Rollin' along
Recently, Talking Pictures TV, a British
channel that I get by satellite here in France, has shown the series Stagecoach West, produced by Dick Powell
and Joel McCrea’s Four Star Television and screened on ABC between October 1960
and June ’61, for a total of 38 one-hour episodes. I have naturally been
following it diligently. 38 hours well spent. It’s rather good.
It was in some ways a classic TV Western of
the time. Like many of the shows it featured a young boy, almost as the hero
(Richard Eyer was billed second, even above his screen dad Robert Bray) and in
several episodes the lad shows himself to be plucky and resourceful. This
formula worked well (think of Laramie
or The Rifleman with the Crawford
brothers as other examples) because the juvenile audience – mostly male – could
identify with the youthful hero while their moms could smile at how polite and
respectful the boy was, probably unlike their own offspring, at least judging
by yours truly, 12 or so at the time it screened. I never went round calling
everyone sir or ma’am, and I most certainly did not defend my pa by firing shotguns
at hired gunslingers. More’s the pity.
The caption should read Robert Bray, Hannibal II, Richard Eyer, Wayne Rogers
Photographed mostly in Arizona, in black & white,
mostly by the fine cinematographer Wilfrid Cline, it featured some good
location shooting and was no low-budget cheapie, though of course there were
many scenes shot in the studio, and sometimes the alternation is jarring.
In
the story, the stage line run by the two friends Simon Kane (Bray) and Luke Perry (Wayne Rogers)
goes, according to Wikipedia, from Missouri to California. But it looks more
like Wyoming to me, and I think Wiki is wrong on this (who knew that Wikipedia could
be wrong?) Several clues point to it being Wyoming, for example in Episode 17,
when the circuit judge comes from Cheyenne. Sometimes they get down as far as
southern Arizona (judging by the saguaros). Anyway, it’s in ‘the West’.
Many writers were used on the series but the
lion’s share was done by DD Beauchamp the Great and Mary Beauchamp. I was always
a Beauchamp fan. DD (died 1969) wrote episodes of pretty well every Western TV
show you care to name but also a big number of feature Westerns too, such as Destry, Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend, The Man from the Alamo, Ride Clear of Diablo, Rails into Laramie, and many more.
It’s a top-notch CV.
DD Beauchamp the Great
As for directors, four were used. George Blair
and Harry Harris only did three episodes between them, though. The rest were
shared between Don McDougall and Thomas Carr. These were pros. McDougall was a
specialist TV director, doing especially episodes of Trackdown, Wanted: Dead or
Alive, Bonanza and The Virginian, though to the best of my
knowledge he never helmed a big-screen oater. Carr, on the other hand, had been
an actor in silent Westerns (he had been a rail worker in The Iron Horse - but then who hadn’t?) and had started directing
Sunset Carson B-Westerns in 1945 and later James Ellison ones. He moved into TV
with Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok
and he was one of Hopalong Cassidy’s favorite directors too, but all through
the 1950s he kept his hand in with occasional big-screen Westerns too. About
the closest to an A-Western he came was directing The Tall Stranger with Joel McCrea in 1957. In the 60s he did a lot
of Rawhide shows.
Bray and Rogers were hardly big-name stars at
the time but they are solid enough in their roles. Brawny Bray had Western cred
as he had been born in Montana to homesteading parents and had worked as a
cowboy in his youth. According to his IMDb bio, in 1946 he was signed to a
contract at RKO Pictures “where he was looked upon as the new Gary Cooper”
though I reckon the Montana ranch background was about all they had in common. That
and the fact that Bray’s character’s name in the series was Kane. He made
appearances in Tim Holt B-Westerns and then landed a part in Lassie on TV.
Sime
Rogers too was a rather
minor figure. He co-produced and wrote the script for the cult sci-fi B-movie The Astro-Zombies, which you doubtless
thrilled to, and in the 70s he would become Trapper John in MASH but Westernwise he too did mostly
TV shows.
Luke
In fact the young Richard Eyer was a bigger
star than either. He had been memorable as the kid attacked by the goose in Friendly Persuasion (review coming in the new year) and his first TV
appearance had been on The Roy Rogers
Show. On the big screen he was in The Raid, Canyon River (review coming in the new year) and Fort Dobbs,
whenever a clean-cut all-American lad was needed. He retired at the ripe old
age of 22.
Davey
Despite Eyer’s quite big role, the series was
not aimed at children entirely. Some of it is quite gritty. The British TV
channel even has it as a “PG” (parental guidance). There are cold-blooded murders and
allusions to sex, though of course all well within the bounds of mainstream evening
TV limits of those days.
Recurring characters are the avuncular
unincorporated town of Outpost’s owner, Mr. Murchison, who runs the trading
post. Murchison is played by our old pal John Litel. Then there’s Zeke Bonner,
who runs the Halfway House waystation and he is played by James Burke. Litel
did huge numbers of Westerns, from a Rin Tin Tin talkie in 1930 to Nevada Smith in ’66, and you probably
remember him as the minister in The Sons of Katie Elder or one of the Beldons in The
Hired Gun or the judge in Jack Slade or
indeed many other parts. Craggy-faced Mr. Burke was a regular on B-Westerns
though didn’t do as many as Litel.
Then there was Cal, the clerk in the stage
line office in Timberline. In different episodes he will be shot, beaten up and
otherwise abused, poor chap. He is played by Olan Soule, a leading radio actor
who was the first to provide the voice of Batman in an animated feature.
Fascinating fact, huh. And also in Timberline, stocky but steady Marshal Hugh
Strickland (Robert Stevenson) makes periodic appearances. At one time or
another Stevenson appeared in most of the TV Western shows.
Otherwise it was guest-stars, with some
appearing in several different episodes as different characters.
Life for stage drivers in the West was
certainly eventful. Every week Luke or Sime and sometimes both have to face
murderers, robbers, hold-ups, sieges and heaven knows what else.
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Here’s an episode guide for you:
In Episode
1, High Lonesome, a kind of pilot
(though the same length as the others) first aired on October 4, 1960, we first
meet the principal characters. Simon Kane embezzled $2000 from his employer to
enable him to search for the wife who has abandoned him, and is being pretty
well held to ransom over it, working off his debt to his nasty employer Osgood
(Robert F Simon). Kane gets into a fist-fight with Osgood (just as the two
men’s sons had done) and Kane decides to leave, paying off Osgood with the
money he has painstakingly saved. But Osgood wants revenge for the drubbing and
hires feared gunman Les Hardeen (funny how names of characters ending in –een were almost invariably villains in
Westerns) to pursue Kane and kill him. Hardeen is played by the excellent James
Best, the first of many well-known Western character actors to appear as guest
star on the show.
It’s quite a coincidence: at the first way
station there is Kathleen, the former Mrs. Kane, coming to find her husband.
She is played by the headline guest star, Jane Greer, who had co-starred with
Dick Powell in Station West in ’48
when Marlene Dietrich turned the part down, and she had been doing Zane Grey Theatre episodes with Powell
in the late 50s. The good news: in High
Lonesome she has a derringer. The bad news: she will not survive the
encounter and Simon will now officially be a widower. Their son never discovers
who the “nice lady” was.
Greer in Station West
Simon has spelled Luke at the reins during a
storm, having experience of driving a six-up, and Luke takes him on as
full-time driver. His friends call him Sime, says Simon. So we’ll call him
Sime.
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In Episode
2, The Land Beyond, the two
partners set up in the remote town of Outpost. On their very first run another
vicious hired gun appears, Cole Dawson (Coles are usually baddies too), played
by the excellent John Anderson. He has been hired to track down a young couple of
Easterners on the stage, who have eloped out West (Robert Harland and Gigi
Perreau). Dawson is to kill the man and take the woman back East.
There’s a dramatic shoot-out in which young
Davey Kane pluckily helps his dad out by getting the shotgun from the footwell
of the stage and blasting Dawson with it. Great stuff. Neither Dawson nor the
young bride will be returning East.
