoshones and tied to two stakes to die of thirst or sunstroke. Major Adams and the train discovers him and rescues him, which he doesn't approve of because he considered it to be an honorable death. Adams convinces him not to die but, naturally, there are people on the train who don't loke him because of his multiple ethnicities, (his father was Irish). When the Shoshones want him turned over to them and threaten to attack the train if they don't get him, those people, (including Dabbs Greer), want Adams to give him to the Shoshones but the Major, with a fiery speech, convinces them he's worth fighting for. Moran decides he doesn't want to endanger people who would fight for him and rides off with the Shoshones after him. Adams tells Hawks he believes Moran will get away with the sort of wry smile that suggests this might have been a pilot for a series.
The Major says that they are in Shoshone territory but if they can get to the hill country beyond, they will be in Pawnee territory. Per Wikipedia, the Pawnees "historically lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas" while the Shoshones were in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Idaho, so the Major's geography seems to be off, unless they are moving east for some reason. Also, how did they get from the mountains back onto the plains? These people are moving west and the continuity of the episodes should reflect that.
The Mary Ellen Thomas Story earlier this season was a great episode made even more poignant to current viewers with the knowledge that the young actress playing the dying girl later died of a drug overdose. The Andrew Hale Story is another episode with a deeper meaning to us now that it would have had when it was first broadcast. Andrew Hale is a preacher who has lost his faith in God because he led a train of his followers into an Indian Ambush and then had to kill one of his flock when threatened him with a gun. He stumbled into the desert in a daze, to be found by Major Adams' train. The Major nurses him back to health and some of the train members, including the soulful Jane Darwell, draw him back towards his faith. Some others, including Clu Gulager as a blackmailing photographer and James Best who doesn't like Indians and resents it when Hale uses an Indian cure for a fever Adams gets, (How does he know what the Indians use to cure fevers?), are unhelpful. Best, (whose wife is played by none other than Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched from 1975's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'), comes around when his baby becomes feverish. Adams asks Hale to take over the train, which restores some of Hale's confidence. It ends with Hale making a speech confessing his failures and reading from the bible, declaring that when he looks at the earth, the sun and the stars, he can't possibly be looking at a 'scientific accident'.
It's a strong episode, (and I'm not very religious) but what makes it memorable is that Hale is played by John McIntyre, who would be taking over as the wagon master, (the unrelated Chris Hale), when Ward Bond died of a heart attack during the 4th season. Bond and McIntyre are two of the greatest character actors of all time, both with a great presence and gravitas. Seeing Major Adams ministering to Andrew Hale at the beginning of the episode and then Hale administering to Adams when he was ill and watching Adams express confidence in Hale's ability to take over the train drips with a powerful meaning now, even beyond what could have been experienced in 1959. For any Wagon Train fan, this is a must see episode.
Rawhide: Incident at the Top of the World (1961)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 3
Incident of the Captive Dec 16, 1960
Incident of the Buffalo Soldier Jan 6, 1961
Incident of the Broken Word Jan 20, 1961
Incident at the Top of the World Jan 27, 1961
On trend of famous series is that often their best years are the second and third years, when the writers have figured out what makes the show work and what doesn't but they still have fresh story ideas and the original cast is still in place. For both Wagon Train and Rawhide, I find that I'm liking the second and third year episodes more than the first.
Another trend is that lesser or clichéd characters will tend to be given more attention in episodes and their characters are made stronger or at least more interesting. The next Wagon Train I will review is called 'Chuck Wooster, Wagon Master' and the first Rawhide I'm doing here is about Mushy, Wishbone's assistant. He does the introduction to the show and it's all about him as his formidable mother, (played by Mercedes McCambridge, no less), comes to 'rescue' him from the trail drive, a rough existence he's obviously not equipped for. She may be right. He tries his hand at being a drover to prove he belongs and winds up falling off his horse. The drovers decide to set up a situation to make Mushy, (real name "Harkness Mushgrove III"), look like a hero: some guys would kidnap Mom and Mushy would go to the rescue. Except Mom was in a stagecoach that had been robbed and could recognize one of the robbers. So they take over the kidnapping and Mushy, thinking that they are going to purposely lose the resulting fight to him, becomes unusually heroic. There's a similar Gunsmoke episode "Marshall Proudfoot" with Chester as the hero. I think the Rawhide people hoped Mushy would become their equivalent of Chester but it never happened, in part because James Murdock was no Dennis Weaver. Instead Mushy reminds me more of "Ruby" in Upstairs Downstairs, where Mrs. Bridges, like Wishbone, never seems to have anything good about her assistant but feels a motherly sense of protection whenever anyone else treats her poorly. Wishbone does the same for Mushy.
