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Rawhide Season 6 Disc 6 Incident of the Swindler Feb 20, 1964 Incident of the Wanderer Feb 27, 1964 Incident at Zebulon Mar 5, 1964 Incident at Hourglass Mar 12, 1964

The Swindler is Straw Coleman, a con man played by John Dehner, who years ago bilked Wishbone out of a lot of money by convincing him to fall for a pretty lady who them seems to have been murdered by a rival suitor. Wishbone gets blamed and leaves town, leaving the money he has acquired from his successful business ventures, (this is 15 years ago) behind. Wishbone has been on the lam for 15 years, hiding out as a mountain man and trail drive cook, (with no hint of this in prior episodes). Now Coleman is on the lam, (he's been found shackled). Straw makes it clear that if he's captured, he'll tell on Wishbone. With that leverage he forces Wishbone to help him escape the camp, even to the point of holding a gun on his long-time friends. But Wishbone finds out his lady love is still alive: that incident 15 years ago was a classic 'badger game' with a fake murder. The woman now regrets it. That sets up a predictable ending. I found it rather far-fetched as a backstory for Wishbone.

The Wanderer is Nehemiah Persoff, playing a strange person named "Michob" who arrives bone dry in a rainstorm. Wishbone happens to have a troublesome book on legends that suggests he may be a jinx. After that, Michob gets blamed for anything that goes wrong, especially by Les Hunt, (Gregory Walcott). Michob, a peddler by trade, is going to a small town to clear an accused murderer he knows is innocent, even thought the guy has a murderous reputation. When he gets there, the man has already been hung, and the wanderer wanders again. A good episode, made so by the always excellent Nehemiah Persoff.

Zebulon is ruled by vigilantes. They are after drover Johnny Larkin, who was seen running from where a dead woman was found. They take him from the drive. Favor follows- alone, a mistake. They hang Larkin and horse-whip Favor. They dump him back at the drover's camp. Rather than get a lot of men killed, he determines to return alone. Still, he gets help from Wishbone and others who find out that Larkin did, in fact commit a murder. Still, Favor manages to get the town, including its cowardly sheriff to rebel again the vigilantes and force them to disband. I like the fact that Larkin was guilty but vigilantism is still wrong and Favor manages to convince the town of that.

Elizabeth MacRae was a fine actress who got typecast as sexy southern belles and country girls in the western and other shows of the time. Her name is very similar to that of Ellen McRae, the professional name of Edna Rae Gillooly, who again changed her professional name when she married Neil Burstyn in 1964. Ellen did a lot of TV in this era as well and went on to become a major movie star in the 1970's and won an Oscar for 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'. Elizabeth is not Ellen but this episode suggests she could have been if she'd gotten the right roles. "Incident at Hourglass" gives her a Blanche DuBois-like role that she plays to the hilt.

She plays Sally-Ann Rankin, an old flame of Gil Favors from when they grew up together. She's now married to an Army officer, (John Anderson), in charge of building a dam. Favor's route is closed down. He tries to convince Anderson to hold off long enough to allow him to get his herd through. Sally-Ann is sick of being on the frontier and asks Gil to take here away from this. She wants to live in luxury as she did as a girl. Except she didn't. She lived in poverty and dreamed of living in luxury. Her illusions have always been more important to her than reality. She's romanced all of the young officers in camp and one of them knocks out Gil, thinking he's a rival. When Gil wakes up, the young officer is dead and Sally-Ann is saying Gil killed him. It winds up with a rial and Gil defending himself. He manages to break Sally-Ann down on the stand and she gets led away, depending on the kindness of strangers.

Wagon Train Season 5 What would be Disc 5 (5 & 6 are not on disc but available on the internet) The Malachi Hobart Story Jan 24, 1962 The Dr. Denker Story Jan 31, 1962 The Lonnie Fallon Story Feb 7, 1962 The Jeff Hartfield Story Feb 14, 1962

Malachi Hobart is an itinerant preacher Duke meets who helps him with a broken saddle and feeds him both physically and spiritually and they become friends. Then Duke meets Irene Ryan, (a few months before she began playing Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies". Hobart has previously encountered her and agreed to pray her deceased husband into heaven for a price. She had given him her life savings. Now her very much alive husband shows up. Duke now determines to get Irene her money back and hound Malachi until he gives up lying to people. Malachi's response: "I tell people what they want to hear. I revive their faith in miracles." Duke winds up wondering if there might be something to that. Sadly, Wally Brown, who played the suddenly alive husband, had actually died ten weeks prior to the broadcast of a "throat hemorrhage" (Ugh!) The tone of the piece suggests a combination of The Rainmaker (1956), Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Music Man (1962), each suggesting that believing in something might be better than believing in nothing.

The Dr. Denker Story also has reference to the Music Man. A young boy, Billy, (future regular Michael Burns) sees his father killed by bandits and has gone mute. Embittered Civil War vet Ed Beauford, (George Keymas) suggests that gaining revenge would be the best was to get over the disaster. Dr. Denker has a better idea: music. He creates and plays musical instruments and teaches the train's kids to play his instruments. In what seems like an unnecessary complication, he also manufactures guns and possesses a load of them also his friend Alfred Nobel's new invention, dynamite. He intends to sell them to finance his music business. The bad guys killed Billy's father thinking he might have the cache and now they are after Dr. Denker, who has to put his life on the line to save the kid. When it's all over, the good doctor declares "guns don't kill people. People kill people. Actually, people with guns kill people. Nobel declared that his invention would end wars because people would not want to fight them if they involved such powerful explosions. Richard Gatling had the same opinion of his primitive machine gun. People can be very naïve about people.

Lonnie Fallon is a young cowpoke in love with Kathy Jennings, (Lynn Loring), whose father opposes the marriage. His employer, (Alan Hale Jr.), wants him to say with his cattle drive as he needs him. He does have the support of Kathy's grandmother, (Verna Felton, doing a great Jane Darwell imitation). He takes her to a judge to get married but they are too young to marry without consent. He winds up shooting the judge and they go on the lam -and she gets bit by a snake. But things improve after that in this convoluted and melodramatic tale.

Jeff Hartfield, (Jack Chaplain), is one of three young boys who are friends. His father, (House ? Peters Jr.) is to hang for a robbery that resulted in death. Jeff is left with his elder sister, Jenny, (Jackie Loughery), has fallen for Dallas, (Michael Forrest), who has fallen in love with the robbery money and he thinks Jeff knows where it is. The other boys have problems with their families and the three of them decide to run off, with Charley Wooster in gentle pursuit. Dallas comes after him. So does the escaped father. They find the money but all wind up imperiled in a storm. It all works out in the end - and Charley Wooster gets to be hero, although he might have stepped in a moment sooner.

You-Tube has an episode listed as "The Big Wish", Episode 35, shown May 3rd, 1956 but it's actually "The Big Switch Season 6, episode 15, shown January 10, 1957.

Perhaps because of that, the IMDB includes the cast of The Big Switch in the cast of The Big Wish, in fact listing them first. Sue George as Mona Fenton. Paula Hill as Peggy Gregson, Monty Margetts as Pauline Fenton. Kathryn Minner as Landlady. Carlyle Mitchell as Dr. Hall and Jimmy Weldon as Hotel Clerk are all from the Big Switch, (and are listed there as well.

Both are very dramatic stories concerning drug use and relationships with parents and both are very good episodes, well worth watching, as are most Dragnet episodes from this era.

Hopefully both You-Tube and the IMDB will make the appropriate corrections and end the confusion.

Rawhide Season 6 Disc 5 Incident of the Midnight Cave Jan 16, 1964 Incident of the Dowery Dundee Jan 23, 1964 Incident at Gila Flats Jan 30, 1964 Incident of the Pied Piper Feb 6, 1964

Continuity in television series is an occasional thing. In "Incident of the Haunted Hills, (11/6/59), Wishbone brags about having been a mountain man for 20 years. Later we see him climbing a steep ridge to help his mates in a gun battle. In "Incident of the Swindler" we find out that 15 years ago he was a New Orleans dandy. In Incident of the Midnight Cave he's afraid of heights. Proximity to a cliff, (created with a painted screen), in one odd part of the drive triggers a childhood memory of being tied to a church bell from a teenage prank which frightened him. He goes psychosomatically blind and remained so until the inevitable scene in which he has to see to save some one, in this case Rowdy Yates during a, (very effectively staged), prairie fire. The whole thing is very well done but I wonder if psychology was sophisticated enough for people to understand psychosomatic illnesses at this time.

The Dowery Dundee is Hazel Court with a thick Irish brogue. She's a lass from Dundee who was tricked into marriage by a man who wanted her bulls to breed his cattle. She's escaping from him but it pregnant. Then her husband shows up with a very different story. Not a memorable episode.

At Gila Flats the drive encounters the survivors of an ambush. They are soldiers on their way to negotiate a treat who were set upon by a small band of Indians who are against the treaty. The officer in charge, (Harry Lauter), insists on continuing and also commanders 200 steers to take to the Indians for food as party of the treaty. His sergeant, (Gene Evans) thinks it's all pointless. After another fight, they find an Indian woman, (played by Lesley Wales, who had a very brief career but is good here). She's a survivor of a massacre of her people by the soldiers. She and Evans start as antagonists but come to understand each other in an ending that involves Evans softening his heart enough to be tolerant, much like John Wayne in "The Searchers". That makes this one of the best episodes of this classic series.

The Incident of the Pied Piper is rather confusing, the relevance of the title being one of the problems. . It starts with a tornado, which causes the drovers to search the countryside for their cattle, some of which have bene claimed by Eddie Bracken who is running an orphanage for cute kids. He sold the cattle to a local banker, Everett Sloane, who shortchanged him. Gil Favor wants the beeves back and turns into the head of the Impossible Missions Force, setting up a 'sting ' for the banker than gets him what he wants and helps out the orphanage at the same time. Wishbone and Mushy have gone to work at the orphanage, which has something to do with Favors' plot, although I don't know what.

