Just now reading on Cameron Mitchell, and The High Chaparral.

After the big name westerns, any you liked?

I like gunsmoke, the rifleman, wanted dead or alive, wagon train and rawhide.

Have Gun Will Travel. But Gunsmoke was probably king of the hill.

I liked them all, but the rifleman was my favorite. Has anyone ever noticed Chuck Conners used the rifle right handed in the opening scene, but during the episodes he used it with his left hand. He was left handed.

I think that the hay day of the really good westerns were made from around 1953 thru around 1963. The golden decade of westerns. Not referencing specific shows but just the western productions on general... Before all the multi million dollar productions. That was also the era of the old singing Cowboys.

Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Lawman, and Death Valley Days.

Oh yeah, Gunsmoke and Wanted, Dead or Alive.

I never noticed him shooting left handed at all. When're he he spun the rifle one handed to rack a round I thought he always done it right handed.

The Wild Wild West........What?

GUNSMOKE for me. Of course, I am kinda prejudiced for that western series.

It was the longest running series in the history of television.

L.W.

26 Men, Sheriff of Cochise.

I just surfed YouTube on the rifleman, apparently he was a badass with either hand!!!

I found a DVD of the old 26 Men series and have been in hog heaven. Good show. Also remember The Virginian, when my grandparents got a new color TV, and we had dinner at their place on Wednesdays (I believe) so that we could watch the 90 minutes in living color.

The rifleman and wagon train are aired here ,the rifleman is my favorite.Chuck Conners was a true ambidextrous athlete,he played baseball and basketball before he was an actor.

Gunsmoke for sure. Always liked The Rifleman. About 1/4 of Bonanza episodes are great, 1/4 mediocre, and 1/2, just plain idiotic.

Its gettin to be like the “bad day fishin better than good day at work” thang. A bad western is better than any current crap.

When I was a kid I was very upset when mom told me Ward Bond died.

Hopalong Cassidy, Cisco Kid, Annie Oakley, Have Gun will Travel, Maverick, and the Old Ranger on Death Valley Days.

I watch some of Bonanza reruns, they used old Henry's, Colt Revolving rifles, and other interesting guns. The same guns show up every few shows.

I believe he was 6'5".
Played professional baseball for the Dodgers & basketball for the Celtics.
Have seen a clip of of him in a dodgers game where he got a big hit and was rounding the bases and he did cartwheels all the way from 2nd base down to 3rd base to a huge crowd applause and took a bow - quite a ham even then.....

The Rifleman was one of my favorites.

I liked all the westerns listed but Maverick and Have Gun will Travel were my favorites. Come to think of it , I really liked Festus.

For another baseball player in westerns, look up Kurt Russell’s father Bing Russell. He was in a buttload of TV westerns and movies. Saw him in Cheyenne Autumn last night.

I knew his dad was a ball player before he went into acting - used to see him in a lot of shows way back when.
Kurt was a very good ballplayer himself - played Triple A ball for a long time, but never quite made the cut for the big leagues.

Yancy Derringer, Broken Arrow, Wyatt Earp, Bronco Lane, Fury, Circus Boy, Bat Masterson, Jim Bowie, Wild Bill Hickok, Sgt Preston of the Yukon, Tales of Wells Fargo, Roy Rodgers.

Never have been a fan of Western's.

Thank you kindly for the input, Manlicker.

Rifleman was a given, but really enjoyed Have Gun Will Travel (Richard Boone as Paladin) and Bat Masterson (Gene Barry). Both had cool revolvers and holsters. When I was a kid the parents got me a set of Mattel Fanner 50 cap guns. The match duel holster set now sells for around $600. Those were the days and I am truly blessed to have been born in the 50s.

I read that the Rifleman was set in the 1880's. However, the rifle was a Winchester 1892 which wasn't invented yet. It also was a 44-40 cal using smokeless powder which also hadn't been invented yet. Supposedly the rifle had been altered to fire every time he jacked the lever. However, before every fight he'd cock it and it wouldn't fire. Now Hollywood wouldn't have made mistakes like that, would they?

Back in the 50's, my family all watched the westerns night after night. A favorite was Cheyenne. My mother always got a kick out of Walker because in every show he managed to take his shirt off to show off his muscles. I stood near him one time when he was in Nampa, ID performing at a rodeo. He wasn't a midget.

He was staying at the Townhouse Motel on Harry Hines Blvd. in Dallas when he suffered a fatal heart attack, about 1961, I think.

It's only recently that Hollywood even attempted to get any accuracy in westerns. One of the worst offenders was John Wayne's The Comancheros, which featured SAA's that began production in 1873 and Winchester 92's that came out in 1892 in a setting ostensibly in the 1830's or 1840's.

I remember as a kid seeing him at the Snake River Stampede in Nampa.