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By Episode
3, Dark Return, the stage line is
established in Outpost under the aegis of Mr. Murchison. In this tale we meet a
young sailor on his way back home, Frankie Niles (Billy Gray, who had been in The Outlaw Stallion) who takes shelter
in a livery stable for the night and witnesses the murder of its owner Stan
Culver (James Hyland) by the man’s own brother Jed Culver (John Kellogg, who
was also in Station West). The
assassin spots the youth and shoots at him but the boy manages to escape.
Unluckily, though, the two meet up again later and Culver threatens the
matelot. Culver blackmails the fellow into helping him rob Murchison’s store,
which also acts as a bank. The worst thing, and this shows how despicable
Culver is (fratricide not being enough), is that he clubs to death Davey’s
little dog Hannibal. What a swine! Luckily, though, Hannibal later recovers and
the stage line owners will deal with the malefactor. Attempted canicide shall not go unpunished.
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Episode 4,
The Unwanted, has, I fear, a very
improbable plot (it’s a non-Beauchamp script). A highly objectionable, violent
and stupid stage passenger, Kelly (Richard Crane) gets into a fight with driver
Luke and ends by drawing a sneaky derringer on him. Luke is obliged to blast
Kelly with his six-gun, and who can blame him? Not Mr. Murchison, certainly,
who exonerates him in a semi-official hearing, but Mrs. Kelly (Bethel Leslie) certainly
does hold Luke responsible, as does the other eye-witness on the stage, gambler
Ben Marble (the very good Gerald Mohr, actor in many a trench-coat intrigue who
became a regular on TV Western shows). Marble decides to ‘take over’ Mrs. Kelly
as his woman. The widow is so distressed at Luke, however - ranting, in fact -
that she thrusts her toddler girl Sara (eight-year-old Tammy Marihugh) at him
and hurriedly leaves on the stage. That’s why I said improbable.
Mohr is better
The child also blames Luke for the demise of
her daddy and is very sulky, and Davey now gets a kind of younger sister. Well,
it will come right in the end, but not before we have had some pretty
sickly-sentimental scenes of Sixties girlhood. Thank goodness she is reunited
with her mama in the final moments. I think Davey was relieved too, though he
is much too polite to say so.
Well, only four episodes in and already two
derringers. Pretty good.
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Episode 5,
A Fork in the Road, is rather a good
one. Sime and Davey are held hostage for several days when their stagecoach is
hijacked, and so the episode is rather static, mostly done in the studio, but
it’s well written and it has excellent guest stars. It opens with Jack Warden
and his henchmen, disreputable ex-soldiers Jack Elam and Richard Devon among
them, robbing a grave and removing a corpse. Good dramatic opening. This body
is then shipped West, and Luke and Sim’s stage line is charged with carrying it
as freight. Why? Ah, all will be revealed.
Jack Elam the Magnificent
I always liked Jack Warden, though he did few
Westerns, and those not very good ones (The White Buffalo, The Man who Loved Cat Dancing and Billy Two Hats). He was better on TV, and in fact appeared in
various small-screen Western shows. As for Jack Elam, he was one my all-time
favorite Western character actors and was never less than excellent, however
small the part he had (e.g. ‘Knife murderer, Uncredited’). Devon’s instantly
recognizable lugubrious face was also often seen on TV Westerns, as well as the
occasional feature one.
There’s a good bit where Davey claims to be
the smartest kid in his grade, smartest boy anyway, but it turns out all the
other pupils are girls.
The script actually has something interesting
to say on heroism and heroes, and the value of myth over reality.
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Episode 6,
A Time to Run, also contains a hijack
attempt on the stage (it seems it was a frequent danger). A disreputable type, Joe
Brandy (Steven Marlo, regular heavy on Western TV shows) probably a bounty hunter,
rides into town with a Mexican sidekick and four Apache Indians. We meet blonde
bombshell Sadie (Barbara Nichols, The Queen of the B movies, Birdie in The King and Four Queens) who meets
dashing man in black Cesar Romero. The bounty hunter wants Cesar but the
Mexican gets the drop on him with his .44 and escapes, though wounded by the
bounty hunter’s sidekick, Nacho (Than Wyenn, also a regular on Western TV
shows).
Cesar does his charming Mexican act
The stage arrives, driven by Luke (no sign of
Sime in this episode) and we meet the passengers, vaguely Stagecoach-like: a whiskey drummer who likes to sample his own
wares, Aeneas Longbridge (William Schallert), an Army major from back east
(Richard Coogan) with his wife (Maxine Cooper) who hates the West - “Horace
Greely can have it” - and of course Sadie, with her little dog (Anon.) The prim
major’s wife doesn’t want to travel with the dog and Davey offers to take the
mutt up on top. We learn the tragic news that Hannibal is no more. Davey’s dad
said he ran away but Davey reckons he died. It might have been that clubbing
James Hyland gave him in Episode 3. We sense that this lady’s canine will
become the new Hannibal.
Cesar holds up the stage, wanting one of the
horses, but Luke is brave and disarms him and then Cesar faints from loss of
blood. He is bundled on board and will be handed over to the law at the next
town.
At the stage stop we met Haddlebird (Guy
Wilkerson, frequent old-timer in B-Westerns, doing a kind of Hank Worden act).
He is an elderly boastful Texan chopping firewood (slowly) for manager Zeke. The
stage arrives but so do the bounty hunters, and the episode becomes a siege. Luke
digs the bullet out of the would-be horse thief. It turns out that this fellow
is a colonel from the Maximilian army. The Juarez government has put a price on
his head, and Brandy & Co want to collect it (so we must be sometime before
the summer of ’72). Well, the passengers and stage-halt personnel decide to
defend the colonel. It’s all dramatic stuff (if studio bound). Romero spends
much of the episode unconscious but still manages to be charming and have
style.
Mexican politics will return as a theme. And
yup, Davey gets the dog, Hannibal II.
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In Episode
7, Red Sand, there’s no dog of
any kind but it’s now Sime’s turn to perform frontier surgery (no sign of Luke
in this episode). It starts in a sandstorm with yet another attempt on the
stage’s team of six when two rough types, Tanner and Brady (Harold J Stone and
Dean Jones), who turn out to be on the run from a posse after a bank robbery in
Bristow, stop the stage by a stratagem and take the nags, and Sime and Davey,
away with them. The party takes refuge from the storm in a cabin, whose owner,
Martha Whitlock (Diana Millay, a few appearances in Western TV shows), they
disarm. Tanner faints from loss of blood (a bit like Cesar last week) so Brady
makes Luke take the slug out of his shoulder – or else.
There’s no food in the cabin, for the woman is
very poor. So, leaving Tanner with the boy, Brady, Martha and Sime go to a
local store for supplies and, oh joy, the scurrilous owner is Edgar Buchanan,
another of my favorite Western character actors. Brady reveals a sympathetic
side, recounting how he never went to sleep with a full stomach in his life and
Tanner was the first to show him any respect, and also by buying a new bonnet
for Martha. They get back to the cabin but the posse has taken it. There’s a
daring escape and a heart-warming ending…
Dean in the mid-60s
Dean Jones didn’t do many Westerns (though he
provided the title song for Gunsight Ridge) but is actually rather good as the young man who wants to be decent
but. Stone is excellent as the bad guy, as he often was. He did loads of
Westerns, all small-screen ones except two – I remember him as the outlaw Capt.
Lavalle in Showdown (the 1963 Audie
one).
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Episode 8,
The Saga of Jeremy Boone, is very
entertaining because it has a high DQ (derringer quotient). In the opening
scene, a St Joe bank manager (Hugh Sanders) who has been taken in by conman
Deuce Stone (Steve Brodie) uses a little pepperbox against him (but Deuce is
quicker with his six-gun), and later on, the estranged Mrs. Stone, conwoman
Felicia Sparks (Marti Stevens) goes up against Deuce with a classic over-and-under Remington. So that’s good.