Wagon Train Season 5 What would be Disc 4 (5 & 6 are not on disc but available on the internet) Clyde Dec 27, 1961 The Martin Onyx Story Jan 3, 1962 The Dick Pederson Story Jan 10, 1962 The Hobie Redman Story Jan 17, 1962

'Clyde' is a wounded buffalo Charlie Wooster rescued and has made his beloved pet. Chris Hale says Clyde can stay with the train so long as he doesn't cause any trouble, which of course he comically does. In one sequence Frank McGrath, who plays Charlie, rides around the encampment on Clyde's back. Frank, like Terry Wilson, (Bill Hawks), was a stunt man before he became an actor and that holds him in good stead, riding a buffalo around as if he were a horse. A more serious problem is the local Indian tribe, who are mourning the loss of the buffalo herds and want to make a meal of Clyde. I like it when Charlie Wooster gets a show where he's more than just comic relief.

The oddly-named Martin Onyx is a western legend, both as a pioneer and as a lawman, (I found a definition of Onyx on the internet: "A powerful warrior stone, the Onyx crystal meaning helps stomp out negative thought patterns stemming from the most debilitating and toxic emotion of them all - fear.") A troubled town has sent for him in the latter capacity. But the bad guys ambush him before he can get there. An itinerant actor comes across his body and is shocked to see that he resembles Onyx so strongly they could be twins, (Jack Warden plays both parts). He encounters Flint McCullough, (who is mostly an observer in this story), and they both head into town, where the actor is greeted as if he was Onyx so he decides to become Onyx, a much more impressive person than he has ever been, even to the point where he leads the local populace in a battle against the outlaws. Kind of talky until the end but a typically fine performance by Warden.

Dick Pederson is James McArthur, a talented actor whose talent was wasted on Hawaii Five-0 plays a young man trying to get away from the cruel farmer who adopted him just to use him like a slave. He winds up on the wagon train, where he falls for Ann Helm, a good actress wasted in 'sex kitten' type roles who gets a good chance here as Janey Cutler, who is taking care of her useless mother and siblings since their father died. She does all the work but has a strong work ethic and no time for romance. She also mistrusts Pederson because he enjoys playing with her siblings. They don't use the term 'pedophile' but that's what she's worried about. Meanwhile the farmer who 'owns' Dick shows up with a sheriff. What save Dick is what saves a lot of people on this show: the Cutler family comes down with an illness, (diphtheria) and he risks his life to care for them, thus proving his value. The train has also traveled beyond the state line, so the sheriff can do nothing for the farmer and they both go home.

Duke Shannon, (Denny Miller), is sent to find a group of three wagons that were supposed to join the train and bring them back. Is the young man up to the task? The characters he finds are Arch Johnson as Glen Andrews, a former wagon master who abandoned a previous train in the area; Parley Baer as Clyde Montgomery, a businessman with a wagon full of things he wants to sell and Amzie Strickland as his wife Agnes; Barbara Eiler (Ruth Carleson) and Ann Jillian as her daughter Sandra and Lin McCarthy as the titular character, (it could have been any of them), who lost his family on this trail and is drown his sorrows in booze. Duke rises to the occasion and gets them out of the desert and back to the wagon train, with one exception. And we barely make it through the episode ourselves, dying of thirst.

Rawhide Season 6 Disc 4 Incident of the Geisha Dec 19, 1963 Incident at Ten Trees Jan 2, 1964 Incident of the Rusty Shotgun Jan 9, 1964

For some reason, this disc has only three episodes, in the middle of a season. The first is still another unlikely encounter as the drover find a Japanese Geisha in a wagon. She is, of course, played by Miyoshi Umeki. She ministers to the men: Rowdy has hurt his back and Hey Soos is much put upon. But a local Indian tribe has decided she is the return of a legendary Indian princess who can sue an illness that have ravaged their tribe. She does have one 'special' talent: she can predict earthquakes. It's quite a ride if you are willing to go along on it.

Incident at Ten Trees is somewhat similar. This time there's a 'reel' Indian Maiden, played by the beautiful and talented Susan Kohner in her penultimate acting performance before she got married and decided to devote her life to her family. She's a captured white woman who appears to be insane whom the Indians want to kill as a witch. Royal Dano is a crazed religious fanatic who wants to live long enough to complete his conversion from being a sinner and who delivers her to the tribe for that purpose, (only to be killed in the process). Favor and Rowdy take her back to the ranch she was living on and find out why she lost her mind and help her get it back. It's one of a couple episodes from this season where these drovers get into deep, (Hollywood), psychology and seem to be able to figure it all out.

The Rusty Shotgun is a semi-comic episode where Wishbone finds he resembles the former betrothed of wild but sensitive woman Marie Windsor, (in a deglamorized role). He also finds out that her three brothers, (Don Megowan, Claude Akins and Kelly Thorsden), think it's more than a coincidence: the decide he has to marry Marie. Gil and Rowdy come to rescue him but the brothers have plenty of cousins and Wishbone agrees to go through the ceremony to save his friends. The local Sheriff is a wimp played by Herbert Anderson, (Dennis the Menace's father), who has secret crush on Marie. Like most of this series, comedies, it's mildly amusing at best.

Wagon Train Season 5 What would be Disc 3 (5 & 6 are not on disc but available on the internet) The Bruce Saybrook Story Nov 22, 1961 The Lizbeth Ann Calhoun Story Dec 6, 1961 The Traitor Dec 13, 1961 The Bettina May Story Dec 20, 1961

The Bruce Saybrook Story is another "what does this have to do with a wagon train?" episode. Brian Aherne is Saybrook, who has brought his quarrelsome family into the western wilderness on a hunting trip in hopes of getting them to grow up. Flint encounters them while scouting for the train and it becomes a rather shallow version of "The Admirable Crichton as he organize them to save themselves from an Indian attack.

Lizabeth Ann Calhoun is played by Dana Wynter, a beauty from Germany, Britian and South Africa doing a (sort of) southern accent. She's a charming femme fatale whom the men in the rain all fall for. But she ahs a secret: she hates Yankees, (which most of those men are) and is part of a plot to use some stolen plates to counterfeit money for "the cause". What they were going to buy with it, I don't know.

In The Traitor, Flint, unconvincingly, gets cashiered from the train for aiding a group of what is called 'scavengers' in other episodes in stealing horses. Charlie Wooster improbably brings him to justice and Chris Hale sentences him to a whipping. Flint then leaves in feigned anger and seeks to join the scavengers. He meets Nick Adams, who is one of them, Nick's sister, played by Jeanne Cooper, and the leader, Anthony Caruso. Except things are not quite what they seem. It winds up being a pretty good episode but, like most of the Flint episodes, has little to do with a wagon train. This show has become a sort of 'wheel', a time slot with multiple shows alternating in it. It's 'Wagon Train' and the Flint McCullough Show". This is one of the latter.

The Bettina May Story is Bette Davis's third and last appearance on this show. In each one, "The Ella Lindstrom Story, (2/4/59), The Elizabeth McQueeny Story, (10/28/59) and this one, she plays a sympathetic and dignified character, the exact opposite of the character she played in the 1962 movie "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". The movie typecast the older Davis as a harridan. TV gave her a chance to play a more likeable and admirable character. The reality might have bene somewhere in between or a little of each. Here she is the matriarch of a family, trying to achieve happiness for each by running their lives who comes to realize that they need to run their own lives and find happiness on their own. There are no bad guys in this one, a nice change from Indian renegades and scavengers.

Incident of the Prophecy Nov 21, 1963 Incident at Confidence Creek Nov 28, 1963 Incident of the Death Dancer Dec 5, 1963 Incident of the Wild Deuces Dec 12, 1963

The Prophecy comes from Dan Duryea, a former gunfighter turned preacher. The drovers come into a town looking for some fun but everything is closed. Warren Oates and Rowdy protest by making a church bell ring by shooting at it. A man is killed, apparently by a ricochet. He's Duryea's brother. He ahs three other brothers and predicts death if they show up. He starts following the drive, continuing to make this prediction. Then the brothers show up and things turn out to be more complicated than they seemed. Anything with Duryea is good and Warren Oates, James Griffith and Hary Dean Stanton are in the same classification.

The Incident at Confidence Creek is a rather silly comic episode made memorable by the pairing of Dick York, soon to be in Bewitched and Barbara Eden, soon to be in Bewitched's rival, I Dream of Jeannie. Dick plays a goofy confidence man who steals the herd's ownership papers and sells it. He winds up being given the Sheriff's job based on a lie that he was a famous lawman, (they are paying him a generous salary in advance). Barb is his skeptical female assistant who wants to get her share of the money from him. She accompanies Rowdy, who wants York to testify to stealing the ownership papers.

We are back in the serious world of the 'death dancer', an escaped African lion turned mankiller, known to do some kind of dance over his victims, one of which was the wife of Forrest Tucker, who is after him. In a subplot, Mushy is sick of being undervalued by Wishbone and thinks it would be impressive to be a hunter like Tucker, who recruits him with the dark intent of having him wear Tucker's jacket as the cat seems to want to kill him more than anyone else. Mushy is thus the bait for a trap. It winds up with Tucker losing a battle with the cat as Mushy, holding a rifle, looks on. It's Gil Favor who arrives in the nick of time and shoots the cat dead. I wish it had been Mushy.

Then we swing back into a semi-comic episode, ("Wild Deuces"), also involving Mushy, who improbably wins $1,500 in a poker game. But money doesn't bring him happiness as so many people are jealous of it or want to get it back, (it was an honest game). He finally decides to give it to a preacher who is founding a church and is now free of it so he can be happy. It's a much better balanced and more satisfactory episode than "Confidence Creek".

Wagon Train Season 5 What would be Disc 2 (5 & 6 are not on disc but available on the internet) The Clementine Jones Story Oct 25, 1961 The Jenna Douglas Story Nov 1, 1961 The Artie Matthewson Story Nov 8, 1961 The Mark Miner Story Nov 15, 1961

The Clementine Jones Story is actually about three people: Clementine, (Ann Blyth), a pretty saloon girl the local temperance league wants out of town, Willie Pettigrew, (Dick York), an inept bank robber and old flame of Clementine and Homer, (Roger Mobley), who has just buried his parents, (it seems) who died of cholera and has only his dog, Rebel. Fate throws them together after Willie meets the kid who has a Conestoga wagon. He feels a real need to help the kid but realizes that he also gives him a cover for when the sheriff comes. Chris agrees to take Clementine if she can find her own wagon as he has no room on any of his other wagons for her. Along comes Willie, Homer and their wagon. The trio gets off to a rough start but get drawn together over time, especially when Homer comes down with a fever. The acting is good and it's a solid episode.

