Western

This is the second half of the third season of Rawhide. Among the better episodes found in this collection are: Incident On The Road Back. Favor is accused of horse rustling. That means hangin’ in those days. In Incident Of The Boomerang, some cattle are off to the Land Down Under, but one of the men may not be who he says he is. Rowdy is arrested for murder… again. This time he’s accused of killing a deputy who was on his way to warn of an attack in Incident Of The Running Man. A practical joke turns bad in Incident Of The Wager On Payday, which rounds out the collection.

This is the first half of the third season of Rawhide. Long before Clint Eastwood was making our day as Dirty Harry or even roaming the badlands without a name for Sergio Leone, he was working the cattle drive on Rawhide. Rawhide was created to take advantage of the huge Western film and television wave that Hollywood had been riding for nearly a decade. With huge ratings for Gunsmoke and Bonanza among others, Rawhide was a bit of an unlikely success. Here the show explored the West on an endless cattle drive to get a few thousand steer to market. Along the way the crew would find themselves involved in someone else’s troubles or meet trouble head on themselves. The cattle drive theme would rely on the changing landscape to distinguish the show from other more sedentary westerns. More like Wagon Train, the constant movement always gave a sense of action even when there wasn’t much. Of course, there was a large number of changing support players along on the drive. Every operation needs cooks, ropers, and red shirts.

The set comprises the second half of the second season of Gunsmoke. The show was still in black and white and in the half hour format. Some of the best episodes of the set included Bloody Hands. For once a western dealt with conscience. When Dillon begins to have haunting dreams and pangs of guilt over killing three bad guys, he tries to back down from a fight. Has Dillon gone yellow? Arness does a better than average job on this rather thought provoking episode. When a man comes from Washington to question Dillon’s methods, he finds out who his friends really are in The Bureaucrat. A man turns up dead in Chester’s Murder just after a fight with Chester so bad Dillon had to break it up. Now Dillon’s got to prove Chester wasn’t the killer, but he’s the worst witness against him. Modern technology reaches Dodge City in The Photographer. Many residents get their first introductions to a camera. But is the stranger with the fancy new camera a killer? Ever notice how a story gets out of hand with each telling? In What The Whiskey Drummer Saw, a story gets out of hand when Dillon’s told he’s about to die. In The Man Who Would Be Marshall, an Army officer wants Dillon’s job; that is, until he finds out just what that job really entails. All in all, this is a solid collection of episodes and certainly won’t be a disappointment to fans who haven’t seen them in decades.

Gunsmoke is the longest running scripted live action television show in history. The series ran from 1955 to 1975. At first it was a half hour black and white show that evolved into a color hour by 1967. It actually started before the days of television, premiering on radio in 1952. Then it was William Conrad as the tough as nails Marshall Matt Dillon. When television came into its own, Gunsmoke made the jump to the bright living room box and made history. Westerns would ride across our small square screens for the next 3 decades, making it the most successful genre of that time, and it was Gunsmoke that started it all. The television version of Gunsmoke was originally conceived as a vehicle for John Wayne, who opted to remain in movies. Yet, it was Wayne himself who suggested James Arness, and it turned out to be a career for the once “carrot” monster from The Thing. Gunsmoke started before all of the big westerns and was around when most of them had departed.

Long before Clint Eastwood was making our day as Dirty Harry or even roaming the badlands without a name for Sergio Leone, he was working the cattle drive on Rawhide. Rawhide was created to take advantage of the huge Western film and television wave that Hollywood had been riding for nearly a decade. With huge ratings for Gunsmoke and Bonanza among others, Rawhide was a bit of an unlikely success. Here the show explored the West on an endless cattle drive to get a few thousand steer to market. Along the way the crew would find themselves involved in someone else’s troubles or meet trouble head on themselves. The cattle drive theme would rely on the changing landscape to distinguish the show from other more sedentary westerns. More like Wagon Train, the constant movement always gave a sense of action even when there wasn’t much.