Gunsmoke, Tales of Wells Fargo, Rawhide.....I like em all. Lawman has the worst actors but I'll set through an episode of it before I'll watch one of today's homo shows....

I'm a fan of Laramie and Maverick

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There were so many good ones I can't even begin to remember them. My grandfather lived with us, and he always had to watch Gunsmoke, so I probably saw it more than anything else.

Others I really liked were..................Cheyenne, Paladin, The Lone Ranger, Wagon Train, Maverick, Zorro, Rawhide, Death Valley Days, and Roy Rogers. Sgt. Preston Of The Yukon and Shy King were a couple of other shows that might not qualify as a real western, but I liked them too. I have watched a lot of Bonanza shows over the years, mostly the reruns. It was okay sometimes, but had some really silly and stupid episodes.

We've recently been watching reruns of the Virginian on Dish. It is amazing all the stars that appeared on that series. Of course it had quite a long run. Only a few of them are still alive. Pretty much all the old western series were good. Although they weren't that concerned with period correct language and firearms they all had a good message. I'm not a big fan of all the gore that is common in current movie productions.

Why is it that those high on the cast live long enough to deliver last words while those lower on the list die instantly? Alan Rickman was always good with last words. His dying expressions said a lot more than his lips

Yeah, I'm somewhat of a stickler for details, and I always hated to see a Western that was supposed to take place in 1868, and everybody was armed with Colt Peacemaker's and Winchester 92's. I suppose the audience they were aimed at was more interested in other things.

But, the good guys always won, and crime didn't pay, so the message was a good one.

Lots of the old ones can be streamed through various services, and pretty cheaply too. Not all of them "travel" well though, as our dramatic standards have changed.

Yancey Derringer was a favorite, and right in the middle of my revisit on Prime, I read that he was a serial molester of his stepdaughter, Sally Fields, until her mother finally divorced the creepy bastard.

One thing I like about the old shows is picking out actors that were just starting out or on their way down after careers in films or radio. A good many like John Dehner and William Conrad did pretty well and even became stars on the new medium.

Love the old Westerns! wish they would come out with some, but they be all jacked up, with the Crap they push down our throats now days!

The Young Riders was also pretty good. I think the writers and producers at the time considered it more entertainment with a message than a period correct study of society.

My wife and I still watch gun smoke, Death Valley days, maverick, wagon train, riffle man,and others

Agreed...

Couldn't agree more. With all the PC bullcrap, and every director hell bent on pushing his own political agenda, movies are hardly worth watching.

Like many, my favorites are Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and The Rifleman. Festus had to be the ultimate sidekick. As for movies, I'm a big Duke guy. John Wayne captivated me as a kid. To me, he personified the western lawman and the beer and a shot kind of man.

Television no longer seeks simply to entertain as it used to.. now everything seems to have an agenda,a message or actors trying to win some insignificant award. At our house we watch nothing of new programming and are grateful for all the classy old shows.

I like most of 'em!

Richard, I had the pleasure of meeting Cameron Mitchell once. Also had lunch with Henry Darrow. (He played Monolito)

Latly been watching The Virginian on the Western Channel. They are good. 2nd place to Gunsmoke.

They were good then, better than the cshit on TV now!!!

ALL TV shows are liberal and contain so much of the social engineering that I won't watch a single one of them. None.

Yes! Think he was suppose to go to the the UT/OU football game at the state fair. Reason he was in Dallas! We were living in Ft. Worth at the time.

I never could figure out Roy Rogers. I mean, it was a Western and Roy and everybody carried six shooters in buscadero holsters and rode horses and caught cattle rustlers and everything, then along comes Pat Brady in his jeep Nellie Belle. As a 7 year old kid I kept thinking “wtf?”, or would have if I knew that last word.

Took me years to decipher what was going on.

Rogers was a unique breed with his fringes and silver plated everything. Even his horse was decked out in circus finery.

The movie cowboys - I'm partial to Gary Cooper, will pretty much watch anything he is in, and of course Jimmy Stewart. I like the John Ford/John Wayne movies and it took awhile for me to come around to Randolph Scott - his acting is pretty stiff but he made a bunch of good Saturday Matinee movies.

I'm not as much of a fan of late 60's/70's westerns - while the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns are great (Once Upon a Time in the West), all the others just took on that Wild Bunch feel.

He was "King of the Cowboys" so I guess he had to dress the part.

Cisco Kid and Range Rider when I WAS a little kid...Tombstone Territory when a bit older. Really liked the theme tune on TT


Whistle me up a memory
Whistle me back where I want to be
Whistle a tune that will carry me
To Tombstone Territory

If your past has run afoul the law
It's a handy place to be
But your future's just a good as your draw
In Tombstone Territory

Whistle me up a memory
Whistle me back where I want to be
Whistle a tune that will carry me
To Tombstone Territory
Copyright: Lyrics © Original Writer and Publisher


source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/tombstoneterritorylyrics.html

Queen of the cowboys maybe.