I've often observed that many popular TV actors were 'video' versions of famous movies stars. There were several Cary Grants, a bunch of Clark Gable wannabes, most western stars were either John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda, (including Henry Fonda in "The Deputy"). There were several Bandos and Rock Hudsons and a bunch of handsome blonde actors I call "The Redfords" after the one movie star that emerged from them. Roxane Berard was TV's Audrey Hepburn, (and got more interesting roles). Nehemiah Persoff seemed to be the Edward G. Robinson of television, getting similar roles and acting them in a very similar manner. Carolyn Jones was the Bette Davis of TV, even to the point of playing a set of sisters one of whom is a murderer on Burke's Law. Here she gets juicy role as an escaped mental patient the train runs across. The other people on the train are suspicious of her but fortunately, (another great coincidence), there's a doctor on the train, (John Lupton), who specializes in mental cases. He takes an interest in her and she with him. But he just wants to unearth the cause of her mental breakdown. Again, very good acting but not much about the wagon train itself.

Artie Matthewson, in still another Flint McCullough origin story, (in The Flint McCullough Story, 1/14/59, he was raised by Jim Bridger. Here he's been raised by Jane Darwell), Flint has to go after his adoptive half-brother, Artie, (Rory Calhoun), after the woman who raised them dies. She had been concerned that Artie, a nere-do-well, was up to no good in the gold fields. She asks Flint to check on him before she dies. Flint finds Artie the big man in a town where he's forced out his more violent predecessor. He seems to have gone straight but the sheriff and his deputy want to use their power to shake the town down. Flint and Artie, who is not all bad nor all good, have to stand up to them. It's a pretty solid episode but has nothing to do with a wagon train. It could have been an episode of any western series.

Brandon de Wilde is young, (he was 19 when he filmed this), Mark Minor, who with his brother Matthew, (future series regular Michael Burns), joins the Wagon Train. Mark has a guitar and he entertains the train members with song, (I think it is de Wilde's actual voice: he sang with western bands), which his little brother steals things. But this isn't about greed: they want revenge against Duke Shannon, who once captured their father after the father stole his horse and brought the man into the law, an act that resulted in his death. They put the things they stole into Duke's possessions, causing the more excitable train members to want to take revenge. Another 19 year old, Barbara Parkins, plays Mark's girlfriend. The resolution seems a bit complicated for something that would happen on a wagon train but it's still a pretty good episode.

Incident at Paradise Oct 24, 1963 Incident at Farragut Pass Oct 31, 1963 Incident at Two Graves Nov 7, 1963 Incident of the Rawhiders Nov 14, 1963

Burgess Meredith makes one of his three memorable appearances on Rawhide. Here he's a nestor who refuses to leave land cattle baron Arch Johnson claims to own. Clint falls in on his side and a couple of drovers join Clint, which brings Favor into it. Meredith is a pacifist who doesn't believe guns solve anything. Eventually he changes his mind, realizing that others will fight and die for him. Then, when a dam threatens to break all sides combine to prevent it and find they are not so different from each other.

Farragut Pass is one of these western towns where someone owns everything. Except in this case, it's a woman, Glenda Farrell, who has had a fence erected over open land. She has a deal for Favor: take on her delinquent son as a drover and teach him some discipline or he'll have to go around here fence, (there's also a financial consideration). The son is played by Frankie Avalon as a cynical rebel against any authority: the only one he likes on the drive is Mushy. He shirks every duty he's given and finally decides, for fun, to start a stampede - and gets the fate of all stampeders on this show. The complete lack of empathy from this character makes the episode hard to like, as well.

British actor Bill Travers is mostly famous for co-starring in 'Born Free' with his wife, Virginia McKenna and becoming, with her, a leading advocate for conservation. Before he did that, he made this single foray into American episodic television, playing an Irish boxer and prospector carrying a slap of some kind of heavy material into gold country - which is also Indian country. It turns out to be a headstone with his name on it - and that of his son. A very dramatic and sentimental episode.

I was googled "Rawhider" and was unable to find a clear meaning. I would have assumed it was a member of Gil Favor's band. On definition was "border pioneer". Another was a "domineering boss". Here it's group of what is called on Wagon Train "scavengers", a gang of ruthless thieves. This group is also similar to the hillbilly types we often see on Gunsmoke. In fact, a musical theme Gunsmoke uses for primitive but dangerous people is used to this group. Actors who frequently played this time of character, like Denver Pyle, Wright King and James Best are used here. A surprise is 'girl-next-door' Nina Shipman, unrecognizable under her unruly hair and dirt smudges, (sort of a girl next door to a swamp).

Rowdy Yates happens into this group and by the time he gets away, patriarch Pyle has decided that "the book", (the laws of the family, which seem to emanate from his mind, not a physical book, Rowdy must marry 'Valley Rose', (shipman), who had been betrothed to Best. Pyle also has plans for Mr. Favor's herd. The rawhiders have as many guns as the drovers and their guns are rifles, with which they are crack shots, to that's a problem. Favor decides to give the betrothed a fancy wedding. But it's not all he plans.

Wagon Train Season 5 (5 & 6 are not on disc but available on the internet) The Captain Dan Brady Story Sep 27, 1961 The Kitty Allbright Story Oct 4, 1961 The Maud Frazer Story Oct 11, 1961 The Selena Hartnell Story Oct 18, 1961

Captain Dan Brady, (Joseph Cotton), like Rex Montana, (Forrest Tucker in The Rex Montana Story, 5/21/58), is obviously based on Buffalo Bill. He sort of attaches himself to the train, (Brady buys his way in), and endeavors to take over based on his reputation. In Montana's case, he's a total phony who has no expertise. Brady has legitimate credentials as a western scout but has been in show business so long that he's not up-to-date on the best equipment, including guns. He claims a single shot guy is more reliable than these new Winchesters, for example. Both men have apparently loyal assistants who secretly loathe their boss. In the Montana story, it's a Ned Buntline character who created the legend and can destroy it. Here's it's an Indian companion who hates Brady for what he did to Indians as a buffalo hunter and a famous and rather phony story in which brady is supposed to have defeated the head of his tribe in combat. This character wants Brady to destroy his reputation by leading the train to disaster. Brady, a more likeable character than Montana, defeats him in combat and becomes famous all over again for that!

Kitty Albright, (Polly Bergen), is a nurse ho has a western-cute meet with Flint McCullough. She shoots him, then patches him up. It takes him a while to warm to her but you know it's going to happen, especially after he has to defend her against the prejudices of the other wagon train member. Apparently, in the west, nurses had a poor reputation, both for their effectiveness and for promiscuity, primarily because they weren't professional nurses, more along the lines of the real-life Julia Bulette and the fictional Elizabeth McQueeney (The Elizabeth McQueeny Story, 10/28/59). But Kitty has bene in England, studying with Florince Nightengale. He encourages people to clean up their wagons and take better care of themselves. Naturally one dubious family comes down with fever and she wins their confidence by caring for them.

Maud Frazer is played by Barbra Stanwyck in a typical role as an ambitious woman who has nagged her husband to take her to the oil fields. When they small party is wiped out, except her, she gets her hooks into Flint. But he's not interested so she goes off on her own and finds a dying soldier that tells her the Indians are on the warpath and will attack the train. She gallops back to the train but doesn't quite make it. She tells Flint they must not camp that night but keep moving. And then dies in his hands, redeemed by finally doing a selfless act. It's an OK episode but here are several references to Barbara being so dazzlingly beautiful that no one can resist her. That's a bit much. I think Barbra is a great actress but I never thought she was a great beauty.

The Selena Hartnell Story involves another amazing wagon train coincidence, sort of. In 1861 in Massachusetts, Claude Akins' character, (Will Cotrell, and the episode should have been named after him), was playing in a poker game in Massachusetts. It was fixed and he objected to it. When the man in charge of the fix pulled a gun, Will, then known as Barrett, pulled his own gun and killed him. All the witnesses were in the employ of the deceased, so he fled but felt so bad about it he decided to become a pacifist. He then collected some other men who had committed crimes and helped to rehabilitate them He also collected a now-deceased wife and is now raising a son. They are on their way to a new life in California but some members of the train resent their pacifism as the train is being harassed by a group of 'scavengers' and, essentially the other members of the train are fighting to protect them.

Flint McCullough and Bill Hawks come across a single wagon with a made and a woman in it. But they aren't married. Selena Hartnell, (Jan Sterling) is a female bounty hunter who employs HM Wynant as her muscle and protector. She's after someone on the train and it turns out to be Will Cotrell. But she has a special interest in it: she is the wife of the man he killed 12 yards and 2,000 miles ago! She and her gunsel take Cotrell away, only to be accosted by the scavengers. It's a good episode if you can believe the backstory.

Incident of the Red Wind Sep 26, 1963 Incident of Iron Bull Oct 3, 1963 Incident at El Crucero Oct 10, 1963 Incident of the Travellin' Man Oct 17, 1963

The "Red Wind" is a desert tornado that is hard for man or beast to survive. Rowdy finds a man, Bowdark, (Neville Brand) who says he knows where there's water. It's a different direction than Rowdy wants to go in. Favor gets injured and Rowdy is in charge, although Bowdark would like the job and convinces Favor it's better to go in the direction he prefers. Rowdy rides out and find the remains of a previous cattle drive - broken down wagons, cow and human skeletons. It turns out Bowdark is a sort of western Ahab, determined to prove that a drive can go through the dessert on the route he tried to wipe the memory of the previous disaster away. A strong start to season 6

Two strong but very different actors dominate Incident of Iron Bull. Michael Ansara plays a mysterious Indian who joins the herd as a drover. He's decided that fighting the white man is pointless and that his people need to find out their ways - selling and buying to make a profit. The drive is joined by legendary Indian fighter Colonel John Macklin (James Whitmore), famed for his 'great victory' on the Washita River, (which means he's Custer). As in real life, the battle of the Washita was at first celebrated as a great victory but later discovered to be the slaughter of an encampment of peaceful Indians. Macklin is suspicious of Ansara, who, it is hint, is his old enemy Iron Bull, although Ansara never admits it. Meanwhile, Iron Bull's tribe is threatening the drive if they don't give up Macklin. But Macklin, it turns out, has lost contact with reality. He starts giving orders to his men at the Washita. Ansara convinces his people that there's no Macklin left to take revenge on. It turns out Favor has been asked to deliver him to a fort, where he is to be escorted to a mental institution. A second straight strong episode in the new season.