Two derringers in one episode. Excellent.
Then Hannibal II is back, so that adds to the
appeal. He’s on the stage with Davey, with Luke driving. No Sime in this one.
Rogers and Bray seem to alternate appearances on the show, only occasionally
appearing in tandem.
At the Halfway House Zeke recognizes Felicia
(I think he must have had 'a past’) and warns Luke about her. She is apparently
“Lucretia Borgia and Cleopatria” combined. Davey is rather taken with her,
though. He’s obviously growing up.
Now we meet boastful young Texan Jeremy Boone
(a descendant of Dan’l) played by Ben Cooper, Turkey Ralston in Johnny Guitar. He is carrying $40,000 in
a money belt and tells everyone about it. Doh.
Deuce turns up, like a bad penny, and the plan
is to take the Texan for the forty grand. But Felicia develops qualms and the
Texan, being a Texan, is a crack shot…
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Episode 9,
Life Sentence, was a Don
McDougall-directed, Don Brinkley-written one about a Confederate deserter from
Vicksburg who abandoned a comrade who lost his arm, and it has something
interesting to say about courage and punishment.
Leo Calloway (veteran character heavy/mobster
Bruce Gordon) holds up the stage (it’s becoming a habit) looking for a
passenger, Toby Reese (Harry Townes, a Western TV show regular) – the man who
abandoned him on the field of battle. But Reese is not inside, only Davey and
Hannibal. Once in Timberline, though, Calloway finds Reese, and torments and
goads him. He is in fact a bitter man and a bully. When shooting at Reese’s
feet (the classic “Dance!” of Westerns) Calloway frightens the stage team and
the horses run Davey down. The boy is carried away unconscious. Now Sime is seriously angry.
Mrs. Calloway (Virginia Grey, in B-Westerns
since the 1930s) is much nicer than her husband and nurses Davey, as well as
baking him an apple pie. But she loves her husband, who rescued her from a life
of sin, and also loathes Reese.
Tough Timberline Marshal Strickland is a
steady influence and does his best to keep the peace, but it looks like a
showdown is coming. The worm finally turns and Reese straps on a gun to combat
his tormentor…
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Episode 10,
The Storm, has Luke (no Sime, Davey
or Hannibal in this one) with the cranky old Doc Apperson (J Pat O’Malley)
traveling to Halfway House to treat Zeke, who is ill. But of course they are
held up on the road (it often happened), this time by a glam but ruthless dame,
Sherry Hilton (Beverly Garland). She takes the horses to aid her getaway with
her lover, Shelby (Tom Drake), and, arriving at the Halfway House, she gets
into a gunfight with the hired help Charlie and kills him (she’s a cold-blooded
lady) but not before Charlie has shot and wounded Shelby.
Pat is the doc
Luke and Doc struggle on foot through the
studio in a snowstorm. Doc can’t go any further and holes up in a cave with a
fire while Luke goes on, and just makes it. But there is Ms. Ice-Cold who makes
Luke doctor Shelby at gunpoint.
What will happen? Will Shelby pull through?
And what about Zeke? Will Luke get the drop on the bank robberess? He has just
been made a deputy US marshal after all, by Marshal Strickland in Timberline. It’s all
very tense.
Well, quite tense.
Garland is good (she was a regular choice of
Thomas Carr, director of this episode) and she was of course equally ruthless
and good with a gun as Marshal Rose Hood in Gunslinger
in ’56. Luke ends up feeling quite sympathetic towards her. I wouldn’t have.
_____________________________________________
Episode 11,
Three Wise Men, is a Christmas-themed
episode (screened on December 20, 1960) set at Zeke’s, and it features pretty
well everyone except Hannibal (who’s looking after him, I’d like to know?)
A young man, Webb Crawford (Dick York) is
given a free stagecoach ride by Sime - he and Luke were very good like that. At
the Halfway House Crawford confesses that he is an escaped prisoner who, on
learning he has less than a year to live, determined to spend Christmas with
his wife and children. He promises to turn himself in on December 26. OK, Luke
and Sime are both US marshals now but they’re decent guys. They’ll go along.
But three evil bounty hunters, posing as sworn
lawmen, are determined to collect the reward for his capture before then. Good
news: one of the bad guys is Denver Pyle. Good old Denver. I don’t think he
ever held his breath just as the best-actor Oscar was about to be announced but
he is a familiar and friendly face in our Western shows. His fellow villains
are another old pal, Harry Lauter, and Arthur Batanides.
Luke and Sime give Davey a pistol for
Christmas. He seems a bit young to have a real six-gun but of course the show
was watched by hordes of small boys who would give their eye teeth to own a
silver plated revolver like that one so I bet the episode was a hit with much
of the Christmastide audience (probably less so with their parents). Later, Davey would get a
rifle too.
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Episode 12,
By the Deep Six, is another rather
improbable one, not written by the Beauchamps but by NB Stone (who, though,
co-wrote with Sam Peckinpah Ride the High Country) and directed by Don McDougall. It opens with six besuited riders
(city slickers, evidently) shooting Winchesters at two English sailors ,
killing one, then pouring coal-oil over the remains and setting it alight. They
seem pretty ruthless types.
The sailor who escapes, Liverpool Jack (they
used a real Londoner, Ashley Cowan) hitches a stage ride from Sime (no Luke,
Davey or Hannibal in this one) and they get to the Halfway House. The other passengers
are the Walker family: Frank, wife Emily and daughter Annie (Ross Elliott,
Catherine McLeod and Gina Gillespie). They are obviously on the run. And there
is a fair colleen, with the rather corny name of Molly Moriarty (very posh
actress Joan Elan, born Joan Bingham-Newland, English stage actress, whose fake
‘Irish’ accent does nothing to hide her cut-glass vowels).
The posse of killers track them to Zeke’s and
their cold boss Martin (Western vet Mort Mills, Marshal Frank Tallman on Man Without a Gun) orders them to wait
till dawn and then shoot to death everyone coming out. But he decides to
explain why first, so, under a flag of truce, he tells the occupants of the
house that he and his men are sworn peace officers (he has a badge) from San Francisco.
The ship the sailors recently left was carrying the bubonic plague. Here’s the
improbable part: all the crew had been killed and the ship blown up and sunk,
and now they were here to kill the last sailor, and, indeed, everyone else in
the Halfway House because they might have become infected. Right.
Mort Mills (in another TV show)
Martin recruits a few no-goods in Timberline
to help, including a certain Clyde Hardisty (Joseph Ruskin, one of those actors
whose hatchet face consigned him to parts as heavy) the ex-con who is after the
Walkers. Apparently Frank Walker’s testimony sent Hardisty to the pen.
Naturally, Zeke, Sime and the others aren’t
too keen on being executed, and they resist. A siege ensues. Luckily, decent
Doc Anderson (Thomas Browne Henry) arrives and tells Martin that the incubation
period is nearly up. If the sailor is still well tomorrow, the besieged people
are in the clear.
But the little girl falls sick overnight. Oh
no! Yet fear not. The gallant doc goes in, examines the child and declares it a
case of measles. Phew. So the posse ride off happily. But Hardisty remains,
and…
Heavy Ruskin
Yet nay, I shall not reveal the ending (though
you may guess).
Not the most believable of episodes but oh
well.
At the end, the fair Molly says she will take
up residence in Outpost and makes eyes at Sime, who is not displeased. Is
romance in the air? Will she re-appear in future episodes? I can’t wait.