Last week I rented THE BIG TRAIL on Amazon to see the real wagons, oxen, horses, mules, cattle, and wranglers. Well worth the effort. And the leading lady has a great real rack.


Sorry. Regarding TV westerns. None that I am aware of that I could possibly stand to watch.

All the country and western singers of the 40's-70's wore glitter suits. It was just a fad I suppose. Roy and Dale Evans were truly great for kids. They always had a good moral code of ethics. I'd rather have a kid watching them than some of the tripe that's passed off as entertainment today.

You're all just a bunch of 'ornery old scudders'...............got to love the Festusisms. Gunsmoke was and is still king of the western series'.

See my avatar.

No one sang the Rawhide theme song better than Jake and Elwood.

GREAT theme songs and music. Made me hate 70's crap shows and their crappier themes even worse.

Compare High Chapparel or Big Valley opening to.....Three's company or Different Strokes.

That show sure made me want a WW2 jeep.

Yeah but...Lawman had John Russell.

The Rogers were solid Christians and they gave a bunch of their money to help disadvantaged kids besides adopting 4 of them. He'd been married twice before. His 2d wife died a few days after the birth of their son Roy Jr. He married Dale a year or so later and they were together for about 50 years.
I read somewhere that he was worth over $100 mill when he died. They were all around good people.

John did really well in Pale Rider.

But he died anyways.

Lots of good ones, but I think the original thirty-minute Gunsmoke episodes were a bit better than all the rest of the TV westerns, including the one-hour Gunsmokes.The half-hour Gunsmokes had considerably more violence per minute than the more civilized, toned-down episodes of the '60s and '70s.

In later years, I suppose they were in search of good material that couldn't be found which accounts for the incredibly dull character of Thad and truly goofy segments with Festus' half-wit relatives.

I'll tell you a little story about that. I wrote several Gunsmoke scripts in the early 1970s. On one -- I think it might have been my second or third script -- I'd already done the story outline and the first draft teleplay and the production office at CBS had given me the "go ahead" to do the final draft teleplay.

They called me in to the Gunsmoke office on the CBS Studio City lot to get a couple of notes to add to the final draft. I was sitting in John Mantley's office. Mantley was Executive Producer of the show. He said, "Leanwolf, there's a problem with your script."

I said, "Oh, what's the problem?"

He said, "We got a directive down from CBS Standards and Practices that we are having far too many killings on Gunsmoke. In your script, you've killed seven people. That's too many."

I said, "Well how many can I kill?"

Mantley said, "Three."

I said, "Okay, I'll resurrect four of them and just wound them."

He said, "That'll work."

So that's what I did when I revised the final draft teleplay.

The reason for "less violence" on Gunsmoke was the fault of the wooses at CBS Standards and Practices, not the producers.

BTW, I never wrote for Festus' goofy relatives, nor Thad.

FWIW.

L.W.

LW,

CBS was already turnin' PC back then!

I was always fan of Richard Boone and I supposed "Have gun will travel" was one of the great shows but I've only seen it in reruns.
It was on on Saturday nights, and Saturday nights in that period I was never home.


Saturdays were date, tail chasing, hell raising nights.

It was said that Loony Tunes was the most violent show on TV.

I have never watched a bad Gary Cooper movie. He was a Western actor supreme, and just as good in other things as well. I'm a John Wayne fan, but Cooper was every bit as good. Jimmy Stewart was without a doubt a tremendous actor, but he just didn't have the appeal for me that Wayne and Cooper had. I also like the old Errol Flynn westerns, as well as his other films. Same way with Randolph Scott, he was better than 99% of todays actors.

My scripts weren't.

L.W.

The Coop Absolutely rocked!!!!

Hey Ranger Green? How ‘bout a little rub of the brush????

🤣

Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Laramie, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, The High Chaparral , Bonanza, The Rifleman... Heck I like em all.

I started this on TV westerns, but.

hillbillybear,

You didn't mention: WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE or THE REBEL.

yours, tex

I used to watch "The Rebel" and it was a pretty good show, but on the lower rung of good westerns; probably because of Nick Adams.

Gunsmoke and The Rifleman were my favorites.

No one mentioned "The Guns of Will Sonnett", I used to watch it as a kid. It was o.k.

"Kung Fu" was a pretty good "western" too.

That's just too damn cool.

Guns of Will Sonnet on YouTube-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p39x5tejKvc&list=PL-O4cgvtfY2nctsaOGyPskQcFAoxo6EjV

Odd that you should say that.as I've never cared for Mannlicher stocks on rifles
either.