The drive is stopped by barbed wire. They have to get the herd to water so Favor orders Rowdy to cut it. He gets a load full of buckshot in his bottom from Elizabeth Montgomery, the head of a family or her brothers. She doesn't want cattle trampling over their farm. The episode is Liz vs. Favor, (at one point she gets called a "witch", (Bewitched would begin the next year). There's a "Taming of the Shrew" aspect to it. Naturally, while fighting each other, they fall in love. Both the feud and the love affair continue to the bitter end.

The Travelin' Man is Simon Oakland, and old hand at playing skalawags. They find him suffering from a fever - and with shackles around his legs. He claims that they were from not the law but a rancher who was forcing him to do work for him to play off a debt. But then Robert Middleton, (which has played a few skalawags himself) shows up with his brothers. (I always wonder about these western families that are so willing to fight with various other groups: is the fight worth losing a son or a brother?) They tell a different story: Oakland was a prisoner of a Sheriff and their father and killed them both. Favor isn't sure who to believe but he's already said that he would deliver Oakland to the nearest law, so he sticks with that. Then Oakland shows is true colors, knifing Wishbone and bloodying up Mushy to make his escape. Favor goes after him. Four really good shows to start the new season.

Wagon to Fort Anderson Jun 7, 1961 The Ah Chong Story Jun 14, 1961 The Don Alvarado Story Jun 21, 1961

A rather strange episode of the other series I'm concurrently reviewing, Rawhide, called "Incident of the Fish Out of Water, (2/17/61) introduces us to Gil Favor's two daughters, who are living with their aunt in Philadelphia, introduces us to two beautiful, charming and talented young actresses who play the daughters: 13 Year old Candy Moore and 12 year old Barbara Baird. Unfortunately, they didn't continue their careers into adulthood: Candy's last IMDB credit is 1966, (she did appear in Raging Bill in 1980 and Lunch Wagon the next year: but is that the same actress?) Barbara's last IMDB credit is her second appearance as Favor's daughter 2/2/62. Both of them however, appeared on Wagon Train, as well. Barbara was in The Will Santee Story (5/3/61) and Candy appears in Wagon to Fort Anderson.

Flint McCullough come across the survivors of an Indian raid: Candy and her older sister, played by Carol Rossen, who has been shocked into silence, (thus wasting Ms. Rosson's considerable talent). Also present are Don Rickles, very effective in a straight bad guy role and his brother, played by Albert Salmi, a simple-minded but decent guy who has always been under his old brother's thumb. They are Army deserters looking to get to the gold fields. Rickles wants to take the one remaining wagon. Salmi isn't so sure. It's a pretty strong episode until they wipe out attacking Indians with a gatling gun. Where did that come from?

Everybody's reaction to The Ah Chong Story is that it's anther example of "yellow face": actors of European decent playing roles of Asian descent. And it sure is. Ah Chong is played by comedian Arnold Stang. He's a Chinese cook who wants to get to Sacramento to meet his family who is coming from China. Charley Wooster has become more interested in playing poker than cooking for Chris Hale and Bill Hawks o they heir Ah Chong to replace him, resulting in a comic rivalry between Charlie and the Chinaman, who also proves to be a better poker player. Ah Chong also has a huge gong with him that scares horses. He's able to repel an Indian attack with it. I've got to say that Stang proved to be a good actor. His performance as Ah Chong has comic elements but it has some subtle, human moments. It's not like Mickey Rooney's Mr. Mr. Yunioshi from the same year's Breakfast at Tiffany's or Jerry Lewis' 'parody' of Japanese from that same era. That said, why couldn't Ah Chong be played by an Asian actor, like, as an example, James Hong? He could have played it just as well with even more subtlety.

The form for a Wagon Train season has been to start the season in Missouri and end it in Sacramento or San Francisco, a form I which Rawhide had held to: each season it the story of one trip. Here Wagon train departs from their formula. They are in Los Angeles. Flint encounters the survivors of an attack. They are Spanish aristocrats who want to hold onto their traditional lands. The father and son are dying or dead. A faithful retainer, (Vladimir Sokoloff, the Russian actor who made the great speech at the end of the Magnificent Seven "Only the farmers have won"), convinces Flint to pretend to be the son so he can take over the family's holdings, (apparently the people there have never seen him as an adult). Flint reluctantly (but too quickly) agrees. Flint has to not only pull off this charade but find out who made the attack, (there's going to be shocked when they see him). The cast is full of non-Hispanic actors trying (sometimes) to speak with a Spanish accent. It's not much of a wind-up to Wagon Train's most significant season.

Incident at Rio Doloroso May 10, 1963 Incident at Alkali Sink May 24, 1963 Abilene May 31, 1963

The herd crosses onto what is private land, based on pre-Mexican War grant. A group of men led by a son of the local Don, (Cesar Romeo). The son is killed when he tries to stampede the cattle. His brother, Michael Ansara), insists that Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates must be punished. Romero rules that the punishment must be death. This has a dramatic ending where Romero's people - his 'peons' - refuse to carry out the sentence as they are tired on his harsh rule and they, Gil and Rowdy just walk away, leaving the Don alone to contemplate the loss of his power over them.

In Akali Sink, the herd is celebrating, (in what sounds like a rather foreboding place). One of their hands, (Russell Johnson - yes, "the professor" in Gilligan's Island) is getting married to Ruta Lee. Unfortunately, her father, (Roy Barcroft), who owns part of the herd, won't have it. They battle drought, Indians and Barcroft but everything turns out OK in the end as Barcroft has a (too) sudden change of heart.

'Abilene' is actually the final episode of the previous season, placed at the end of this one for no apparent reason, (they weren't going to Kansas in season 5). I have previously received this episode where it belongs as the end of Season 4, under the title 'The Devil and the Deep Blue'.

The Eleanor Culhane Story May 17, 1961 The Chalice May 24, 1961 The Janet Hale Story May 31, 1961

The Eleanor Culhane Story is an interesting effort at high drama that seems to borrow from Gone With the Wind, as others have noted. It has a fine performance from the beautiful Felicia Farr, (soon to become Mrs. Jack Lemmon). It has nothing to do with a wagon train and seems to be the plot for a movie western. But it would be impressive wherever they put it. Farr is an old flame of Flint's, (he has a lot of them). This one is warm enough that Flint is ready to leave the wagon train behind and go off with her when he learns her husband is deceased. He's surprised to find that everyone in the town in which she lives has nothing but contempt for her. Mr. Culhane, (played by John Lasell, who just died a week ago as I write this), was the town boss, a bully and a dangerous gunman. He's said to have been killed in another town. This towns contempt for him has transferred to his wife, a haughty woman who, we learn, pushed Mr. Culhane to be what he was to provide the lifestyle she prefers. Mrs. Culhane now wants Flint to replace him. Except Mr. Culhane isn't really dead.

The Chalice is a fancy cup a family of Italian winemakers are carrying to California with them. They also have 50 sprouts for growing grape vines. Lon Chaney and Richard Jaeckel play a couple of nere-do-well partners who decide the family must be carrying a lot of money and they befriend them with the intention of robbing them. They don't find money but they find the chalice, which is intended to be given to a church when they establish their farm. Chaney and Jackel wind up fighting over the chalice and shooting each other. Ironically the chalice isn't real gold and the jewels encrusted in it aren't real either. The winemaker keeps saying to everyone that it's the thought that counts and that's something Chaney and Jaeckel never understood. Chaney is still alive when they find him and is taken to a local church, to home the winemaker, (Jarold Heifetz) presents the chalice in a moving scene. He tells Bill Hawks he's going to stay there and begin his farm. One problem: his wife and his sprouts are back with the train. Shouldn't he go back for them with Bill first?

Chris Hale was introduced with "The Christopher Hale Story" (3/15/61). We learned there that he was a legendary wagon master who had brought his family and his brother with him and they had decided to settle in an attractive valley they found before crossing the mountains. Chris had gone on. Taking the train to California after negotiating a treaty with the local Indians, he returns to find that his family had been whipped out by a band of renegades from the same tribe. Flint McCullough finds him there and bring his to the train where he eventually leads a rebellion against the tyrannical replacement for Major Adams, (Lee Marvin), and becomes the new wagon master.

The Janet Hale Story dramatizes Chris' backstory. John McIntire is my favorite character actor and his wife Jeanette Nolan is my favorite character actress and she plays Janet Hale, who is tired of waiting for her husband to return from his arduous journeys and demands to be brought along with his family, (a boy and girl played by Robert Hyatt and, I kid you not, Wendy Winkleman). He's very reluctant because of the dangers but agrees. Knowing what is going to happen takes a lot of the drama out of it. Richard Cutting is Chris' brother Josh, who appears to have been his second in command. Janet takes sick and the people of the wagon train pause to build them a house to stay in. (And it's quite a place - on the inside, full of fixtures you wouldn't expect them to have and solid, smooth walls, even though the outside shots are of a log cabin). Josh offers to take the train across the mountains while Chris stays behind but Chris decides it's his responsibility.

There's a 'wrap-around' story with Charles Aidman and Bethel Leslie, in which Aidman wants to stop and build a house, (also with the help of the train members) in a nice-looking valley, despite the fact that there won't be any neighbors for a hundred miles. Bethel wants no part of it. Chris convinces her to give it a shot by telling her his family's story, (how?). He says that "If mankind had invented the rocking chair before he invented the wheel, we'd all be sitting in rocking chairs - in a cave". Thus we have wagon trains.

Incident of the Clown Mar 29, 1963 Incident of the Black Ace Apr 12, 1963 Incident of the Hostages Apr 19, 1963 Incident of White Eyes May 3, 1963

Normally I don't care for the attempts at comic episodes in this series so my heart sank a bit when I saw Eddie Bracken was the guest star in "The Clown", but this one took a different turn. Bracken's character was a circus clown but didn't feel he was accomplishing anything in that profession, so he became a linguist and is studying Indian languages. At first, he seems like a fish out of water and a pest but his clown skills come in handy when a chief's son is sick. The ending is quite touching.

I also have an aversion to gypsy stories in westerns as they tend to be cliché-ridden. The Black Ace isn't that bad but also isn't that good. Walter Slezak is an untrustworthy gypsy father, (he makes his living by gyping people), and the not-very-gypsy-like Karen Sharpe as his daughter, who has been promised to powerful rancher Robert Strauss, who has paid his fee and now wants the other end of the bargain. There a sub-plot about Slezak predicting that Wishbone is going to die and that no one will show up at his funeral. He cooks up a feast to make sure he has friends. It's mildly amusing.