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I said that the show wasn’t really for younger
people, despite featuring a small boy and dogs. Well, Episode 13, Object: Patrimony, the first of 1961, was
probably the most violent and was also quite tense. It guest-stars Robert
Vaughn as an ex-Confederate Captain Beau Buell, a gentleman turned renegade and
now known as Shenandoah. He has three very undesirable accomplices: Warren
Oates plays the low-life Billy Joe, Than Wyenn is the murderous half-breed
Mexican Indian Pasaquindice and Dennis Patrick plays the highly-educated,
frock-coated Teacher. A pretty classic line-up of outlaw henchmen. They are all
determined to waylay the stage and take $20,000 from a derby-hatted passenger,
Duncan (Dave Willock).
But Duncan is dispossessed of his ride at
Timberline and isn’t aboard. The whole coach has been commandeered by the very
arrogant and unpleasant daughter of a rich rancher, Susan McLord (a rather
heavy-handed surname) played by Pippa Scott, and her weasel-like fortune-hunter
fiancé Chambers (George N Neise). The couple are eloping.
On arrival at a way-station (not Zeke’s this
time) they murder the owner, Tinker (Wally Brown), who is using the horse
trough as a bath tub. They might have spared him because he was singing Shenandoah but nay. Perhaps they thought
he was singing it badly. Actually, he wasn’t singing it at all; he was very
obviously dubbed.
Duncan not being there, they decide instead to
hold the rich young woman to ransom. The slimy Chambers, who has stupidly
blurted out who his fiancée is, volunteers to carry the ransom note to her father.
This reminded me a lot of The Tall T.
In that movie too a charismatic bad man (Richard Boone as Frank), with
ne’er-do-well henchmen (Henry Silva’s Chink and Skip Homeier’s Billy Jack being
quite like the Mex and Billy Joe in this episode), hold a woman to ransom, and
her no-good husband deserts her, ostensibly to carry the ransom demand. In The Tall T Frank finds the husband so contemptible that he has Chink shoot him after
he uses him to make the money arrangements with her dad, just when Willard thinks
he's being allowed to get away free with his wife still a hostage. The
same happens here.
As you may guess, the arrogant woman softens
under the combination of adversity, Luke’s charms and his Western grit. In the
end they even kiss. At the end of the last episode Sime was getting a bit
lovey-dovey, with that fair colleen; is the same happening to Luke now? But he
turns down a job as foreman her grateful daddy offers him, so I reckon not. I
think he’ll be back drivin’ the stage next week.
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Episode 14,
Come Home Again, is a Sime/Davey one;
no Luke this time. And it’s a very female one too.
The father and son find a lady, Deborah Cotton
(Lisa Kirk, in her only Western, poor soul) and her daughter Abigail (Reba
Waters) standing on the bank of river, and agree to give them a ride into
Outpost, as is their wont. The two women are fleeing a private detective out of
Cheyenne, Murdock, who has been hired to arrest Deborah for kidnapping her own
daughter. Good news: this tec is James Coburn, then in his early thirties. He’d
already appeared in thirty or more TV Western shows but more importantly he had
been memorable in Ride Lonesome, the
great Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott oater of ’59, and of course he was now
famous because three months before this Stagecoach
West episode he had been knifeman Britt in The Magnificent Seven, so he was a big name as guest star.
Sime is reluctant to help Mrs. Cotton as she
is a fugitive from justice (and he is a deputy US marshal after all). Davey,
though, has been taught that a gentleman always helps a lady in distress, and
she claims to be a fugitive from injustice,
so he has other ideas. Furthermore, Abigail isn’t much older than he is and is
rather attractive, so he goes all sheepish when around her.
There are also a whole bunch of showgirls led
by Angie (Joyce Jameson) and they are a lot of fun. Mr. Murchison has invited
them (not the first time). They will come in handy when Sime wants to best the
bad guys in a saloon, dancing with the thugs and then, on Sime’s signal, bashing
them over the head with whiskey bottles.
This one was written by Roy Chanslor, who
worked on Cat Ballou, Johnny Guitar and The Daltons Ride Again.
It’s rather good!
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Episode 15,
The Brass Lily, was unaccountably
missed by the Talking Pictures channel and is not available on YouTube, so I’m
afraid I can’t tell you much about this one. It guest starred Robert J Wilke,
so I’m sorry I missed it. The IMDb summary says: “A famous singer arrives
in Outpost to deliver a concert and is welcomed by the entertainment-starved
community. When a stray bullet seriously wounds the chanteuse, the townspeople
discover the goddess they idolized is really a foul-tempered and selfish shrew.
After her business manager abandons her, only Vernon, a patient deaf-mute, is
willing to tend to her many needs, but the singer scorns his pity.” Mmm. Sounds
a gripper.
_____________________________________________
Episode 16,
Finn McCool, guest-starred Sean
McClory, a real Irishman for once (so many ‘Irish’ characters had fake accents)
who was a regular on Western TV shows, especially The Californians. In this episode of Stagecoach West he is a high exponent of the blarney, Finn McCool,
descendant (so he claims) of the hunter-warrior of Irish myth. In the opening
scene he is beguiling a smiling audience in Timberline with his songs and
admiring the (rather daring) legs of a saloon gal when four rough types in
suits burst in and take him outside at gunpoint. There, Finn makes short work
of two with his fists and shoots a third, before making his getaway.
McCool turns up at the Halfway House and
manages to gentle one of Zeke’s ‘unbreakable’ horses – he’s something of a
horse whisperer. Davey is taken in by the blarney but when the stage rolls in
his dad is more skeptical. On board are the British Ambassador, Mr. Allison,
from San Francisco, and his glam wife Sybil. These characters are also played
by genuine nationals (Stagecoach West
was good like that), John Sutton and Hazel Court. Of course McCool charms Mrs.
Allison with his winning ways. Sime does not approve and warns McCool. When his
puritan strictures go unheeded he feels the necessity to knock McCool down.
This provokes a bout of fisticuffs in which McCool’s elegant pugilism is pitted
against Sime’s saloon brawling skills, with His Excellency as the referee, and
the result is a draw.
The Irish thugs (Barry Kelley, Dan Sheridan
and Denny Miller) have followed, though, and now intrude. They announce that
they are members of the Irish National Brotherhood, come to execute McCool for
the treason he has committed. They say they will shoot him at dawn (why is it
always dawn?) During the night Mrs. Allison slips him a knife and he does for
one of the Irishmen, then escapes, taking the unfortunate Mrs. A. with him as
hostage, and knocking Davey down on the way out. Davey already had a broken arm
in a sling (that bronc) and now he gets a head bandage too. So Sime, the
ambassador and the Irishmen are all cross now and have reason to go after him.
There’s a grand shoot-out in the rocks.
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Episode 17,
Image of a Man, a Luke-only episode,
has a starry cast. It features Thomas Mitchell as a broken-down judge who
finds redemption, but also has John Dehner superb as a besuited crooked town
boss, and DeForest Kelley as his nasty homicidal younger brother. An excellent
line-up, though we do get a bit tired of Mitchell doing his recovering
alcoholic act. Stagecoach, Buffalo Bill,
Destry, it sometimes seemed as though that was all he could do. Still, he’s
very good in Image of a Man, I must
say.
Mitchell very good
The episode is quite thoughtful, with a
philosophical hired gunman, Cord (John Milford) discoursing (prophetically) on
the power of a crowd and Luke waxing philosophical on a biblical passage with
the judge, too.
We are in the town of Riverton, 1871. The
townsfolk pull down a statue of Justice as a (rather obvious) symbol that the
place has become corrupted and is in thrall to town boss Henchard (Dehner).
Luke will finally spur the pusillanimous
townsfolk to do the decent thing, but not before the redeemed judge has been
cold-bloodedly murdered by Cord on the orders of Henchard.
_____________________________________________
Episode 18,
Not in Our Stars, is, despite the title, star-studded. We
get Jay C Flippen, particularly good, I thought, as the loathsome, religious
Aaron Sutter, who feels he has “the right” to “exterminate” a former bond servant,
Ben Wait (Lon Chaney Jr.) because he tried and failed to doctor Sutter’s
daughter, who died. Aaron has three sons (Hampton Fancher, Skip Ward, Paul
Carr), also dressed in black, one of whom seems half-decent but the other two are
as foully homicidal as their poppa. In Timberline, they strong-arm Luke, who
doesn’t care for it at all.
