Tag: tv westerns

Memory Lane, ‘Sky King’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Remember this? Sky King–the only TV Western hero who flew his own airplane, which he called, affectionately, Songbird.

Sky King started as a radio show in 1946 and ran on television from 1951 through 1962–quite long-lived for a TV series. It starred Kirby Grant as Sky King, who always caught the bad guys but never killed them, and Gloria Winters as his niece and co-pilot, Penny. I had kind of a crush on her when I was 11. I wonder if my other girlfriends at the time, Jean Simmons and Lee Remick, ever got jealous.

Anyway, this little clip ought to bring back pleasant memories. It was such a can’t-miss idea–a Western with an airplane–you wonder why it took so long to think of it.

‘Incident of the Druid Curse’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

How cool were 1950s TV Westerns? “Incident of the Druid Curse” was an episode from Season #2 of Rawhide, vintage 1960. You’re driving cattle from Texas to the market in Sedalia, Kansas, and you run into… an archeologist and his daughter (Byron Foulger and Luana Patten) searching for evidence that Druids were here, 2,000 years ago.

Just another ol’ day in the Old West, right? Try to work around the fact that the daughter 100% believes in all this Druid stuff, but it’s too late to send her back home to Boston. And throw in a little gang of bad eggs, led by Claude Akins, who are too ignorant to recognize metaphor and hyperbole when they hear it, and decide to kidnap the archeologists and force them to reveal the location of this fabulous ancient treasure that does not, in fact, exist.

Thanks to youtube, my wife and I watched this episode a few nights ago and greatly enjoyed it. At one point, even though I knew what I was going to see, I still got a bumper crop of genuine gooseflesh when I saw it. No, I’m not going to tell you what it was: that would spoil it. Suffice it to say that this is a very eerie story, brilliantly written, brilliantly performed, and most definitely not what you’d expect. I’m amazed by the skills of TV screenwriters of that era, how much action, dialogue, and insight they could pack into just 50 minutes of air time–without ever seeming to be rushing things, or jamming too much into it, or leaving out information that they ought to include.

Rawhide–best remembered now for giving Clint Eastwood his big break in acting, and Frankie Laine’s rendition of the theme song–was just another one of dozens of great TV programs from that period. Come to think of it, it also gave actor Sheb Wooley, one of the cowhands on the show, the opportunity to score with a hit record, The Flying Purple People Eater (“It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater…”)

[ Here is the Miller Company’s classic rendition of Sheb Wooley’s Flying Purple People Eater. Are any of you old enough to remember these great toys?]

There’s always the chance that when you look back on things you used to enjoy, long ago in life, you’re looking through rose-colored glasses and remembering things as a lot better than they really were.

Thanks to youtube, I’ve been able to confirm that those old shows that I thought were so great… really were so great!

The New, Improved, Politically Correct ‘Wagon Train’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Our secret agent in Hollywood reports that Schlockmeister Studios is going to remake the classic late-1950s TV Western series, Wagon Train.

“But of course,” says studio honcho J.T. Fidget, “we’re going to update Wagon Train to bring it fully into line with today’s highly-evolved, modern sensibilities.”

So instead of Major Adams leading the wagon train, we’ll have Sister Twonda, a street-smart African-American nun, and her wife, Spike, 450 pounds of towering female fury. Instead of Flint McCullough as the scout, we’ll have a “gay” character named Zooey (“Oh, the Native American braves are just so fabulously brave!”), and Charlie the Cook will be replaced by Imam Khalil, who will make sure everybody on the wagon train eats a proper Muslim diet, or else.

Out of respect for animal rights, the wagons won’t be drawn by horses, mules, or oxen anymore, but only by heterosexual white men. To Save the Planet, the train won’t actually go anywhere. It’ll just go around and around in a circle. The passengers will all be undocumented Mexican immigrants living on checks from the government. And each episode will begin and end with a sermon against the evils of heteronormativity. [Gee, look at that–my computer’s spell-check doesn’t recognize any such word as “heteronormativity.” Obviously it has never been to collidge.]

“A lot of those old classic shows were very good,” says Fidget, “as opposed to most of the shows we produce today, which are crap. All those old shows need, to be popular again today, is drastic modification which will make them grotesque parodies of themselves. And that should be easy!”