Incident of the Buffalo Soldier is probably the best Rawhide episode I've seen so far. It features Woody Strode, an actor and man of great presence and dignity but also capable of very intelligence and knowing performances. He plays an ex-slave who found the army a new kind of slavery. His rebelliousness has held his career back. He gets into a fight with a fellow "buffalo soldier" and kills the man with his own knife and steals Rowdy Yate's horse to escape. Rowdy has been at the fort delivering cattle the Army has bought to give to the Kiowa Indians for food - and something to hunt. Woody outwardly expresses contempt for the Indians - as he does for everyone, but seems to have some sympathy for their plight. The Army patrol that is after him has orders to shoot to kill. Rowdy wants to get there first and does. At this time it becomes similar to the excellent Have Gun Will Travel "The Outlaw" in which Paladin has to bring in Charles Bronson. Paladin falls over a cliff and Bronson can now escape but finds that he can't leave the man he has come to respect behind. That's what happens here. When Strode softens and comes back to help Rowdy, it proves his undoing as he has to summon the patrol to help and hey shoot him. No happy ending was imposed, making this different from most TV shows and movies of the period.
This is Rowdy's best episode yet, allowing him to emerge from his "wet behind the years" persona. This may also have been at the actor's insistence or the producer's feeling that they had a star on their hands.
This was the height of Strode's stardom, coming between his turn as a Roman slave forced to fight Spartacus and another Army sergeant accused of murder in 'Sergeant Rutlidge'. This is fully as good as either.
The Broken Word is a tangled web. Favor has agreed with a local rancher, played by, of all people EG Marshall, (soon to be playing Lawrence Preston on "The Defenders"), to buy 200 head of cattle. The problem is, he has less than 200 head because his cattle are dying of anthrax, which has already killed 20 of them and also his ranch hand. Ol' EG doesn't want Favor to know this because he wants the money favor will pay him, $1200.00: $6 a head, so he can fulfill his promise to take his pretty young wife, (Gloria Talbot) to live in a St. Louis mansion with servants and pretty dresses, etc. That would be $27,558.71 today, (the ranch hand's gravestone says he died in 1869). Living as he described seems like a pipe dream but that's what this guy does: dream and commit crimes to try to make his dreams come true. When the doctor, played, ironically, by a Perry Mason judge, Morris Ankrum, discovers the disease, Marshall kills him to silence him, knowing that by agreeing to sell the cattle already makes him guilty of murder.
On the other end of things, Favor has a drover, played by Dick York, (four years prior to 'Bewitched' but shortly after he would have hurt his back filing 'They Came to Cordura' in 1959), who refuses to drink alcohol even when Wishbone is treating him for an injury. We later learn that York stopped drinking when, having lost contact with reality through drink, he shot and - he thinks - killed his finance. He bolted after doing that and has been on the move ever since. In one of those convenient television ironies, he did not kill his lady love - just left her using a cane - and she married EG! People mocked her and mocked him for marrying someone so much younger and that's his motivation for getting her happiness and the both of them living in high society, even if it involves a series of murders. Dick comes by the ranch when he learns she is there but she refuses to leave EG for him. He then goes to the local town to drink away his sorrows, (another broken promise - to himself). He winds up in a fight and wounds himself. EG takes him to the town doctor - who has already killed - and then tells the sheriff that Dick must have done it. The sheriff jails Dick but wonders why the doctor's body was so cold. EG then decides kill the sheriff and have Dick blamed for it. At this point, he runs out of silk for his web. You have to make the best of reality, not try to rearrange it to create a fantasy.
The Top of the World is where Robert Culp is when he takes his morphine, which he started using to recover from serious war wounds. He used to be a drover, (did they have cattle drives before the war?), and his doctor thinks it would be therapeutic for him to return to that profession. He's presently on three pills a day and is trying to get down to one. He gets Favor to sign him on but not tell the other men what his problem is. He winds up getting one man injured but save his life. The man's replacement, (played by the excellent Paul Carr), is the callow son of a man who was killed fighting along side Culp in the war: he sort of hero worships him. Culp, determined to get over his addiction, gives Carr his pills and tells him not to give him one no matter what. The next day, Culp begs Carr for one and Carr follows orders and refuses him. The desperate Culp shoots him dead. The cattle bolt and Culp, (predictably), dies a hero's death trying to stop the stampede. It's a very good character study.
