The West Old & New Vol. III Issue IV April 2014 | Page 3

The April edition of The West Old & New is all about the iconic western serial television shows between the 1950s into the
1970s.
The Lone Ranger ran on ABC in the early 1950s and was the highest-rated television program and its first true hit series.
The first 78 episodes were produced and broadcast for consecutive weeks without any breaks or reruns. These episodes were
shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California. Clayton Moore played the Lone Ranger and Jay Silver heels a Mohawk First Nations actor played Tonto.
Gunsmoke, a tale about the fictional U.S. Marshal of Dodge city, Kansas, Matt Dillon was a radio show ran for nine years on
CBS radio and twenty years as a CBS television show. Matt Dillon was played by James Arness in the television series from 1955
to 1975 and in the subsequent movies between 1984 and 1994. In both the radio and television series Matt Dillons exact relationship with Kitty Russell was deliberately left vague. Kitty was portrayed by Georgia Ellis in the radio version and by Amanda
Blake in the television series. Kitty was the saloon hostess but it is alleged that in the radio episodes she was characterized as a
prostitute. In the original radio series auditions the character was named Mark Dillon.
Wagon Train ran as a television series from 1959 until 1965 first on NBC and then on ABC. The show debuted at #15 in the
Nielsen ratings and rose to #2 in the next three seasons, peaking at #1 during the 1961-62 season. The show chronicled a wagon
train making its way from Missouri to California. The show like many of this genre were set a few years after the American Civil
War.
Rawhide premiered in January of 1959 and aired for eight seasons on CBS until 1965. It is the fifth-longest-running American
television western with a story line set in the 1860s around wranglers moving cattle to market from Texas along the Sedalia Trail.
The series addressed some tough issues including morphine addiction, racism, anger over the Civil War, torture, plague, cattle rustlers and Commancheros.
Bonanza the story of the Cartwright family on the Ponderosa began on NBC in September 1959 and aired until January 1973.
It is the second longest running western series behind Gunsmoke and one of the top ten longest running, live action series in
America. Ben Cartwright, the thrice-widowed patriarch lives with his sons on a ranch in Virginia City, Nevada, which borders
Lake Tahoe. Bonanza was considered an atypical western for its time because the storyline dealt less with the landscape of the
west and more with Ben and his dissimilar sons. Chinese American actor Victor Sen Yung played their cook, he appeared in an
average of eight to nine shows per season but unlike the major cast members was paid per episode. While researching this series I
learned some interesting things including the fact that Hoss was the first major character written out of a show after his untimely
death.
The Virginian, known in its final year as The Men from Shiloh, starred James Drury and Doug McClure and aired on NBC
from 1961 until 1972. It was a spin-off from a 1958 summer series called Decision. Set in the late nineteenth century it was
loosely based on the 1902 novel by Owen Wister, that centered around a tough foreman of the Shiloh Ranch. It is the third longest
running western behind Bonanza and Gunsmoke. With a name change in season 9 and a new theme song composed by Ennio
Moricone, the show began reflect a style similar to spaghetti westerns, which were popular at the time.
The new aspects of the West in this issue give a detailed view of a small town mural which reflects the efforts of many different painter’s hand, and documenting many different characters and times in one large graphic.
Also in this issue is information on the Lewis & Clark Caverns located in Whitehall, Montana and the Granite County Museum and Cultural Center in Philipsburg.

The West Old & New Page 3