On the stage, driven by Sime, there’s a
senator (J Edward McKinley), his wife (Stanja Lowe) and their pretty young
daughter Lucy, more or less Davey’s age (so teen romance blooms yet again) and a
disreputable and drunk doctor (our old friend Whit Bissell). Drunk docs, who
may (or may not) be redeemed through some medical act of mercy are of course a
stand-by in Western plots.
The stage drivers
At the Halfway House, Waits turns up, having
‘borrowed’ a horse in Timberline. He has a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and is something of an amateur doc, and indeed he
will turn out to be more medically proficient than the qualified quack. You
see, Davey takes Lucy out to impress her with talk of wild Indians but she is
bitten by a rattler. Doc Bissell is too inebriated to do a good job and Ben it
is who will save her.
But Sutter and his sons turn up and yup, it’s
another siege. Aaron wants to horsewhip then hang Ben. There’s a good ending.
_____________________________________________
Episode 19,
The Arsonist, is very dramatic. It
starts with bookkeeper Jethro Burke (James Dunn) being given a $5000 retirement
bonus by his friendly employer (Ralph Moody, for once not an Indian), the owner
of a paint factory going bankrupt, and Burke carefully leaving a candle to burn
down and set the place alight, presumably for the insurance. But Burke’s
younger wife Sally (Adele Mara) is in league with the lowdown Jack Craig (our
old pal James Best, always good, especially as baddy, back from Ep. 1). They
believe there is a lot of money in the factory safe, and Craig kills the old
owner and sets the place alight before that candle burns down. Such
skullduggery.
All three take the stagecoach. Craig,
disappointed with not finding big money in that safe, wants Burke’s five-grand
bonus as a consolation prize, and Burke’s faithless wife will aid ‘n’ abet.
Mr. Burke is very scientific, and, to prove to
himself that he didn’t burn the factory down and kill his friend, the owner, he
very stupidly lights a candle in the timberland and then forgets to extinguish
it, causing a vast forest fire in the studio (intercut with generic forest-fire
footage – it’s all quite well done, though, considering 1960 special effects).
Craig shoots Luke in the shoulder, the rat, but he and Sime and Davey and
Hannibal manage to get the passengers (except Craig) to safety.
Stage drivers in them days certainly had to
face perils of every kind.
We are told in passing that Zeke has left the
Halfway House. Has he been written out of the series? I hope not. If so, it was
a bit casual.
_____________________________________________
Episode 20,
Songs My Mother Told Me, guest-stars
Arthur O’Connell (Tom Wyatt in Cimarron
and Sam Beasley in Man of the West)
as Matt Dexter, a sympathetic Irish vagabond who panhandles for dimes playing
his mouth organ and who, unfortunately, witnesses a cold-blooded murder. He
skedaddles because he saw the killer and the killer saw that he saw. Of course
the bad guys want to kill him so that he can’t testify; without him they can
claim it was self-defense. They follow Matt to Outpost.
The bad guys are Richard Devon (back from Ep. 4,
and he will return later too) and Harry Lauter again, so that’s good. That gaunt face of
Devon’s made him an excellent baddy. Harry could do goody or baddy, at will.
Harry was in several episodes
Matt comes across Davey, and they bond, as
fellow harmonica players. They duet on I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen. In a Great
Expectations-type moment, Davey sneaks food from home to feed the fugitive,
though Matt is an amiable Magwitch. Sime can’t understand where all that food
is going. The baddies threaten to shoot Hannibal, so you don’t get more lowdown
than that. There’s a final shoot-out down by the river, and you may guess who
are the shooters and who the shootees.
_____________________________________________
Episode 21,
The Root of Evil, guest-stars Philip
Carey, so that’s good. I like Phil, especially as the charismatic bad guy. You
will know by heart of course 1 Timothy 6:10 so will understand that although ex-Army
officer Major Ralph Barnes claims to have secret military orders about his
person, he is almost certainly coveting after $$$, and
we know that such people have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves
through with many sorrows.
Carey excellent
He is on his honeymoon, though seems less than
amorous towards his wife Cecilia (Rachel Ames). He claims that a gang of
thieves are after him, and in Timberline he shoots one of the men following him
dead with a pocket pistol (sadly not a derringer) through his coat pocket.
Barnes and his wife take the stage (Sime driving) to Outpost.
On the way Sime picks up a walking
trapper/prospector, and it’s John Dehner. Only three or four episodes ago he
was the crooked town boss, brother of gunman DeForest Kelly, so you would think
Sime would have recognized him but probably Dehner’s Scottish accent fooled
him. I don’t think it would have fooled many Scotsmen, though, for it sounds
like he was brought up somewhere between Edinburgh and Warsaw.
At the Halfway House Zeke’s back, and his
cooking is as bad as ever. I was afraid he had been written out. There, Sime
and his passengers are joined first by another ex-Army man, Capt. Jackson Lee (burly
tough-guy Don Haggerty) and then by Luke, who has brought the glam Stella Smith
out in the buckboard. Stella sweet-talked him into it. She says she wants to
meet her fiancé. It turns out that’s Capt. Lee, though accomplice might be a
better word than fiancé.
Talking of the fair sex, those earlier hints
of forthcoming romantic entanglement, for both Luke and Sime, never did come to
anything, did they? It remains a particularly male household, with Luke, Sime
and Davey (though Davey and Hannibal do not appear in this one). That was the
case with Laramie too, at least in
the first season, and I suppose Bonanza
also. Women come and go, peripherally, and occasionally dally with one or other
of the men but it never comes to anything.
Good news: Stella has a derringer, though it
does her no good against the major‘s pocket pistol.
Well, there’s a dramatic dénouement, as you
will expect. Both Sime and Luke get knocked out cold, but recover to best the
bad guy. The “traveling Scotchman”, as Capt. Lee calls him, drops that phony
accent and turns out to be a colonel from the War Dept.
_____________________________________________
Episode 22,
The Outcasts, starts in Dodge City with
a young deputy, Ken Rawlins (Don Dubbins, a Cagney protégé who co-starred with
Jimmy on Tribute to a Bad Man)
shooting a bank robber and then finding out he has gunned down his own brother.
Rawlins gives up his badge and gun, and ends up being hired by Zeke at the
Halfway House, where he makes friends with Davey. Ken wants nothing more to do
with guns or killing. But of course his past will find him out, you know how it
does.
Zeke has been about the West over the years
There’s a mail-order bride from back East
(Hollis Irving) but she is told that her intended has died in an accident.
Luckily for her, though, the widowed Timberline gunsmith, Hal (Lyle Talbot),
takes a shine to her and it will be wedding bells alright.
Also featured are the bitter and disappointed
Ruby (Joanna Barnes) with her ne’er-do-well fancy man Mack (Stacy Harris). I
was hoping Mack would have a derringer but it’s only a gambler’s pocket pistol.
There will be gunplay.
_____________________________________________
Episode 23
is named The Remounts and it concerns
two happy-go-lucky horse herders, Clete (James Beck, a regular on Western TV
shows who however only appeared in one feature, 40 Guns to Apache Pass) and Hutch (Don Burnett, small parts in Raintree County and The Fastest Gun Alive but he didn’t really do Westerns) who have
rounded up some mustangs to sell to the army. They hire on two ne’er-do-wells
who try to take over the herd and sell it themselves. Good news: these lowlifes
are Mort Mills as Griz and James Griffith as Cowboy.
The scumbags are in league with a gang and
this gang is bossed by Richard Devon. Now Devon had already appeared in two
episodes of Stagecoach West, Ep. 5 as
a disreputable ex-soldier and Ep. 20 when with Harry Lauter he was trying to
kill a witness to a murder, so you’d think someone would recognize him by now,
but nope. He was always good as a baddy, I thought. It was that hatchet face.