Favor makes a good speech describing what Culp has gone through and you wonder if his own experiences having his face undergo plastic surgery after war service might have given the words an extra depth to Eric Fleming.
Wagon Train: The Steve Campden Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 8
The Clara Duncan Story Apr 22, 1959
The Duke Le May Story Apr 29, 1959
The Kate Parker Story May 6, 1959
The Steve Campden Story May 13, 1959
An unusual episode, (In a series that, like Rawhide, has a lot of them), which features a young Angie Dickinson as the fiancé of an artist who went out west after getting bad reviews and is now painting some (lousy watercolors) of western subjects. One is a sexy picture of Angie, (is there any other kind?), hanging above the bar in a saloon that has been very successful because of it. Another in "Portrait of a lynching", which has been getting him some attention back east. It's also been getting him some attention out west by the rancher, (not really so) accurately depicted in the painting and his henchmen. Flint has a supporting role after Clara and the artist's father arrive to find him.
Cameron Mitchell, a very fine actor, is Duke Le May who is an escaped convict hiding with the wagon train under an assumed name. A lawman arrives looking for him and Duke wins a shoot-out but is captured. The major orders McCullough to take him to a nearby fort, which sets up a classic back-and forth situation between a (temporary) lawman and his prisoner as they travel over the prairie. Le<ay tells Flint that he grew up in a strict religious household and that he became a criminal as a rebellion against his strict father. They come across a small ranch ruled by a man, (Ed Platt) very similar to his father. He has an attractive daughter who finds Le May interesting and young son about the same age Duke was when he left home and who looks up to Le May as a man it might be exciting to be. Le May's only opposition, other than Flint, is the father. But he wins him over -temporarily - by claiming he knows how to find water on the property, (there is a terrible drought), using a divining rod. That ends when he digs in a place that appears to have no water. He tries to escape but the boy tries to stop his father from shooting Duke. The gun goes off and the boy is shot. He'll survive. Duke returns after much thought, deciding he can't leave the boy - or leave him thinking that his type of life is one to leave. Then some water bubbles up in the hole they dug. Flint declares it three miracles. I wasn't sure I liked this one until that ending, which was very affecting.
It's interesting that, in the initial confrontation, Duke is disarmed by Charley Wooster with a whip, drawing rare admiration from his wagon train mates. This is the beginning of some attempts to make Charley, who heretofore has been a clownish character, into something more substantial. One wonders if this was at the behest of Frank McGrath, who got sick of playing Charley as an idiot.
The Kate Parker story was less satisfying. It features Virginia Grey, who had played Major Adams' long-lost love in "The Major Adams Story" in season one and now returns in a different role, although no one seems to notice the resemblance. She's married to the vile Warren Stevens, who views everything in terms of dollar signs. Robert Fuller, a future regular on the show but not in this role, is a young husband who is concerned about the condition of his wife, (Ruta Lee), who is injured in a wagon accident and has to stay behind. Major Adams will send a doctor back when they encounter one. (A wagon train is like a moving town: you would think they would make sure to have a doctor along.) Grey, (she's Kate Parker), agrees to stay with them, to help her and perhaps get away from her husband. But he won't go away as long as she's got a box of cash and gold coins. He demands the box. Fuller shoots him with a one-shot derringer, which wounds his leg. Stevens fortunately doesn't kill him. But insists his wife take him away with the wagon at gunpoint, leaving Bob and Ruta to try to survive a blizzard in a small tent. It winds up with Stevens breaking through some thin ice because he is weighed down with the gold coins, (something they borrowed from Jack London's "Call of the Wild"). Kate is recused by a mountain man, Royal Dano, who has lost his Indian wife and starts falling for her. Meanwhile Bob and Ruta have survived by warming themselves in each other's arms. The theme, obviously, is that caring for each other pays off more than carrying gold across ice.