Still another plot I don't normally like is the one where the hero encounters 'Indians' who are obviously white and decides they have to be returned to 'their world'. If they are happy living with the tribe that has adopted them, why not leave them there. Favor encounters three children played by Leslie Wales, (an attractive and talented young actress whose brief career was about to come to an end), Tony Haig and Suzanne Caputo, who is now known as Morgan Brittany. Gil misses his daughters and tries to be a surrogate father to them but they resist. When the Apache chief shows up with a large force and demands them back, Gil is prepared to fight them but when he sees how they respond to the woman who has raised them, he does the right thing, which pleased me greatly. He finds out that the term 'hostages' depends on who is holding them and whether they want to be there.

Favor helps out the passengers on a runaway coach with a dead driver, taking them on to the next way station, which is abandoned and quicky besieged by and Indian tribe who seem to be after one the menagerie of characters the coach was carrying: John Vivyan, (Mr Lucky), as an actor Nita Talbot as his cynical wife, Willaims Schallert as an Army officer with little experience of the west, Diana Millay as a "lonely woman" and Nehemiah Persoff as the mysterious 'Domingo', who sees to know a lot about the tribe besieging them. There are hints he may be the legendary California bandit Joachim Murietta, who would be pretty far from home if he is. (Persoff had played a Murietta-like bandit said to have been his associate in the Wagon Train episode The Tiburcio Mendez Story, 3/22/61). It's a tight, dramatic episode, if a bit wordy.

The Joe Muharich Story Apr 19, 1961 The Duke Shannon Story Apr 26, 1961 The Will Santee Story May 3, 1961 The Jim Bridger Story May 10, 1961

Veteran character actor Akim Tamiroff plays Joe Muharich, an immigrant from eastern Europe who had his family killed by drunken thugs in Nebraska and is now traveling west to forget and start over again. Robert Blake plays a troubled young gunman whom Joe befriends and defends. He sees him as a surrogate son. When Blake gets involved with a shoot-out in a saloon that actually wasn't his fault, Joe leaves the wagon train to help him. The real cause is come cowboys who resemble the men who killed his family. Joe gets in a fight with them and, when they produce guns, he grabs and shot gun and killed them. Both he and Blake wind up in jail. Joe to be hanged. Joe talks to the young man, urging him to avoid trouble in the future. Blake at first defiant. But when he is released and sees Joe preparing to be hanged from the scaffold, he should to him that he heard him and understands now. Excellent performances by both in a fine episode.

There's a strange mystery about the Duke Shannon character on Wagon Train. He first appears, briefly, in "Weight of Command" (1/25/61), in which he has a conversation with Ward Bond as Major Adams. He then gets introduced as a new character in "The Duke Shannon Story" (4/26/61), in which John McIntire as Chris Hale is the Wagon Master. There's no reference of his being with the train before this and he appears in no episode in between these dates. In this one, Frank McHugh, (in a beard), plays his grandfather who is in search of an abandoned goal mine he feels still has plenty of gold in it. He convinces Charley Wooster to help him find it. James Griffth and a couple of thugs overhear them and follow them. Duke and Bill Hawks follow them, leading to a final confrontation. Other than introducing Duke, whom we've already met, it's not a memorable episode.

The Will Santee Story is about the family of a disturbed young man who killed two women. He's been executed but that didn't end the punishment. His family, (mother Virginia Christine, brother Dean Stockwell - he's Will and sister Barbara Beaird, who had just played Gil Favor's daughter on Rawhide), has had their home burned and bene forced out of one town after another because no one will have them. It's the old fear that mental illness was hereditary: whatever the murderer suffered from, his family might have it, too. Will is now head of the family, (he's a man, after all), and he moves them west and gets to join the wagon train under an alias. Naturally, they are found out and the prejudiced wagon train members want them out. Chris Hale tries to talk them out of it. Duke Shannon tells them of a conversation Will had in a town they visited with a mysterious stranger who urged him to stick it out and not let prejudice win out It turns out that man was Edwin Booth! It's a good, strong episode. What interests me is that they don't have John Crawford, (no not the father of Johnny and Bobby Crawford of The Rifleman and Laramie), who plays Booth deliver those lines, Instead, they give them to Denny Miller as Shannon, perhaps to further connect the audience to the new character. Millie Perkins, who played Anne Frank in the 1959 movie plays a wagon train member who falls for Stockwell. Jocelyn Brando, Marlon's sister, plays her mother.

The Jim Bridger Story is marred by an illogical decision made by an Army General, (they didn't have many of them in the old west), played by John Doucette, (a frequent bad guy, often a crime boss, especially on The Adventures of Superman). Doucette arrives at the train, temporarily headed by Flint McCullough, as Chris Hale has gone on ahead to Denver), to find everyone glad they had gotten out of Ute country without conflict. The General has a company of 120 men who are trapped by a force of Indians, (presumably Utes) and is seeking help. But instead of asking for it, he is commandeering the whole train. He wants then to follow his small contingent of soldiers back into Ute country to make it look like a much larger force is coming to the rescue of the company. Maybe with the wagons behind them, the Indians will just flee. What makes no sense is that the general wants to bring the women and children along. Their presence would show the Indians the wagons did not contain a military force. His obvious intent would be hide them in the wagons. Why not simply leave them behind with a small contingent of older men and some guns and maybe enough wagons to allow them to continue their journey? Then have armed, younger men pilot the remaining wagons behind the soldiers. He might have gotten enough volunteers for that if he'd asked for volunteers. And it would have taken less time for the smaller, lighter train to get there. But no, he commands everyone to go and gets stern resistance as a result. Jim Bridger, (Karl Swenson), who helped raise Flint, is his scout and the whole operation is his idea. Jim makes a speech about how the Army has done so much to protect the settlers and now it needs their help. That wins them over. In the depiction of their arrival at the scene of the battle, we see about 20 troopers accompanied by just a couple of wagons when there would have been dozens of them. The whole thing is poorly conceived nonsense.

Incident of the Gallows Tree Feb 22, 1963 Incident of the Married Widow Mar 1, 1963 Incident of the Pale Rider Mar 15, 1963 Incident of the Comanchero Mar 22, 1963

The Gallows Tree is a Jim Quince episode and Steve Raines again does a fine job. Jim wakes up in a horse barn. Still drunk and, singing and talking to himself, rides back to the drover's camp. What he doesn't know is that a very powerful and popular rancher has been lying nearby, shot in the back and dead. The sheriff arrives with a posse to arrest Quince, who admits that he had a brief confrontation with the man in a saloon and that he doesn't remember what happened after that due to his inebriation. Favor decides to accompany the posse into town in an effort to get Jim a fair trial. The sheriff promises one but the rancher's foreman, (Gregory Walcott) has other plans. The only person in town who seems to be on Jim's side is the saloon owner, Beverly Garland, who believes Jim to be innocent but won't say why or who she thinks did it.

Patricia Barry is another saloon owner with a big picture of her long-lost confederate office, Gil Favor, on her wall. The drovers see that and bring in Gil Favor to see it. He is at first angry, as he knows but has never been married to this woman. He was best man at her wedding to another officer who has been cut out of the picture. Then he hears her side of it: her husband turned bad after the war and got a bad reputation, so she's been pretending to have been married to Gil to keep a good reputation. To the shock of his drovers, he agrees to go through the ruse, saying to everyone that he's been wounded and suffered amnesia and now remembered the marriage. They are even going to renew their vows! But he also has a plan to extricate himself - and herself - from the situation. It's meant to be a change of pace with some humor to it. I thought it was rather silly.

Rowdy has to kill a robber played by Albert Salmi, only to find that a new drover who has signed on with Mr. Favor is also played by Albert Salmi, and thus looks like the man he killed. He even wears identical clothes. But he has a different name and denies even knowing the man who was killed. The deceased did have a twin brother, but he's supposed to be dead. The whole thing is going to come to a head and the truth will be revealed. It's a good dramatic episode but somehow the doughy Salmi isn't quite mysterious or threatening enough to pull this Pale Rider off.

The Comanchero is Robert Loggia, a man so vile even his fellow Comancheros bound him up in a frame designed to slowly kill him. He's found by a couple of nuns, played by Virginia Gregg and Nina Shipman. For some reason, (not revealed), Mr. Favor is away and Rowdy is running the show. He agrees to let the nuns and Loggia travel with them to the nearest two with Loggia turned over to the authorities. His former Comanchero friends, who out-number the drovers by 2-1, and are led by the fearsome-looking Than Wyenn, (a fine actor who always looked to me as if he was missing an eye but can find no mention of it). They demand Loggia be turned over to them. (He stole their money and knows where it is). Rowdy has to decide whether to stick to his agreement or turn Loggia over or cut him loose. Loggia, who has had several debates with Gregg's patient nun, has a decision of his own to make. A good episode but the ending seemed abrupt. I thought there would be more.

The Christopher Hale Story Mar 15, 1961 The Tiburcio Mendez Story Mar 22, 1961 The Nellie Jefferson Story Apr 5, 1961 The Saul Bevins Story Apr 12, 1961

John McIntire now shows up to become the new wagon master - but not immediately. So many people prefer Ward Bond to John in that role, yet the year Wagon Train reached #1 in the ratings was the year after this one. Ward Bond is one of my favorite character actors but John McIntire is my all-time favorite. Bond had a range from boisterous and domineering, (which he seems to have been in real life), to wonderfully gentle and understanding, (maybe he was that, too). But McIntire's calm, wisdom-soaked voice made me feel good as soon as I heard it. When he had previously appeared on the show playing another, (unrelated) Hale, Andrew, in 'The Andrew Hale Story' (6/3/59), and it was treat to see these two wonderful actors playing off each other. Both have such presence that nobody else could even fit on the screen. On that occasion, Andrew Hale was a preacher who had led his flock on a trek to the west and a disaster, which caused him to lose his faith in God. Chris Hale is a legendary wagon master who's been doing it for a decade, (longer, apparently, than Major Adams and his crew). But he wanted to retire and set his family up on a ranch which he promised to return to after finishing his last trek. But Flint McCullough finds him sitting, with a hundred yard stare, in the ruins of the ranch, where his family has been wiped out by an Indian raid. Flint, not even knowing who he is yet, brings him to the train.