This gang brutally and callously slay some 7th
Cavalry soldiers who have brought the money to buy those remounts. Then they
don the uniforms of the deceased. Not content with getting the $$$, they now want
to sell the nags to the Army and get even more loot!
When the stage turns up, Luke, Sime, Davey and
Hannibal (so it’s a full house) are taken prisoner. Griz and Cowboy keep Davey (and
Hannibal) as hostages while Luke is forced to don the Union blue (he was a Reb,
remember) and Sime is taken along too, to drive the horses.
Poor Clete and Hutch get taken by the gang,
just as Luke and Sime did. But cleverly, the two pairs of friends join forces
and manage to do in the bad guys. Now they go back for Davey. And Hannibal, of
course. Exciting stuff.
_____________________________________________
Episode 24,
House of Violence, guest-stars Jack
Lord, who, well before he was Five-0, did quite a lot of Westerns. He even led
in two. He plays the wicked robber and killer Russ Doty, who robs the stage-line safe of the payroll it was going to carry and shoots Cal doing it, the
swine. Luckily Cal is only winged (he’ll be back next week) but still. Then
Doty and his two accomplices (our old pals George Keymas and Charles Horvath)
gallop off and take over a way station – not Zeke’s but the next one down the
line.
There the three renegades hold the stage
passengers and crew hostage – it’s becoming quite a regular
occurrence. On board there’s a sick Senator (Grandon Rhodes) and his loving
daughter (Marion Ross), and a cowardly drummer (Peter Leeds) who sells fake
pearls. Luke, Sime and Davey (but not Hannibal) are all there too. Davey has
toothache.
Luke is sent back to Timberline “for supplies”
but warned that if he tells anyone there, the hostages will be killed. But once
there, steady Marshal Strickland convinces him that Doty will kill everyone
anyway, so it’s better to go back with a large posse, which they duly do. A
gripping climax ensues.
There’s a good bit with the simple-minded
Spinner (Horvath) and his spurs.
_____________________________________________
Episode 25,
The Butcher, has John Dehner back yet
again, this time not as a crooked town boss (Ep. 17) or a Scottish prospector
(Ep. 21) but as an Army colonel suffering from what we today would call PTSD.
In World War I it was called shell-shock. After the Civil War it was just
called going crazy. It’s a credit to these actors who made several guest
appearances that you believe them each time. Jack Lord’s back too – he did
Episodes 24 and 25 on the trot. This time he’s Johnny Dane, a charismatic
outlaw in chains being escorted on the stage by a sheriff, and, oh joy, the
lawman is none other than Frank Ferguson! Tragically, though, Sheriff Doolin
(FF) is shot to death by Mexican bandidos quite early on, even before the first commercial break. Curses. I first
understood that Doolin’s prisoner was Johnny Dean, and I thought it could be Waco
Johnny Dean, before he perished in Winchester’73, he of the hyena laugh, but it turned out to be Johnny Dane. Pity.
Col. Dehner with Jack Lord
The stage seems to be “rollin’ along”, as the
title song has it, through southern Arizona now because there is the odd
saguaro dotted about. Wyoming? Arizona? Missouri? Who knows where we are? Never
mind, it’s “the West”.
The bandidos are after Col. Dehner, for he has
been ruling California with an iron fist, and is on the stagecoach because he
has been recalled to Washington to answer for hanging too many recalcitrant
Spanish-speakers. The Mexes call him El Carnicero, and they want to take him
off that stage and do him in. Sime can’t allow that, of course, even if the
colonel is a bit of a swine.
Also on the stage are glam Linda Barton (Dodie
Heath) and Shakespearean actor Abraham Fontaine (Christopher Dark). And Davey.
But no Hannibal, unfortunately.
Well the bandidos, captained by the ruthless
Domingo (Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.) block the road, stop the stage and drive Sime and
the passengers into the maquis. The party decides to walk to the nearest way
station, and it’s a grueling trek, though Davey very politely helps Miss Barton
over rocks and such. They are harried by the Mexicans at every turn. The
colonel has to dig a bullet out of Sime’s shoulder. But the colonel finally
loses it completely and there is a dramatic ending involving Johnny Dane
shooting it out with Domingo & Co. Stirring stuff alright.
_____________________________________________
In Episode
26, Fort Wyatt Crossing, we are
still in saguaro country (it looks like it was filmed round Old Tucson) and
Luke is taking passengers to Albuquerque. At one point he says Timberline is
“way to the north”. I’m going for Wyoming.
There’s a good opening scene of a wounded
soldier on a pay wagon who is afraid of some Indians (Apaches maybe?). His wagon
crashes and he passes out but the Indians ignore both him and the gold he was
carrying. The stage then happens along and Luke stops (only Luke in this one)
to help the fallen man, cauterizing the wound with a hot knife (prairie surgery
was quite a common thing on this show).
On the stage is a Mexican woman, Maria (Madlyn
Rhue) and another whiskey drummer, JJ Brester (Alvy Moore). They all get the
wounded soldier, Tibbs (Steve Terrell) and the gold on the coach and set off through
Injun country for (fictional) Fort Wyatt to deliver soldier and gold safely
back to the Army.
But they are caught up by a small patrol of a
captain (Lawrence Dobkin, appearances in every TV Western you care to name plus
feature Johnny Yuma) and two troopers
(Mike Ragan and, oh good, Warren Oates). We can smell a mile off that they are
crooks and sure enough, they take the passengers and Luke at gunpoint. The
wounded trooper Tibbs turns out to be the son of the ‘captain’. Of course they
want that gold, $190,000 worth.
The dangerous foe weren’t Apaches, they were
Digger Indians, outcasts from various tribes, and though they have no guns or
horses, they are far from friendly, especially when the ‘captain’ shoots some
of them. He shot salesman Brester, too, in cold blood. He really is a bad egg. So
it’s all set up for a gripping climax to the episode, which by now we are
coming to expect, it being rather a good show.
The last scene is Luke amorously entwined with
Maria. Will this be love? Not on past reckoning. He and Sime dally with the
dames but they never seem to get into a serious Relationship.
_____________________________________________
Episode 27,
A Place of Still Waters, guest-stars
Darren McGavin. I always thought he was good in Westerns, big screen and small.
I remember him especially in the Audie Murphy oater Bullet for a Badman and in a Cimarron Strip episode with a similar plot, The
Legend of Jud Starr. In Stagecoach West
he is outlaw and bank robber Red Pierce and the opening scene is the
classic one of a punk with a gun challenging him. “They tell me you’re fast.”
You know how they do. Of course the lout ends up deceased. Red turns up at
Outpost, looking for the Reverend Jim Hallett (Edward Binns) and meets Davey
and Hannibal there; the preacher is away visiting the sick. Davey is mightily
impressed by the gunman. “They say you’re even faster than Wyatt Earp!” It
turns out that the preacher and Red are old friends and, badman or not, the
reverend wants to help his old pal. They were prisoners in Andersonville
together and Red helped the preacher survive. Now it’s payback time.
Lane Chandler is (briefly) the sheriff.
The townsmen, though, want to hunt the outlaw
down. Sime disapproves: he thinks they are only out for the bounty. They are -
two men in particular, Sam and Matt. Sam is played by Burt Douglas and Matt by
our old pal stuntman Chuck Roberson, miscredited as ‘Robertson’. It all leads
to a hostage-taking situation in the saloon in which Sam and Matt will be the
hostages…
This one was directed by Harry Harris, the
only episode he did (he was usually busy with Rory Calhoun on The Texan) and was written by Frederick
J Lipp, who also wrote Episode 17.