More remarkable is The Steve Campden Story. The train is stuck in a mountain pass, (so many of these second-year stories take place in the mountains), and Flint is sent to find a way through, (haven't they been there before?). He encounters a father and son pair of mountaineers. The father, (the always excellent Torin Thatcher), is a Captain Ahab type whose Moby Dick is whatever mountain that hasn't been climbed yet. He suggests Flint come with them because the best way to spot a mountain pass is from the top of the highest mountain. He agrees to go and notices that the son, Steve Jr., (the also excellent Ben Cooper, who has a fine British accent for an actor from Memphis, Tennessee), is not an enthusiastic participant. He's clearly scared of mountain-climbing, which Steve Sr. Attributes to cowardice, always comparing him unfavorably to his deceased older brother - and himself.
Faced with a blizzard, the climbers find a cave high up the mountain. In there they find, (but we do not see, except for what was an obvious prop albino mountain lion with unusually long teeth). But we heard them constantly, their noises provided rather obviously by recordings of cats meowing. But it's unnerving to the men and to the audience. Big Steve puts on his act of bluster, mocking the concern of the two younger me. But he gets injured and insists that he'll stay in the mountain as the other two go for help. Little Steve, in a confrontation gets him to admit that his brother was no paragon: he died in battle, while covering in a foxhole. His father has just used him as a cudgel to belabor his younger son - and make it look like the father is so much stronger than his son. When Flint and Little Steve get back down the mountain, make contact with the train and return to rescue Big Steve, they find him overwhelmed by fear, (his hair has turned white), and he tries to get away form them but falls into what looks like a bottomless pit. Was he deluded into thinking they were a threat to him? Was he scared of showing them how weak he had become, destroyed by the fear he wouldn't admit? The answer is at the bottom of the pit in the mountain he couldn't conquer.
The episode is hurt by the cheesy effects. A climb supposedly up the mountain is an obvious crawl across a sound stage - perpendicular to the mountains in the background. And the 'saber tooth tiger' must be seen to be disbelieved.
Rawhide: Incident at Poco Tiempo (1960)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 2
Incident of the Slavemaster Nov 11, 1960
Incident on the Road to Yesterday Nov 18, 1960
Incident at Superstition Prairie Dec 2, 1960
Incident at Poco Tiempo Dec 9, 1960
Rawhide's 5th ever episode is called "Incident on the Edge of Madness". In it, Gil Favor finds that his commanding officer in the Confederate Army has formed a private army of his old war buddies and wants to use it to create a kingdom in Panama. Now, in the 5th episode of season 3, (the 'Slavemaster' he encounters the former commandant of a Confederate prison camp who is still running a prison camp and won't let his prisoners go, while he lives a life of luxury. This is generally a better episode than the first one, except for two things. One is that security sees amazingly lax at the camp. Gil and Pete, guests in the house, easily climb through a window and walk all over the place, finding a mine where the prisoners work and are not caught. Secondly the prison camp commandant is played by the now-corpulent Pete Lorre, who was more threatening when he was young and skinny and kind of weird. Now he's old and dumpy and kind of pathetic. He died three years later of a stroke at age 59.
He might have wanted to be on the Road to Yesterday but that's the path of Frankie Laine, (who, of course, signs the series' theme song over the credits of each episode). He plays a former robber who, after a long time to think about it in prison, has made a legitimate financial success of himself and is now paying back the money he stole, from victim to victim. Favor was one of the victims, from a stagecoach robbery. But the final stop is hometown, where he stole $250 from the bank. He pays that back, only to find out that he's wanted for the theft of $11,000 and a murder. He's taken in but notices that a local businessman, (Chester Morris) has his name on every sign in town - and that his old girlfriend is married to the sheriff.
When Frankie signs the theme, he also cracks a whip. I've yet to see any of the drovers use a whip in any episode but it makes for a dramatic sound.
At Superstition Prairie, (where do they get these names?), Wishbone violates a taboo by attempting to save an old Indian, (Australian actor Michael Pate, who had played the Aztec in 'Incident of the Challenge', the second episode of this season), who has been left to die by his tribe. It turns out he's not as used up as they suppose: when the creek suddenly runs dry, he knows why, remembering an incident from his youth. It's a good episode about honoring the knowledge and wisdom of older people. (I'm 70 and am not used up, either.)
Poco Tiempo is the name of a town where another robbery has occurred. A man's been killed and much of the town has been destroyed by a fire the thieves started. A posse encounters Rowdy and Pete and takes them in as potential suspects. (Lucky they didn't do what the posse did in "The Ox Bow Incident" from 1943.) What the posse doesn't know is that the bandits are holding a priest hostage in the basement of a church, with two nuns covering for them lest the priest be harmed. The two nuns are Agnes Morehead and Gigi Perreau, the latter of whom has yet to take her final vows.