That's a good start. The rest of it is pretty absurd. Major Adams is now absent. The TV audience knows why Ward Bond is absent but are not told why Major Adams is absent. He's never even mentioned. Why not just say he had a heart attack, or that he'd decided to remain with Beth Pearson? Now we were told that the train is owned by something called the "Western Trail Company" and that the "Home Office" has appointed Jud Benedict to take over the train. All prior episodes have depicted the train as being a stand-alone company headed by Major Adams, who made all the decisions. Each wagon owner, (or renter), had a personal deal with him. There was no "home office" Apparently, the Western Trail Company pays its wagon masters just to arrive in Sacramento with whomever manages to survive the trip. It doesn't matter who doesn't. Benedict says he's made twice as much money as Major Adams did because he made two trips a year, taking all kinds of risks. He's accompanied by gunmen who seem to enjoy it if anyone protests so they can shoot them. Benedict prefers public whippings of whoever complains. Why would anyone sign up for that? Even Gil Favor treats his beeves better than that on Rawhide. He wants them fat and healthy when he delivers them to market. Apparently Jud would make the same amount if he arrived in Sacramento alone.

Jud used to work for Chris Hale, who bested him when they had a confrontation. But Hale doesn't feel up to confronting him this time and goes along with him, not wanting to take any responsibility after things went so badly for his family. As the episode goes on, he regains his moral strength, much as Claude Rains does in the Rawhide episode, I recently reviewed, 'Incident of Judgement Day'. But Chris doesn't want to win a debate with Jud. He wants to beat him up again and force him to leave the train, (as if that would do it). He appeals to Benedict's ego, giving him a chance to get revenge for the prior beating, with his gunmen agreeing not to intervene. We then are presented with the 53 year old John McIntire beating up the 36 yard old Lee Marvin, if you can believe that. Benedict, in frustration, grabs a gun and is shot by Bill hawks. The gunsels then leave, having lost their leader. Chris Hale agrees to become the new wagon master. Hopefully the Home Office will go along with that.

And, of course, the next episode, The Tiburcio Mendez Story, doesn't have Chris Hale in it. Terry Wilson as Bill Hawks, is running the train in this one. There's no mention of Chris, It's another example of the ruined continuity of the episodes in this transformative season. This one features Nehemiah Persoff as a follower of famed California bandit Joaquin Murrieta, the "Robin Hood of the West", who in this story was an avenger of Mexican citizens who lost their property in the Gold Rush and the transfer of the land to the USA. He's raised Joaquin Delgado, (Leonard Nimoy, in his best pre-Spock role that I've seen), the son of a deceased friend, to believe in fighting the Yankees as much as he did. But he's aged, too, and has come to doubt the endgame for his people. They have been threatening wagon trains that bring more Americans to the new state. But this one contains a federal judge, (Russell Collins), who says that he's been sent to California to punish all breakers of the law and to sort out who properly owns what land. He convinces Mendez to give him a chance but Delgado isn't buying it. Despite his love for Mendez, his hate for the Americans causes him to break away with like-minded younger members of their group. Your perception of this episode will depend on whether you believe that this federal judge would have straightened out everything in California and that Mendez's martyrdom in the final confrontation would win over Delgado and his friends, (who hardly seem numerous enough to prevent Hawk's train from moving on to California in any case).

The Nellie Jefferson Story is a Charlie Wooster story. I like it when he's given a story to show that Fran McGrath was a good actor and Charlie Wooster more than just a clown providing comic relief. He's a huge fan of Ms. Jefferson, the most famous actress of the period, (she's in Mazeppa so I guess she's intended to be Adah Isaacs Menken, who appeared apparently nude and riding a horse in that play). Here she's played by Janis Paige, (who recently died at the age of 101). Nellie Jefferson has a deranged husband, (played by Don Megowan with an Irish accent). Don's very big and Charlie is rather small but he takes the big guy on to save her and earns her affection. Their trails part afterwards but Charley still treasures the gift of her affection. Note: Chris Hale is in charge in this and the next episode. Hopefully it is the end of the continuity problems.

Wagon Train continued to be a prestigious enough show to draw distinguished actors and Rod Steiger made a rare foray into episodic television to appear on it as Saul Bevins, a blind man but ferociously independent, bringing his family out west to establish a school for the blind in California. Other members of the train question him and his family joining them: it might slow them up. But a series of events prove them wrong. He is waylaid by a couple of robbers who think he must have a lot of money and has to find his way back to the train and manages to identify the culprits. He then uses his heightened senses to detect a wildfire before anyone on the train can and becomes a hero. I'd heard about enhances senses for years. I thought I'd heard that it was a myth. I also thought that maybe blind people just pay closer attention to the information our senses are always sending to the brain. I just googled "Do blind people have heightened senses?" and got a series of articles indicating that the heightened senses are, indeed real. So this episode may not be as outlandish as you think. It was good to see Rod Steiger, a strong but quirky actor, playing a fully sympathetic character.

Incident at Spider Rock Jan 18, 1963 Incident of the Mountain Man Jan 25, 1963 Incident at Crooked Hat Feb 1, 1963 Incident of Judgment Day Feb 8, 1963

This group of episodes borrows from previous work. Incident at Spider Rock reminded me of "The Child-Woman (3/23/62) and Incident of the Reluctant Bridegroom (11/30/62). In the first, Mushy saves a relative who is a singer for a ruthless saloon owner who comes after the drive to get her back and get revenge. In the second, Rowdy gets drugged and married to a saloon owner's girlfriend and he comes after them. At Spider Rock a runaway heiress, (Susan Oliver), has a job as a saloon singer. She's not popular because of her superior attitude and runs away from the town with the drovers. There's a 'Taming of the Shrew' aspect to the story but one drover, (James Best), decide he wants her and her disdain for him causes him to kidnap her and hold her for ransom, Favor rescues her and reunites her with her father. Not bad but a little too familiar.

Much better is Robert Middleton as 'The Mountain Man', who was out west when the drovers were kids. He was on a wagon train, with his daughter, (Pat Crowley) when he defended her from the attentions Robert Wilke's crude son, resulting in his death. He's being lynched when the wagon train and trail drive intersect. It brought up the dream in my head that the TV series Wagon Tarin and Rawhide could have a cross-over episode, (the narrative on both shows at this time was that they were both headed for Denver). Of course it wasn't possible due to different networks and production companies and here the wagon train is just seen at the beginning of the show. The drovers prevent the lynching but agree to make sure the roaring, over-the-top Middleton will be taken to the local sheriff and given a fair trial. Wilke goes along as the only witness. Middleton insists on escaping and Crowley joins him. Rowdy Yates goes after them but is captured by Middleton. They then encounter a raiding party led by an old Indian friend of Middleton's - but they aren't very friendly. My only problem with this episode is that Crowley seems over-dressed and coiffed for the daughter of a mountain man, even if she's headed for a convent.

As others have pointed out, "Incident at Crooked Hat" is basically 'The Gunfighter', Gregory Peck's 1950 film. James Gregory is a famous gunman incognito as one of Gil Favor's drovers. A young gunman encounters him and goads him into a dual and comes out second best. His big brother, (Arch Johnson), is a powerful rancher and boss of the local town. Gregory and Favor brings the kid to the local doctors and wait for the sheriff in the local saloon were Jeanne Cooper works. She's an old flame of Gregory's. When the kid dies, Johnson lays siege to the place. Gregory, of course, dies at the end and Favor tells Johnson that he will hence be known as the man who killed the famous gunslinger and have to deal with all the kids like his brother that want to earn a reputation by taking him on. It's good but very familiar. Gregory is a bit old for this role at age 51. The young whippersnappers would have gotten him a long time before that.

I just reviewed a Wagon Train episode about some men who had been in a Civil War prison camp and had another man inform on their escape attempted and want revenge. Here it's Rowdy, who insists to John Dehner, Richard Carlyle, John Kellogg, Howard Dayton and Gale Kobe as the wife of a deceased prisoner that he's not the one who informed on them. They wish to hold a star chamber trial in a ghost town but find it has one resident: a drunken former judge, played by the great Claude Rains. Dehner appoints him judge for the trial and makes sure he understands the required verdict. Rains starts out rather meek and delirious but sobers up and finds strength growing within him. He winds up asking the questions and establishing an alternative theory of the crime. It's a little like 12 angry men, leading to a confrontation between Rains and Dehner, two of the best character actors I've ever seen.

The Odyssey of Flint McCullough Feb 15, 1961 The Beth Pearson Story Feb 22, 1961 The Jed Polke Story Mar 1, 1961 The Nancy Palmer Story Wed, Mar 8, 1961

The Odyssey of Flint McCullough is one of the top-rated Wagon Train episodes on IMDB with good reason. Flint has a few days to himself, somehow), but encounters a burned-out farmhouse and three children hiding with their grandfather, (Henry Hull). The oldest of the three, a teenage girl, is in a catatonic state, having witnessed the death of her parents in an Indian raid. Michael Burns, (later a regular), plays a son. There's also a younger daughter and an infant. He agrees to guide them to the nearest fort. They have no source of milk for the infant and another young boy shows up with a goat. He's the last survivor of another raid by the same Indians. Then they come across a young Indian boy. At first the children reject the Indian boy but Flint points out that he's of another tribe and he's lost. He manages to keep everyone together and they become a 'family' of sorts. They find the fort abandoned but eventually they reach safety. Flint never does get any time to himself. Ultimately, it's a story of tolerance and the need to work together to survive.

The Beth Pearson Story is the final episode Ward Bond appeared in. Major Adams comes across a sole wagon that contains a woman who looks exactly like his great love we were introduced to in the first season two-parter, "The Major Adams Story", (4/23-30/58). I thought this might Just be a clip show, mostly flash back to that earlier story, but it turns out to be a good episode in its own right with another good performance from Bond. The issue is: is he falling in love with Beth Pearson because he loves Beth Pearson or because he still loves Rainie Webster. Pearson is injured in a wagon accident and Major Adams insists on staying with her to care for her. For some reason, this creates a rebellion from the members of the train, who had signed on assuming they'd be guided by Major Adams. (There are many episodes where the train is being led by Flint McCullough, Bill Hawks or even Charlie Wooster in the Major's absence. This episode ends with Beth improving but the Major accidently calling her Rainie and the Major returning to the train but they could have re-edited it to show the Major saying with Beth to explain his ongoing absence from the series but that was not done. I suppose they could have said that the Major died of a heart attack, as Ward Bond did, but they didn't choose to do that, either.

