TV Show Westerns - What are your favorites/least favorites and why?

I'm watching the early seasons of Gunsmoke now -- I've never seen the B&W ones before. It sure moves a lot faster as a half-hour. A lot are based on scripts for the Gunsmoke radio series (1952-61), which you can tell if you pay close attention. Sam Peckinpah wrote several -- in fact The Rifleman began life as an early Gunsmoke script the producers didn't buy, so three years later SP dusted it off and sold it to Dick Powell/Four Star.

This is a Sam Peckinpah script with Strother Martin (their first collaboration?):

Nothing earthshaking, of vital interest only if you're writing a term paper on Sam Peckinpah (or Strother Martin)

However this Peckinpah script is one of my favorites:
https://youtu.be/r_ZoSRD0aZ0
The jail scene may be unique -- I've never seen a hero act like that before

Perhaps my favorite episode. A Peckinpah script with a really unexpected plot twist:
https://youtu.be/-D3CiFhdbY0

One more:
https://youtu.be/rA56QGv5f-8
This a very interesting episode, not for the somewhat awkward plotting (the story strands aren't really woven together all that well), as for the character detail we are given about Matt. But what makes this episode stand out is the last four or five minutes. Dennis Weaver has a nice moment where he gives Matt a speech on why he is needed, and then the final shot is something really unusual for a TV western, or indeed any TV episode or movie to come out of Hollywood. Of course there is a limit to how ambiguous a TV series can be -- we know there's going to be an episode next week -- but TV execs are still less-than-enthralled by loose ends.

Series creator John Meston gets the story and script credit. I presume it's based on a radio episode (the ones where he gets story credit generally were), and I'm starting to understand why OTR fans rave about how great the radio Gunsmoke was. The Gunmokes of this era show aspects of Matt Dillon that simply were not explored in the color episodes (the period I'm familiar with).


Producer Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston, the creators of Gunsmoke:




John Meston with James Arness:

 

I reallyt enjoyed that first episode, really enjoyed both the guests and the leads, especailly Wayne Rogers. It mist just be the msot enjoyable performance I've ever seen him give. Here is the second episode.

 

death valley days.i think it lasted about 20 years or so.they have the reruns on the western channel.
had some great guest stars+
also had some great hosts.
Old Ranger (Stanley Andrews) Dale Robertson Robert Taylor+Ronald Reagan

 

Wild Wild West, mainly to look at Robert Conrad -- surely one of the most attractive men to ever work on television.

 

Peckinpah and Meston were absolutely amazing writers, unconventional and refused to be put into a box.

 

Here is another great Western that few have seen. The Westerner starring Brian Keith and John Dehner brought to you by Sam Pekinpah!

 

This is one of the classic TV western episodes:



Writer-director Tom Gries would later rework it as a feature film.

 

One of Heston's best performances.

 

Two early 60's series I'd have no problem recommending are The Dakotas and The Tall Man.

The Dakotas was a Cheyene spin-off series featuring Larry Ward and Jack Elam as two of four roving territorial Deputies. Elma's wise cracks and tough guy dark humor added tremendously to this short run series. It was cancelled after viewer complaints over the level of violence in specific episodes rather than weak ratings.

Also, The Tall Man featuring Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett with Clu Gulager as William Bonnie. Gulager's take on Billy the Kid was complicated and sympathetic which made this series more entertaining than some westerns of the era.

I'd also recommend a number of the surprisingly well written and acted western series (some already mentioned) like Bricoe County Jr., Lonesome Dove, Yancy Derringer, Stony Burke, early Gunsmoke, Wyatt Earp, Have Gun Will Travel, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Rifleman and many more.


Cat

 

Always like Gulager. Thought he was an uderused actor.

 

Two of my favorite shows (from different studios).




Then there's the good old Warner's line-up:

 

BTW, every Saturday afternoon at 4:30 PM ET/3:30 PM CT, RFD-TV is rerunning this series licensed from Classic Media/Dreamworks and as a result, the prints are great.

 

Cheyenne
Gunsmoke
The Rebel

 

Wagon Train with Robert Fuller
Rawhide
Wells Fargo
High Chaperral
Have Gun-Will Travel
Hawkeye And The Last Of The Mohicans.

 

When I was a little kid back in the mid-1950s, I was a huge Hopalong Cassidy fan. And in the later 1950s, it was Lawman and a show whose name I forget in which Michael Ansara played an Indian (Cochise, I think). And then I always enjoyed the Rifleman, as so many on this thread apparently also did.

 

Never liked Gunsmoke' actors looked so old' cept Burt Reynolds who was ok..but imo a boring show.

 

Michael Ansara - Broken Arrow

 

Me, too. He was all over TV. Thus, here was my first school lunchbox:


Hopalong is almost totally forgotten now.

 

Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you notice they never get anywhere? They just keep wagon training...

 

I'd like to recommend The Guns of Will Sonnett (1967-69) the best western ever made for television. Young Jeff Sonnett searches the wild west for his father, a wanted gunfighter on the run, guided by his grandfather. Each episode is a well-thought out moral fable about the choices we make and the consequences we pay in life, with a little gunfighting, a little poetry and lots of gruff, cantankerous empathy from Walter Brennan. This was back when westerns could still be intelligent, before mindless and ambivalent "spaghetti westerns" killed off the genre and made the great American western a lost art. The Timeless Media set collects all the episodes in okay quality including the resolution to the search, which never aired.

Don't hesitate. Buy it now:

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Will-Son...p/B00ABHYFM6/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8



Seen any good westerns from the old days lately?

 

Check out some half-hours. They're a lot faster paced than the hour-long episodes.

I linked a few in the post at the top of the page, but it seems they've been deleted. Here are some new links with the same brief comments:

Perhaps my favorite episode. A Peckinpah script with a really unexpected plot twist:



A fairly unremarkable episode, but with a classic ending
https://youtu.be/0vm8Q1TWrAY

One more:
https://youtu.be/rA56QGv5f-8
This a very interesting episode, not for the somewhat awkward plotting (the story strands aren't really woven together all that well), as for the character detail we are given about Matt. But what makes this episode stand out is the last four or five minutes. Dennis Weaver has a nice moment where he gives Matt a speech on why he is needed, and then the final shot is something really unusual for a TV western, or indeed any TV episode or movie to come out of Hollywood. Of course there is a limit to how ambiguous a TV series can be -- we know there's going to be an episode next week -- but TV execs are still less-than-enthralled by loose ends.

 

Yeah ..Dennis Weaver ( mister Dillon mister Dillon ) was very effective in Touch Of Evil.

 

I read that Hoppy's image lunchbox was the very first lunchbox to ever have an image on it! Impressive!

 

I second your recommendation.

I never paid attention to Gunsmoke and the other horse operas when I was growing up, when they were all either in repeats or running out of steam, but I've been getting into them now. The 1950s in particular turns out to be a rich well for western buffs. Gunsmoke was a tight, lean program artfully shot and maturely, intelligently written at 30 minutes. Those short episodes are as well-made as a feature film. The best scripts were by Sam Peckinpah; the several he wrote are constantly surprising and so good one wishes he'd contributed a lot more. I used to work with a writer who became involved with the program much later on, now that I've watched the first two seasons I get what he was talking about.

 

I'd qualify that "okay quality" line with the fact that these really DON'T look very good. These are syndication prints, sometimes choppy in terms of storytelling, and look washed out and mushy at times, with color tint just a little off. I find that when I watch these, I need to drop the brightness or up the contrast, and change the hue and saturation to get it to a watchable state. Nevertheless, it's worth doing so - the series is really good.

The same prints air on MeTV and DECADES at times.

Harry