The bandits tell them to deliver their take via a stagecoach to another member of the gang in the next town. Also on board is the local prostitute, played by Carolyn Hughes, (who had been George C. Scott's first wife), who gets along well with the nuns despite their differences. Rowdy suspects something and joins them. Gigi falls for him and decides not to complete her vows, which makes Rowdy feel guilty. So he proposes to the prostitute to get Gigi to change her mind. Meanwhile the two bandits have killed the priest and rendezvous with their colleague, leading to a fight between Rowdy, Wishbone, (who is along for the ride), and the bad guys won by the good guys. The nuns go back to their church and Rowdy has to tell the prostitute he didn't really mean it. She walks away and the nuns ride a way in the stagecoach. Rowdy says of the lead nun that "she's quite a lady". Wishbone looks at the prostitute walking away and says "So is she." A very effective ending.
Wagon Train: The Vincent Eaglewood Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 7
The Sister Rita Story Mar 25, 1959
The Matthew Lowry Story Apr 1, 1959
The Swift Cloud Story Apr 8, 1959
The Vincent Eaglewood Story Apr 15, 1959
In the first one, Flint comes across a wagon with three nuns in it who have come to 'serve' the Indians who are very naïve about their task, (a Priest accompanied them until he was killed). But they insist their faith will carry them through. Flint rides with them to get them to the wagon train in case prayers are not enough. Vera Miles is Sister Rita, who recently joined the order and seems to be falling for Flint. Francis Bavier, (soon to be Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith Show), is an older nun who gets captured by the Indians. There's a strange scene in which Rita and Flint see her after the capture and think she's dead. Flint says "I hope so", suggesting that she's been visibly tortured. But she later appears, still alive but dying as if from a heart attack but otherwise unmolested. I suspect a change in the script to a gentler demise but the editor didn't remove the brief earlier scene suggesting otherwise.
Keeping up the religious theme, Richard Anderson plays a Quaker, (Lowry) who lost an arm during the war caring for the wounded, (he got gangrene from a patient). There's always a querulous member of the train who makes trouble but none are quiet as bad as Jed Otis, (John Pickard), who wants to fight the one-armed Quaker in the very first scene because he's "sick of those 'thees and thows'. He also thinks he a rival for the affections of Dorothy Provine, playing a slutty woman Lowry has no interest in who has been flirting with him. The train has to go through a narrow canyon when they encounter a wagon where people have been stricken with cholera. It's too narrow for the train to turn around. Otis' boorish solution it to "burn them out". Lowry crosses over to help, saying that there's two kinds of cholera and this might be the kind that isn't contagious. Otis actually convinces some of the train members to join him in a mutiny. The show ends with an amazing engineering feat: they climb a cliff and hoist the wagons up to the top of the canyon, which, (turning out to be a flat movie set), allows them to mover on normally. Than why did they enter the canyon to begin with? How did their belongings stay in the wagons as they were being pulled up the sides of the canyon? If they unloaded the wagons first, how did they get the belongings up the canyon walls?
There are items in the trivia and 'goofs' about the woman who appears at the beginning, calling for help that Flint somehow misses in an early scene. It says she never reappears. Yet, she's obviously the woman we see when the train encounters the diseased wagon, who then falls for Lowry. It may be another example of bad editing: the first scene plays no role in the story and could have been cut out.
Swift Cloud (Rafael Campos, who is excellent) is the son of an Indian Chief who gets wounded in an encounter with the wagon train. Major Adams convinces that he can be cured of the resulting limp if they can take him to a doctor in Sacramento. Swift Cloud is suspicious of everyone on the train except a boy his age, (played Johnny Washhbrook of My friend Flicka). Meanwhile a group of Comancheros decide they want Swift Cloud. This week's trouble-maker is Alan Baxter as a former Confederate officer who still wears his uniform and insists on military aggression as the solution to everything.
Vincent Eaglewood is basically Mr. Peppers out west. Wally Cox plays a school teacher who joins the train and holds classes for the children, (and Charley Wooster, who enjoys a book of poetry which he can't read because he likes the pictures). Vincent gets in trouble for various scientific demonstrations that go wrong but winds up dueling with the medicine man of a local Indian tribe and winds up with the job himself.