Virginia Grey plays both Rainie in the flashbacks and Beth. She's also played Kate Parker (5/6/59) but Major Adams didn't fall in love with her then. One of the flashback sequences is narrated by an actor trying to impersonate Ward Bond, suggesting that this was, indeed the last episode filmed as Bond was no longer available to do the new narration. I tried to place it but the best I could come up with was Howard Duff with a gravelly voice. I'm maybe 10% sure of that.

John McIntyre as Chris Hale still hasn't shown up. Flint McCullough is in charge of the train in The Jed Polke Story. In another one of those lovely coincidences, Jed is traveling with his family west on a wagon train that also contains some men who remember him from when they were in a prison camp together during the way. Jed, (John Lasell, a John Cassavetes doppelganger), informed on their prison break attempt and they have vowed to kill him for it. The four ex-prisoners are Willard Waterman, Morgan Woodward, Jeff Hayes and Perry Lopez. They are all full of hate but at different levels. Woodward is the worst: he wants to kill Jed's entire family. Hayes is the most pliable: he gets to know Jeff's son and doesn't want him killed. Other reviewers have noted that Waterman is best known as a comic actor, playing "The Great Gildersleeve" on TV, but is excellent here in a dramatic role as the more cultured leader of the group. People always forget that actors - at least the good ones, are capable of much more than the sort of role they are famous for. Ironically, I will shortly be reviewing a Rawhide episode where Rowdy Yates, (Clint Eastwood) is given a trail by former prison mates for informing on their escape attempt, (Incident of Judgment Day, Feb 8, 1963). It's one of those old reliable plots.

Nancy Palmer is none other than Audrey Meadows, now free of Ralph Kramden's cramped Brooklyn apartment and finding herself in the old west. She's still got a ball-and-chain husband, here played by Jack Cassidy as a guy who grew up rich, (as Nancy did) and who wants to be rich again. When the rest of the train is attending a party in a town, Mr. Palmer robs the local bank. Nancy is loyal enough to him to hide the loot and they think they are on the way back to being rich people, (this is their 'get-rich-quick' scheme), and that, once the wagon train pulls out, that they have gotten away with it. But a sheriff's posse shows up to reach the train. Nancy agrees to hold a baby while another wagon is searched and hides the money with the baby until the posse is gone. But Jack wants them to steal some horses and leave the train, which proves to be a dumb move as they are trying to cross a dessert and not taking good care of their horses. Jack even leaves Nancy behind at one point. Audrey was better off in Brooklyn. It's a good episode but this train won't get its momentum back until Chris Hale shows up.

Incident at Quivira Dec 14, 1962 Incident of Decision Dec 28, 1962 Incident of the Buryin' Man Jan 4, 1963 Incident of the Trail's End Jan 11, 1963

The narrative of this season's episodes are confusing. In the opening credits, they show a map with a dark line moving from Sedalia Missouri, (their destination the first few seasons) to Horseheads, Texas, which seems to have little to do with where they actually are. Some episodes say they are going to Denver, (which is ironic because some Wagon Train episodes I am currently reviewing say they are headed for Denver, so the two shows could conceivably have interacted at some point but there was no cross-over: they were on different networks). In Incident of Decision, Rowdy, Jim Quince and Hey-Soos are on their way to Horseheads to join up with Mr. Favor. But that's not shown at the beginning of the season and, if there is an episode that takes place at Horseheads and explains where they are going, I've yet to see it. Incident of the Trail's End is the end of their drive or of the season but it does say they are headed for Wyoming. I don't think the episodes are shown in the proper order, as they often are not due to network preferences.

Incident at Quivera has some similarities to Season 5's 'Gold Fever' (5/4/62), in which Victor Jory plays a prospector who convinces the drovers he's found gold and they all leave Mr. Favor in their dust as they go off to look for it. They must have learned something so when Royal Dano shows up saying the same thing, they are dubious enough to feel sorry for him that he's gone that crazy. But Mushy falls for it and helps him "borrow" some horses and goes off with him to find 'Quivera', where all the gold is supposed to be. There they find a young boy and follow him to an encampment where some soldiers, (led by the ubiquitous Claude Akins), who deserted long ago have been looking for the gold. They get captured, as does Rowdy Yates, who was assigned by Mr. Favor to retrieve Mushy and the horses. The others want to kill them but Akins wants them to leave with his son who has done nothing wrong and wants to see the big world.

The title "Incident of Decision" seems awkward. I suspect the script was originally titled "Decision" but somebody made a decision that every episode title this season had to being with "Incident of". The first three seasons, almost every episode had a title that began that way. In the fourth they dropped that concept but have brought it back with a vengeance this year.

The decision is one made by Johnny Calvin, (Douglas Lambert), that he can't be a drover after all but he has another direction his life could go in. Johnny has a bad leg but he idolizes drovers and wants to be one. Rowdy Yates, Jim Quince and Hey Soos are on their way to join Mr. Favor at Horseheads and decide they have enough money to buy some 'beeves' for themselves to take along with his herd. They make a deal with a local rancher whose son, Johnny, wants to go with them. Johnny has shown a knack for healing animals but cannot heal his own leg injury or his desire to be a drover. Rowdy turns him down because, with his injury, he could never do the job. Rowdy, Jim and Hey Soos leave with their tiny herd, (15 cows), only to find that Johnny had followed them. Rowdy turns him down again and forces him to go back home. He encounters a small group of bandits, led by Carlos Romeo. Complaining about Rowdy, Johnny gives them too much information and they decide to steal the cattle, leaving the three drovers without horses. They think it's Johnny's revenge on them.

But it's not. Romeo turns out to be the former scion of a wealthy rancher who lost everything in the Mexican wars and had to star over from the bottom. He develops a feeling for the kid, even after mocking his inability to manage the cattle. When Rowdy, Jim and Hey Soos, having walked to a nearby ranch and borrowed horses, return and reverse the situation against the bandits, Romeo has convinced Johnny that spending his life as a veterinarian is a better option. It's not a bad episode but the turnabout of Romero's character was a little hard to swallow.

The 'Buryin' man is a traveling undertaker, played by the Uriah Heap-like King Donovan, who is also a counterfeiter who keeps his printing press in his hearse. The drovers encounter him when he is being followed by Indians. Favor allows him to follow the drive to the next town. He's also being followed by two former partners in crime, Richard Devon and Constance Ford, who want the treasury plates they'd stolen and to gain some revenge on him for running out and leaving them to deal with the consequences. It turns out the Indians want to use the hearse for their chief's funeral and Favor and Yates take care of the other two problems. An attempt at a comedy episode, something this show didn't do very often or very well. Donovan's character is so irritating he couldn't be funny.

Trail's End is not the end of the drive or the season, (we now learn they are on their way to Wyoming), it's the end of the trail for legendary trail boss Harry Maxton, (Harold J. Stone), who is losing his eyesight. Favor gives his old friend and mentor a chance to go one last drive, (but he's riding drag, nice). Unfortunately, one of the drovers, (George Brenlin), used to work for him and was chewed out by Maxton in front of everyone and told to leave. Now he wants revenge. His several confrontations come to noting and he winds up just going away. It comes down to a dry drive and Maxton knows where a stream is that they won't find on a map. Maxton has an earlier scene in which he tells Favor that they don't have anything in their lives that could ever replace being a trail boss. That contradicts Favor's many soliloquys about what a difficult job it is and his desire to buy a ranch so he can settle down with his daughters and Maxton says at the end that, now that he's quitting, he'll go live in St. Louis with his son. Like Johnny Calvin, they had alternatives.

The Sam Elder Story Jan 18, 1961 Weight of Command Jan 25, 1961 The Prairie Story Feb 1, 1961 Path of the Serpent Feb 8, 1961

The Sam Elder Story has neither the now-deceased Ward Bond, his eventual replacement John McIntyre, (who appears in the credits) or Robert Horton, who is also in the credits. Bill Hawks, (Terry Wilson) and Charlie Wooster, (Frank McGrath) are leading the train. They do a good job and so do the actors playing them. Dramatically, those two characters could conceivably carried on the show but it needed star power and so McIntyre was brought in and Horton would be with the show for another year.

Sam Elder, (Everett Sloane) is a former Union office who led a vain charge during the war to warn his unit of the presence of a tremendous battery of cannon facing them. Most of his men died. To assuage his guilt, he's spent the post-war era gathering together sons of his deceased soldiers and wants to start a military school in California, (why not in the East?), to bring them to manhood. By one of those coincidences that the writers to fuel the stories for this series, the father of one of his deceased men, (the excellent Walter Coy), is on the wagon train and vows to kill Sam. This episode ends with Terry Wilson, as Bill Hawks saying "I guess that's what we all have to have: a reason to go on." I suspect the writer, Wilson, and everyone else knew the meaning of that line to the show.

Weight of Command is Ward Bond's penultimate episode. On review suggested it was the last he actually filmed. That appears unlikely as 'The Beth Pearson Story' contains a voice over done by an actor doing an impression of Bond. But Bond's friend Terry Wilson, (Bill Hawks) gets to tell Bond, (as Major Adams) at the end of this episode, "There ain't a man on earth who can measure up to you, not a one". If that's the last line Wilson had to say to Bond, it's one he was probably pleased he got to say it.

In the episode Hawks goes on a hunt with two men, played by Richard Crane and Tommy Rettig, (the first str of the Lassie TV show, now 18 years old). They are besieged by a group of Cheyenne Indians in war paint. Hawks leaves to get help from the train, because he has the best chance to get through. But the Major wants to move on and get through a mountain pass. He's fearful the whole Cheyenne nation might be at war, despite a treaty. He's seen one of their villages burning. Hawks is incensed that they aren't going back to save Crane and Rettig. He has some very dramatic confrontations with the Major over this. When they get through the pass they get to a fort and find out here has been no rebellion - the hunters just encountered a small rogue band of Cheyenne. The Major leads a force with Wilson where they find the hunters have survived and Wilson gets to deliver that last line. Denny Miller, (decades later, the "Gorton Fisherman") makes his first appearance as Duke Shannon in this episode and would be with the series for the rest of it's run.

