John Ostrander: Walking Tall On the Small Screen
I was not always a big fan of Westerns. My knowledge/memory of them were largely drawn from TV shows of my childhood – and not always the best ones. They were dominated by The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry (although I was never a big Autry fan) and shows like them. Westerns dominated TV in those days in ways that I don’t think any genre dominates any more.
It was my late wife, Kimberly Yale, who really schooled me in movie Westerns and the difference between a John Ford Western, ones by Howard Hawks, and Budd Boetticher’s Westerns. I finally learned and grasped what powerful movies they were, Just a few years ago, I got to see John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers on the big screen and it was only then that I really understood how powerful it was and why its star, John Wayne, was such an icon. In the close-ups, where Wayne’s face is two stories high, he seems like a figure off Mount Rushmore. And the famous final shot, where his character is framed by a closing door, is haunting. It’s also interesting to note that both here and in Howard Hawks’ Red River he plays something of a bastard.
It’s only been in recent years that I’ve returned to some of the Western TV shows and rediscovered them. What I discovered was some very good writing and acting, especially in the half hour shows. Have Gun, Will Travel, starring Richard Boone, featured him as a traveling gunslinger, Paladin, and a memorable and haunting title song. Wanted: Dead or Alive starred a young Steve McQueen right around the time that he broke out in films in The Magnificent Seven.
Of all of them, my favorite discovery has been The Rifleman starring Chuck Connors. Connors was a 6’6” former athlete, playing basketball for the Celtics and baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs. In the show he played Lucas McCain, a homesteader who was fast with a special rapid fire Winchester. McCain was a widower although he had a son, played by Johnny Crawford. His best friend was the Marshall of the town of North Fork, Micah Torrance, played by Paul Fix. (Trivia note: Mary and I so liked the name “Micah” that we gave it to one of our cats.)
The show was also a proving ground for actors, writers, and directors who would later go on to other things. Sam Peckinpah directed several episodes and wrote a few, too. Budd Boetticher directed an episode, as did Ida Lupino. Richard Donner, who would later direct the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, directed seven episodes.
A number of famous (or to be famous later) actors also appeared – Agnes Moorehead did a turn, as did Martin Landau, Buddy Hackett, and Harry Dean Stanton. Sammy David Jr. acted in the series twice, once as a gunslinger. There was a time that I would have questioned the probability of that but my later researches into the history of the West revealed that there were a number of black gunslingers in the Wild West.
Connors was a better actor than I remembered and the stories were varied and almost always interesting. His Lucas McCain was a stern father but a loving one and usually reluctant to be drawn into a fight. The stories weren’t the simple good/bad confrontations I knew from shows like Roy Rogers. The characters were more complex which made the stories more interesting.
You can catch the shows on DVD and I would guess on Netflix or Hulu. They’re worth a shot. So to speak.
I’m a fan of THE RIFLEMAN, John, too. And you’re right, the stories were always more than “white hat vs. black hat.”
Connors also went on to BRANDED, another Western that was more than “white hat vs. black hat.” He was a calvary officer who was falsely accused of cowardice and drummed out of the U.S. Army. Here’s the theme:
“Branded.
“Scorned as the one who ran.”
“What do you do when you’re branded,
“and you know you’re a man.”
“Whatever you do for the rest of your life,
“You must prove
“You’re a man.”
I remember those days – Maverick, Fury, Cheyenne …
Eric Bogle wrote a song called “Front Row Cowboy“, about the Saturday matinées of his youth (that cost sixpence). The refrain is
and the last verse says
and the song ends, after the final refrain
Personally, i love Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West..; it may be my favourite film, not just my favourite Western…
Never heard that song before. I like the lyrics. And Once Upon A Time In The West is one of my all time favorites, very powerful movie.
Eric Bogle is brilliant – you may know one of his songs, “No Man’s Land” (also called “Willie McBride” and “The Flowers of the Forest”).
It and “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” are two of the most powerful anti-war songs i know.
But the man also writes some of the funniest songs you’ll ever hear, too.
“The “Rifleman” is, at its best — which is damn good — almost Biblical, a stark, violent saga with characters seemingly drawn from the Old Testament — Lucas, Micah and Mark. Peckinpah played a major role in developing it and you can see actors who became part of his stock company, including Warren Oates and R. G. Armstrong, in the series. Connors portrayed the title character as a somewhat crazed man, driven wild by a tortured past and/or killers who somehow repeatedly came to the little community of North Fork, where he was forced to kill them, week after week. Paul Fix, who frequently worked with John Wayne on the big screen, was a perfect companion as the alcoholic but wise and surprisingly tough Marshal (one l, by the way) Micah Torrance. The powerful music adds a great deal to this classic Western series.
I started watching The Rifleman as an 8 year old boy, on an old 2 channel, black & white TV with rabbit ears. Never missed an episode. My mom would remind us when it was coming on if we were out playing (kids “played” together in those days!). When Chuck started firing his rifle in the beginning, me and my brother would grab our chests and fall to the floor dead, every time. I can’t say much good about television today, and what they offer. There are no TV censors anymore. Anything goes, and it helps to destroy the morals of society. This is one reason why I started collecting vintage and classic TV series and episodes, off the Internet. I’ll always watch one of my favorite shows, the Rifleman, and I know that Johnny Crawford realizes what a profound and morally sound memory, he helped to present to millions of TV viewers around the world.
I grew up watching The Rifleman. I became a single father. My twin daughters watched reruns of the show with me. After it was over, we discussed the moral of the story, the trust, the honesty or other events through the story. The girls are 26 now, and we have a great relationship. We own every single episode on DVD and have marathons when they come visit. I became a lawman by trade. A quiet guy, who talks his way out of a confrontation with everyone shaking hands and parting amicably whenever possible. And, I carry a large lever .44 Winchester Carbine instead of a patrol shotgun. That’s true, my employer allows it because I hit what I aim at. The Rifleman is a lot more than an old western. It was full of life lessons to teach my children. They became good adults.