Rawhide: Incident of the Night Visitor (1960)
Rawhide Season 3 Disc 1
Incident at Rojo Canyon Sep 30, 1960
Incident of the Challenge Oct 14, 1960
Incident at Dragoon Crossing Oct 21, 1960
Incident of the Night Visitor Nov 4, 1960
Somehow, there's a confederate army unit that has taken over a ranch, lived off the land and is 'awaiting orders' years after the war ended. If you can buy that, it's a good episode. Meanwhile a former Confederate Colonel who was something of a legend, has joined the union army and been made a sergeant in charge of some young recruits with no battle experience. They are to protect the drive through a dangerous area, made so by raids from the neo-confederates. All three parties meet in the battle of Rojo Canyon. Songstress Julie London and her real-life husband Bobby Troup make a gracious but totally irrelevant appearance, although they attempt to tie it in by making Julie the daughter of the rancher who lost his spread to the confederates. It would be the same story without them.
The 'Challenge' is another strange plot. An Aztec, (played by and Australian actor named Michael Pate), who has walked to Texas in search of a descendent of an Aztec goddess to help his starving people. He saves Favor during a windstorm and accompanies him as he goes to a nearby town seeking access to their wells for his herd. Pate decides that a saloon girl, (Ann Robinson) is the Goddess descendant he's looking for. This angers her and the mayor of the town, (Lyle Bettger), who is secretly having an affair with Robinson to get away from his shrewish invalid wife. Meanwhile, Robinson has eyes for Favor, who gets turned down for the water by Bettger. Is that complicated enough for you?
The best Rawhide episode thus far is "Incident at Dragoon Crossing". A Feverish Favor has made a risky decision to drive the herd through some difficult country to get to a stream. He's spotted by legendary trail boss John Cord, (the excellent Dan O'Herlihy), who insists he's made a mistake but is rebuffed by Favor, who is in no mood to have his judgement questioned. Later, Favor rides to Cord's encampment and admits that he's not capable of bossing the herd in his current state. Cord's aide takes him to a local town to recover and Cord rides to the herd to take over. He finds the drovers unbelieving that Favor would give up his position. But Cord expects them to do everything he says anyway. He knows what he's doing and that becomes evident as he wins over each of them one-by-one, Rowdy being the last hold out. But there's another problem: a local gang has taken over the best ford in the stream. They had a violent encounter with Cord and his men when he drove his own herd through, (he was on his way back to Texas), that cost their leader a brother. They are out to get Cord. In the end, it's all about leadership and how you have to have someone in charge you believe in.
One thing I notice from the battles in Rojo Canyon and Dragoon Crossing is that Favor has developed a habit of not having a hat on when a battle starts. It made me wonder if that was an attempt to draw the viewer's attention to Eric Fleming as Favor, the show's star, among all the hats.
There few things a trail boss holds on tighter to than his remuda - his supply of horses. It's a long walk from Texas to Missouri and cattle pay much more attention to a man on a horse than to a man on foot. The camp gets hit by raiders that steal some of their horses. But is it Comanches or famous horse thief...err 'trader' Nick Mesa, (the wonderful Harold Stone). One of the Drovers, Jeff Barkley, (Dane Clark), is wounded - but not by the Raiders. Rather's it's by an 11 year old boy who just wanted to look at his face. He surprised Barkley, who was sleeping, and the result was a fight. Two huge coincidences: Barkley used to work for Mesa and Barkley is the kid's father, but doesn't want to deal with it.
Rawhide: Incident in the Garden of Eden (1960)
Rawhide Season 2 Disc 8
Incident of the Music Maker May 20, 1960
Incident of the Silent Web Jun 3, 1960
Incident of the Last Chance Jun 10, 1960
Incident in the Garden of Eden Jun 17, 1960
Peter Whitney was one of the best character actors on television during my youth. He could play domineering villains or big dumb guys or anything in between. The Music Maker is one of his best roles. He plays a Swiss patriarch who has brought his extended family to run a farm out west. It has failed and they are starving, (but don't look it). By trade, he's a (very) handyman who can make or fix anything. He inculcates himself into the drive as a gunsmith but makes the guns unworkable and his family comes to steal 50 head of cattle. Gil is injured and feverish and Whitney orders him taken to their farm, where he can take care of him, (he also knows medicine). But his family wants to steal the whole herd and that's a line he won't cross. One of his sons is played by Werner Klemperer, later the Colonel on 'Hogan's Heroes'.