The Prairie Story is one of the episodes that showed Robert Horton, (Flint McCullough) leading the train. He comments in James Rosin's book on the series: "After Ward's passing, there was talk of me taking over the role of wagonmaster. I was very much against it. I thought it should be played by an older man. I also felt that part of Flint McCullough's appeal was that he accepted responsibility when he chose to. He had never gotten into a situation where he was tied down.

I did do four episodes which were written for Ward but I did them because Howard Christie (the producer), was in a bind. I can remember one show that contradicted what I had established as my character. The writers simply took Major Adams out of the script and put in Flint McCullough over his speeches. The story involved a woman being dragged off by the Indians. By the time it was cut and edited, it looked as if I stood by and made no effort to prevent it. Now, with an older man in that situation, his physical limitations would prevent him form doing anything. Or, with Ward in the role, with his knowledge and maturity, he'd say 'There's nothing to be done.' And you'd believe it. But when Flint stood in the prime of his life and did nothing, it invalidated his image." In The Prairie Story, the Indians attack and run off with what appears to be a dummy in a dress and Flint, much like Major Adams in Weight of Command announces that they can't afford to go after the poor 'woman' because the train must move on.

The Prairie Story is written to be a tribute to the women who moved west but focuses mostly on women who didn't want to go once they found out how hard the journey could be. One, (Virginia Christine), is so frightened she demands her husband turn their wagon around to go back east, a decision likely to make them far more vulnerable than if they'd stayed with the train. But Flint lets them go. Another goes nuts and rides off in a wagon on her own, dying in an accident. A third, (Jan Clayton, the original Julie Jordan" in Broadway's Carousel) likes to sing songs with her piano, making everybody else feel better. But even she wants to give it up but is persuaded not to by Flint and the philosophical Beulah Bondi. One can imagine Major Adams and Beulah developing a close relationship as kindred souls, but it works OK with Flint, too.

Path of the Serpent features Noah Beery and Jay Silverheels as a legendary mountain man and his faithful Indian companion, (although I didn't realize it was Jay, who had had played Tonto in the Lone Ranger TV series: his dress and make-up were different and he has no actual lines). Beery is an old friend of a dying Army sergeant, (Paul Birch), who asks him to guide his daughter, (Melinda Casey), who is with the wagon train, through a treacherous path in the mountains to him so he can see her once more. Bill Hawks comes along to scout the trail for the train. A young soldier, (Robert Harland) is with the group. He fall in love with the daughter. When they get together, Birch improbably asks Beery to marry his daughter and make sure she's safe. Then he dies. Beery tries to fulfil the request but comes to realize that Harland and Casey love each other and decides to do what's best for everyone. The always agreeable Beery is the only reason to remember this one.

Incident of the Wolvers Nov 16, 1962 Incident at Sugar Creek Nov 23, 1962 Incident of the Reluctant Bridegroom Nov 30, 1962 Incident of the Querencias Dec 7, 1962

The herd is once again besieged by wolves, as they were in 'Incident of the Judas Trap' (Jun 5, 1959). Dan Duryea offers his services as a wolfer to Rowdy, who is running the herd in Gil Favor's absence. Rowdy doesn't trust Duryea, especially when he finds out the Army is already paying him to kill the wolves, but he needs the help and agrees to pay him extra for his services around the herd. At that point the story stops being about the wolves and becomes about Duryea's overly protective attitude toward his daughter, who with two sons, travel with him on his journeys to kill wolves. He's afraid of what the human 'wolves will do to his daughter and even more so that she will leave him and won't do the chores she does for him and his sons. Patty McCormick of "The Bad Seed", (still only 17 and maybe 16 when they filmed this), plays the daughter. The ending is kind of predictable, especially since it's perennial bad guy Duryea.

Sugar Creek doesn't like Sam Garrett, (John Larch). The reason seems weak: He sold cotton to a businessman from Boston, (I got the impression it was after the war, not during it as the plot summary says). He was convicted of "treason". Also his father in law was against his marriage to hi now-deceased daughter and has taught his young son to hate the father has no memory of knowing. Sam is working with Mr. Favor's, drive, trying to earn enough money to start over. But he gets badly injured and needs a doctor. The closest one is in Sugar Creek and refuses to treat him, (so much for the Hippocratic Oath), except at gunpoint. The gun belongs to the one person in the town who still cares for Sam, saloon owner Marcie, (Beverly Garland, who has bought some land to help Sam on his comeback. Larch and Garland are two members of an excellent cast: Everett Sloane as the Doctor, John Litel as the father-in-law, Arthur Franz as an unhelpful sheriff and James Westerfield as an unhelpful storekeeper. My only complaint is that that Litel would have been better as the doctor and Sloane as the father-in-law. Also Franz turns color and deals rather harshly with Litel at the end.

Rowdy gets drugged by a bartender and winds up married to the saloon owner's girlfriend. That's the plot of The Reluctant Bridegroom. The always wonderful Ruta Lee is the girl and Arch Johnson, who could be comic or intimidating, (he's a bit of both here), is the saloon owner. But the best part of it is Ed Nelson as the phony cleric who marries them. It seems he dresses that way to collect contributions to the 'church' and then uses the money to gamble with.

A Querencia is an animal that doesn't want to leave its own turf. Edward Andrews plays a down-and-out old friend of Gil's who wants to bring a small herd of Querencias along on his drive to try to start a new ranch. Against his better judgment, Gil agrees, slowing own the herd. Andrews proves to be an incompetent drover and himself slows the herd down. He doesn't want to do any real work and creates various problems until Gil has to order him to leave the drive. But he redeems himself by warning the drovers of an impending Indian attack at the cost of his own life in an unconvincingly maudlin ending.

Incident of the Prodigal Son Oct 19, 1962 Incident of the Four Horsemen Oct 26, 1962 Incident of the Lost Woman Nov 2, 1962 Incident of the Dogfaces Nov 9, 1962

The Prodigal Son is Carl Reindel, a handsome, talented young actor of the early 60's for whom big things were apparently expected. He had twice, (5/5/62 and 9/15/62) played a strong-minded character named 'Cale' on Gunsmoke. The latter episode was the beginning of a new season. At the end of it, he resides way and Matt Dillion tells Chester that he thinks Cale has quite a few adventures ahead of him. It sure looks like a pilot for a prospective series but Carl never appeared in one. He spent the 60's and 70's as a supporting player in various movies or TV series. His IMDB resume ends with a 1981 appearance in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" in which he played an Air Force sergeant. He died of a heart attack at age 74 in 2009. Obviously, he found something else to do with his life and that's good. There are a lot of Carl Reindels in these old shows, and a lot of them in the new shows today. Talent and looks are not enough. You need that big break.

Shortly after those 'Cale' episodes, Carl played the scion of a railroad magnate who has rebelled from his father and is out on his own but not doing well. He's found drying of thirst as he reaches a waterhole and faints. The drovers find him and revive him. Favor offers him a job when he fully recovers. Gene Evans plays a veteran drover who gets along with no one but takes the young man under his wing. It seems his bad attitude toward life stems from the death of his own son. Reindel accepts the attentions of the older man: his father had ignored him. But Evans is a very disturbed man. He threatens to kill anyone who comes between him and Reindel. When Rowdy Yates chews the kid out, Evans ropes him and drags him. It all winds up in tragedy and a reunion with his real father. A good solid, dramatic episode.

I don't know about The Four Horsemen but that episode has a remarkable cast, full of prolific TV actors from this period: Claude Akins, John Dehner, Jena Engstrom, James Griffith, Ron Hayes, Myron Healey and Robert Wilke. The story is about two feuding families. Wilke is a powerful rancher. Hayes is a younger rancher from a numerous family that bands together to fight their battles. Favor and Rowdy get involved in the feud when they are asked to be witnesses at a wedding on Hayes and Engstrom, Wilke's willful daughter. They know nothing about the feud but now they are in the middle of it. Dehner, (who might normally have had Wilke's role) is Wilke's henchman, who changes sides, even working for Favor at one point. Akins is a mysterious guy who asks the two drovers to witness the wedding who seems unaligned and gets a job with Favor. He always looks like he's up to something but we never find out what. Griffith seems to be a victim of the feud but is he? Healey's presence is so brief I never knew what his role was about. But to have so many recognizable faces in one episode was amazing.

The plot was more confusing than amazing. Favor tries to be a peacemaker and also to try to get his herd across a river to avoid the coming conflict, (they bring back the situation from a previous episode: you can't get steers to cross a stream the sun is shining off of: it scares them). Some the situation resolves itself down to Favor offering to be a 'champion' for Wilke to fight Dehner, who has now jumped over to the side of Hayes' family. Gil doesn't do too well in this battle until Dehner's tendency to suddenly lose consciousness at unpredictable times betrays him. It doesn't make much sense. Who was pestilence again?

The drovers find an unconscious woman, (Fay Spain) woman with a baby. Later they encounter rough, crude RG Armstrong and son Harry Dean Stanton, as well as his other son, Hampton Francher, who isn't crude. He doesn't care about the woman but the baby, he says, is his as the deceased father was his oldest son and heir and so is his only son. Favor says the woman can stay as long as she wants and that she can keep her baby. After they win a briefly violent confrontation, the drovers send Armstrong away. But he doesn't go away. Instead, he decides to stampede the herd and steal some of them along with the baby. They forgot that the fate of all bad guys who stampede herds is the same.

The best of this group is the one about 'Dogfaced' soldiers, which also has some excellent character actors in it. Rowdy and Clay Forrester come to the rescue of three soldiers fighting off a small group of Indians: James Whitmore, as a sergeant who was a Confederate office, who became a 'Galvanized Yankee': a prisoner who agreed to join the federal army and fight Indians, which freed frontier soldiers to fight against the Confederacy. There was a rule that galvanized Yankees could not become officers, so he's stuck at sergeant. John Douchette, frequent villain, especially in the "Adventures of Superman" series, playing a former member of the Czar's armies who somehow wound up with Whitmore and Steve Brodie, former wanna be movie star in the 1940's, now part of the TV guest star rotation, playing an Irishman whit a streak of loyalty to Whitmore. They were being attacked because Whitmore had killed a chief's son and the chief wants him to gain revenge. Whitmore's men refuse to let the Indians get him and the Chief now threatens the herd and the drovers as long as they protect the soldiers. Whitmore gives one of his smiling mouth-threatening eye performances but wins the respect of everybody at the end.