_____________________________________________
Episode 28,
Never Walk Alone, was directed by
George Blair (the Casey Jones chap)
and written by the Beauchamps. It concerns charming-rogue Cole Elridge, played
by William Campbell, who did quite a few Westerns, often with a similar part. I
remember him in, for example, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, Money, Women and Guns and Backlash. It’s a
Luke-only story. He goes up to Lander in response to a letter from Cole. They
were old wartime buddies and Luke wants to help. There he meets Cole’s gal Ruby
(Karen Sharpe) and they join forces to assist Cole. You see he has been framed
by two crooks, Fargo and Hyatt (Alan Wells ad Lee Van Cleef) and unjustly
accused of a train robbery they carried out, Fargo murdering the railroad clerk
in cold blood in the process.
Luke signs in at the Lander hotel “Luke Perry,
Outpost, Wyoming”, so that confirms it. Wyoming it is.
He and Ruby meet Cole at Deep Well, WY, a kind
of Hole-in-the-wall place favored by outlaws, where saloon ‘gal’ Siwash Annie
(Claire Carleton) sings Beautiful
Dreamer. Well, she doesn’t, it’s
dubbed, but you know. Cole and Luke ride off together, pursued by Lee (Fargo
gas been shot) with some henchmen. The bad guys get the drop on Cole and Luke -
but Ruby rides to the rescue…
Luke offers Cole a job, planning a north-south
stage route. We’ll see if that pans out but he doesn’t seem a very steady
fellow. I’m not sure he’ll stick at it.
_____________________________________________
Episode 29,
The Big Gun, stars Cesar Romero, back
from Episode 6, now as Francisco, a Mexican colonel fighting for Juarez who
comes to the US to capture a Gatling gun which Luke is transporting on the
stage to Fort Benson. Montana seems rather far to go from Mexico but whatever.
Being Cesar he is dashing and handsome, etc. and rather sympathetic, as
Juarista colonels go. He has with him, however, a very nasty piece of work,
ex-soldier DeForest Kelley, bitter and twisted at having been passed over for
promotion all his military career and not understanding that his being a
psychopathic killer might have had something to do with that. There are also
three thugs in the gang (Jonathan Bolt, Bing Russell and Hal Baylor) as well as
two Mexican girls, the feisty Chiquita (our pal Barbara Luna) and Rosa (Gale
Garnett). These malefactors duly hijack the stage (Luke and Sime must be
getting used to this by now) and propose that Luke drives it to Mexico. I’m not
sure that plausibility is this episode’s strong suit.
DeForest enjoys mowing people down
Nor is chronology. We know the series is set
at least ten years after the Civil War, 1870s for sure, but Maximilian was deposed
and killed in 1867, so why is Col. Cesar trying to defeat him now? Oh well.
Luke is very resourceful, sabotaging the
kingpin so that the stage can’t go to Mexico, and there is a guns-a-blazin’ finale
(well, they had to get that Gatling working or it would have been a bit of an
anti-climax).
_____________________________________________
Episode 30,
The Dead Don’t Cry, was also
unaccountably missed out by the Talking Pictures TV channel but I caught it on
YouTube. Luke (it’s a Luke-only episode) goes down to Tucson, AZT to buy a new
stagecoach. He finds that his brother Sam Perry (Todd Lasswell) is on the run
for robbery and murder, though in fact he is proved to be innocent – the dumb
marshal (King Calder) jumped to conclusions. But now evil bounty hunter Pardee
(James Best again) is tracking Sam down, for the $2500 reward.
Luke finds Pardee but the bounty hunter won’t
believe even a letter from the marshal declaring Sam’s innocence. He is too
greedy for that reward. Luke overpowers him and together they ride to the town
of Vega to get proof of Sam’s innocence. On the way, though, Apaches attack…
The pair eventually get to Vega but there the
sheriff (our old pal Harry Lauter again) is corrupt, and a friend of Pardee’s.
He agrees to lock Luke up. It will require a daring escape and breakneck ride
to catch up with the bounty hunter and save his brother…
Mary Tyler Moore (sans Dick) appears briefly when Luke
interrupts his quest to do more prairie surgery. He never tells anyone that he
is a deputy US marshal. I wonder why not?
_____________________________________________
Episode 31,
The Raider, is a very Tom Hornish
story. It opens with Henry Silva brutally slaying a homesteader (William
Phipps) and taking a calf. The sodbuster’s partner Gil Soames (Jimmy Lydon)
buries the deceased and sets off in a new store-bought suit to Zeke’s Halfway
House where he has agreed to meet a mail-order bride, Miss Emily Prince (Jan
Shepherd) from back East. This happened in Episode 22, too, didn’t it?
Silva is…
...Tom Horn (kinda)
Silva arrives there before Soames or the
stage, and Zeke doesn’t cotton to him at all. He’s seen him before somewhere
(Zeke’s been about a bit) but can’t recall where. Turns out Silva was a top
scout, “the best scout outside o’ Al Sieber” but has now come north to Wyoming
as a “stock detective”, i.e. a gun hired by the big cattlemen to kill
homesteaders. He does this at long range, with a rifle. See? It’s a very Tom
Horn-like situation, even if Silva’s character is ‘Mel Harney’. That sodbuster
in the opening scene, the one Silva killed in a studio, wrote the word HARNEY
in the dust of the studio floor before expiring.
The stage turns up (late as usual), with Sime
driving and Davey (but no Hannibal or Luke) and with Miss Prince aboard. Gil
Soames is coming next day with a buckboard. But Harney is there to kill Soames.
That calf he took he has brought with him. He will plant it on Soames’s body as
(false) proof that Soames was a rustler.
Only a couple of weeks ago we were in 1867,
when the Emperor Maximilian was deposed. Now we’re in the 1890s Johnson County
War territory. It’s rather odd chronology. Never mind.
There’s a gripping climax/shoot-out (we’ve
come to expect that) and this time Davey convinces his pa to let him ride
along, and very useful he is too, with a Winchester. I reckon Richard Eyer told
the producers he was fed up with being a small kid and why couldn’t he tote a
gun and help his dad every now and then? If so, well done.
_____________________________________________
Episode 32
had the title Blind Man’s Bluff. Now,
a question, dear Western-lover. How many blind gunfighters can you think of?
Well, there was Minnesota Clay in
1965. There was Patrick Wayne in An Eye for an Eye the year after that. But first there was James Drury in this episode
of Stagecoach West. There may have
been others but I can’t think of any right now. It’s an odd idea, isn’t it, but
evidently quite popular. Drury is the unseeing Stace, following his singer ex
- wife or lover, not quite sure - (Ruta Lee) who has run off with a piano player (Whit Bissell again, this time
with a phony Irish accent – or was it supposed to be Scottish?) Naturally the
musical couple roll up in Outpost, and there too Stace arrives, with his dog,
to wreak vengeance.
Drury is a blind gunfighter
Davey takes a shine to the blind man (though
Hannibal doesn’t to his mutt). The lad has been seen reading Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s Essays on the stage though
really he had a dime-novel inside. But Davey’s dad warns him against the blind
man; he’s clearly a dangerous killer. In fact, though, in the last few scenes,
it will not be the unseeing gunman who endangers Davey but… yet, nay, I shall
not reveal.
There’s a running gag about two arm-wrestlers
(Robert Anderson and Charles Horvath again) and the British-Chinese waiter in
the saloon, Sing (Lloyd Kino) which gives a bit of comic relief. There’s an
incompetent detective (Dabbs Greer) who isn’t, and an incompetent hotel clerk
(Dave Willock) who is. So this episode goes for quite a light-hearted vibe.
Apart from the lethal blind man. And there’s rather a sad ending too, though
not for Luke, who is left holding a bundle of cash.
_____________________________________________
Episode 33,
The Bold Whip, is quite
‘old-fashioned’ in a way. It’s the classic bad-guy-selling-guns-to-the-Indians
plot. The villain in question is a man in a suit calling himself Stokes but
Luke reckons he’s seen him before. He finally remembers: this man is Rupe
Larned and he killed a stage-driving pal of Luke’s back in Kansas. He is played
by John Kellogg, a regular heavy on Western TV shows, back from Episode 3.