A young girl, (Reba Waters), witnesses the murder of her father and is shocked into psychosomatic silence. Don Haggerty is an escaped convict who borrows her father's clothes and pretends o be her father as a cover. Later Haggerty and Favor confront the guy who is actually the killer, (Charles Maxwell) and the convict becomes a hero. Not a complicated plot but some good characterizations.
A young, naive couple drive their wagon across the herd and, after rescue, join the drive: they are from the east and headed for his uncle's ranch, (or was it hers?). They are played by John Kerr, (lately of South Pacific - Lt. Cable) and the Audrey Hepburn of television, Roxanne Berard, (love Audrey but I like Roxanne, too: She gets a chance to play a wider selection of characters in TV than Audrey did in the movies, as here). Roxanne doesn't show much faith in her inexperienced and unlucky husband and concludes that he is a coward - until, of course he comes through to save her from some drunken Indians. It's kind of a trifle for this series, with the drovers in the background. Also, it's not very politically correct, showing an image of alcoholic Native Americans and women who need 'taming'. Very 1950's.
The Garden of Eden features one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood history, Debra Pagett, (aided by false eyelashes and eye shadow). She's living in a mansion her father built on a ranch that has a small herd of cattle Rowdy wants to buy to replenish the herd, (he's in charge while Mr. Favor is away). The father is played by Robert Coote, (Colonel Pickering in Broadway' My Fair Lady). Debbie's sick of the west and wants to sell the herd to get enough money to go back east, (Daddy's fortune is running out). Debbie has two shocks coming: they don't even own the herd. Daddy ran out of money a long time ago and she's not the daughter of his long dead wife: her mother is the Indian servant who has been taking care of her: she's a half breed. It winds up with her standing at the edge of a cliff, contemplating ending it all while Rowdy and Daddy race to save her. At the end, she probably belongs in mental asylum, so many bad things have happened. But she merely seems tired. Still, a strong dramatic episode.
Wagon Train: The Conchita Vasquez Story (1959)
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 6
The Annie Griffith Story Feb 25, 1959
The Jasper Cato Story Mar 4, 1959
The Vivian Carter Story Mar 11, 1959
The Conchita Vasquez Story Mar 18, 1959
Annie Griffith is a 'mountain lady' waiting for her husband to come home. She finds Flint, wounded and feverish and brings him to her cabin, not knowing that he was wounded by her husband, whom in killed in self-defense. Jan Sterling, (the victim's cold wife in 1951's 'Ace in the Hole') plays her. John Dehner plays the weekly trouble maker on the train, recruiting wagon train members to follow him back east, including an interesting scene done in silhouette with Dehner and a another guy sitting in a wagon with, presumably, a camp fire somewhere behind them and Major Adams on the camera side of the wagon, listening in.
Jasper Cato is an American Inspector Javert in a story obviously inspired by Les Miserables. He's after Alan Case, (soon to be in 'The Deputy' with Henry Fonda), a reformed criminal now a crusading newspaper editor who has just rid a town of it's 'boss'. The town wants to hang Cato, who has a very uncharacteristic change of heart in the face of this. A good episode with a very unconvincing ending.
Vivian Carter is a dignified but naïve woman, (she's always reading from Robert Browning), who thinks she's out west to marry an old boyfriend she hasn't seen in a decade. This guy, (played by Patric Knowles), is already married to a dance hall girl, (the excellent Mari Aldon), and they have a plan to deprive Vivian of her money with a fake marriage. She gets crushed by this and rebuilds herself as a hard-boiled woman who's never going to fall for anyone again. Lorne Greene, (the year before Bonanza), who really loves her, tries to soften her up again. You wonder if this is a wife Ben never told us about.
The delightful Anna Maria Alberghetti plays Conchita Vasquez in a cliché-ridden story. She's with a band of Comancheros and in love with their second in command until he murders her father to become the first in command. She then falls for Flint, whom she lured into being captured by the group. She helps Flint escape and joins the wagon train but feels alienated by those who see her as 'different' and by Flints unwillingness to marry her. She then rejoins the Comancheros and helps them devise an ambush. But when Flint comes through first, she runs out to want him and is shot by her boyfriend and dies in Flint's arms. Is that a spoiler? You didn't see that coming?