This episode has everyone in. Cal, Zeke, Luke,
Sime and Davey. No Hannibal, though. We haven’t seen him for some time. I hope
he’s OK.
They are pioneering a new stage route, from
Outpost to (fictional) Fort Tremaine, via the Halfway House. They have a hefty
Army payroll on board for the fort. And crooked Larned is a passenger… Also
aboard is an Army wife, Mrs. Marston (Carolyn Kearney) going to the fort to join
her Lt. hubby. And they also have important cargo: a new rifle for Davey. What
with the pistol they gave him in Ep. 11, the boy is armed to the teeth.
On the way they meet a young Sioux lad, Little
Fox (Eugene Martin) who tells them that renegade Cheyennes are on the warpath,
and indeed, the Cheyennes do attack, in that old-fashioned Western way in which
they gallop endlessly past the door and windows of the building the whites are
holed up in, allowing the occupants to take pot-shots at the Indians, who fall
off their horses. The thing is, these Cheyennes have late-model Winchesters.
Where did they get them?
From Larned, of course, and as you know, in
Westerns selling guns to the Indians is a crime far worse than selling your
mother into slavery. Infinitely worse.
Well, Luke and Sime are crack shots. I was
disappointed that Davey didn’t get to use his new rifle alongside them. The
defenders run dangerously low on bullets. There’s a dark moment when Sime gives
Mrs. Marston a revolver, saying, “There are two bullets in it. You know what to
do” and Davey and she look a bit queasy. But to complete the old-fashionedness,
the US Cavalry arrives at the last minute. This whole plot has been done a
million times (starting with The Battle of Elderbush Gulch in 1913). It still works, though.
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Episode 34,
The Orphans, is a sheep story. Raoul
De Leon plays Manolo, a Basque sheep herder happily driving his flock up to
high country open-graze accompanied only by his sheepdog. The sheepman is
brutally and callously murdered by Hogan (John Milford), a gunman hired by big
cattleman Kincaid (never seen). The shepherd’s poor dog pines over the corpse.
The next day, Manolo’s two teenage children arrive at Timberline on the
stage. They are Jaime and Angela. Davey
immediately goes all moon-eyed again over Angela (Linda Dangcil, 19) but with
some bizarre casting Robert Cabal was chosen as Jaime, and Cabal was in his
mid-40s and looked it, so that when Luke and Sime refer to “the kid” it is
definitely weird.
Anyway, the partners decide to help out and
become sheep herders. Davey has to drive the stage back to Zeke’s with Angela,
and a very good job he does of it too. There’s actually quite a clever moment
when the usual stirring ‘rolling along’ stagecoach music becomes rather halting
as Davey is driving. But Hogan and his two henchmen (Joseph V Perry and Alan
Wells) pursue the sheep and their minders, and attack. Little do they know that
both Luke and Sime were top-class soldiers in the recent Unpleasantness and so
the bad guys are completely outclassed by superior tactics. Hogan is captured
and tied up while the other two manage to – yet nay, my lips are sealed.
Zeke is left with the sheep.
I thought this episode was rather good.
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Episode 35
(getting near the end now), The Guardian
Angels, has the bad-man-redeemed plot. On the stage this time, with Luke
and Davey, are three bad men: a con-man/preacher who makes money from the gullible
faithful, a card-sharp gambler run out of town and a snobbish dude from the
East who thinks himself superior to everyone. These are played by Malcolm
Atterbury, Steve Brodie (back from Ep. 8) and Max Showalter, respectively.
Riding shotgun for Luke is also the former and disgraced marshal of Timberline,
a coward and a drunk (Walter Kinsella).
They get to Halfway House but Zeke isn’t
there. He has put his back out and the place is being temporarily managed by a
certain Jason (Robert Foulk), who is disagreeable and lazy. Really, Luke and
Davey are the only good guys around.
There is a band of robbers and killers,
renegade Indians led by ‘Captain’ Avery (our old pal Harry Lauter, back from
Episode 11). They know Luke has a large amount of cash aboard, and they want
it. There is another siege. Curiously, for such a main threat, Avery hardly
appears in the show; it’s the ‘bad’ men inside on whom we focus. They turn out
to be better than first thought. So brave are they, in fact, that… but I cannot
give the game away. After all, you may watch it.
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Episode 36,
The Swindler, the antepenultimate, features
Dennis Patrick, the frock-coated teacher from Episode 13, as Collier, a
charming-rogue conman who falls into the hands of a whole gang of conpersons
(Jean Willes, Adam Williams, Chris Alcaide and regular on this show Charles
Horvath). They decide to take the whole of Outpost to the cleaners with a scam
about a (fake) goldmine, and the gullible townspeople (except Sime and Luke)
are eager for profit. The script has something to say about credulity and how
greed can overcome common sense.
The thing is, Sime, Luke and Davey (still no
sign of Hannibal; I’m getting quite worried now) can’t help liking Collier,
even while at the same time not trusting him an inch.
The gang will fall out and start doing each
other in and all will come right in the end.
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Episode 37,
the last-but-one, The Renegades, has
Richard Devon back yet again (he had already been in Episodes 5, 20 and 23) and
Warren Oates (from Episodes 13 and 26) as renegade soldiers, rivals as to which
can be the nastier. They break out of the guardhouse of a fort just before
facing a firing squad, murdering guards as they do. With them is a dumb but
obedient ox (Hal Baylor again) and two reluctant escapees (Ed Kemmer and Paul
Carr, again). They all fetch up at the Halfway House where Devon cold-bloodedly shoots
Zeke (oh no!) and forces Luke and Sime (no Davey around) to take them to Canada
in the stage.
The Army is after the renegades, of course,
and in command is Major Tristram Coffin (what a great name). Luke and Sime know
that even if they get to Canada the ex-soldiers will do them in. Can they slow
things down to allow the Army to catch up? Or can they sow dissension in the
ranks of the bad guys and get them at each other’s throats? It’s all pretty
tense stuff.
Zeke’s been besieged, had pneumonia, put his
back out, had various assistants murdered, and now this. It was evidently a
tough life for managers of stage relay stations.
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Episode 38:
I am grateful to Talking Pictures TV for showing this series but they were a
bit naughty in skipping Episodes 15 and 30, and especially wicked for not
showing the very last episode of all. Tut tut. Luckily, The Marker was available on YouTube. In it, Luke finally finds
lerve.
Apparently he had fallen for a certain Jenny,
a saloon gal, down in Colorado. Jenny (played by Ruta Lee, the singer who ran
off with Whit Bissell in Ep. 32) had a brutal boss, Mingo (Mort Mills, again).
Jenny stowed away on Luke’s stage and thus escaped. Luke was rather pleased
about it. But now Mingo has come up to Wyoming, with a couple of henchmen
(Berkeley Harris and Anon). Mingo has a grave marker made and delivered to
Luke. It says, ‘Luke Perry. Died June 18’. Luke gets it early on 18th.
Luke gets Jenny a job as cook at the Halfway
House, so everyone is pleased about that (you know what Zeke’s cooking is like).
But under cover of a violent storm, Mingo and his gunmen draw near…
Davey isn’t in this story either, so he did
not appear in the last episodes. Maybe he was in school. More worryingly,
Hannibal isn’t either. In fact the mutt hasn’t been seen since Episode 32. Do
you think he died? Again. They shouldn’t write key characters out like that
without any explanation.
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Well, there we are. A cracking good series, I
reckon, with some great Western character actors, some clever stories from good
writers (as well as a few old-chestnut plots) and quality directing.
Recommended.
I don't know why it wasn't renewed after the first season. It may simply be that the market for these shows was declining. Even NBC's Walter Mirisch-produced series Wichita Town with Joel McCrea, which ran concurrently with Stagecoach West and which promised to be a sure-fire hit, wasn't renewed.
Anyway, enjoy what there is!
