Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia

I am pretty sure that the first TV Western I ever saw……my granny’s house in around 1958 was “Boots And Saddles”, a little remembered show about the Fifth Cavalry fighting Apaches in Arizona.

Of course in 1959, when we got our own TV we had just two channels….BBC and ITV and for the best part of a decade TV westerns were a staple. With output of three American channels, it meant that some westerns never crossed the Atlantic. But generally speaking we had the  opportunity of seeing a lot of westerns. But with few repeats and no VCRs it meant that we really only had one opportunity. Until…….recently. TCM Channel has shown “Rawhide” and “Maverick” and is currently showing “Gunsmoke” and “The High Chaparel” on a daily basis.

Around the age of eleven (say 1963), I borrowed a very large book on the History of the Wild West. Real photographs, the real story of Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Belle Star and Calamity Jane were so much different from the legends and myths on movies and TV. And…….worse these people looked……dirty, unkempt, hirsute. They stood or sat for photographs in that old fashioned way and carried their guns……a motley collection of guns……or just shoved them into their clothes. No fancy gun belts.

In truth the Movie Western (take a bow John Ford) of the 1940s and 1950s and the TV Western of the 1950s and 1960s are morality plays merely using Kansas, Wyoming and Arizona of the 1870s as a kinda back drop to hang modern morality tales.

The hairstyles, clothing, western towns, the horses……..have more to do with Holywood than Dodge City. Ive rarely sat on a horse that did not decide to…….at best……urinate. And yet those western towns are spotlessly clean and did dirctors order a re-take if a horse ruined a scene by doing what comes naturally to horses? And all those cavalry scouts who tracked war parties of Cheyenne, Sioux and Commanche they looked for hoof prints in the desert………but actually five hundred horses leave a very organic trail that is never seen in a western.

Essentially the TV Western re-cycles a familiar set of story lines and characters……..former gunslinger turned sheriff……cattle baron versus small farmer…..the drifter……..a motley assortment of stage coach passengers holed up in a small ranch.

I still remember an  exciting episode of “Cheyenne” (and saw it recently on You Tube) where a group of people were holed up in a mountain pass and it looked familiar. I had just watched a movie on TV called “Rocky Mountain” a few weeks previously. The actual footage from the movie (1952ish) was used in the TV show (1957ish) and according to wikipedia Warner Brothers Television regularly re-cycled footage and scripts from their movies of a decade earlier. Actually I have just realised that TCM are showing “Rocky Mountain” tonight.

But each studio seemed to have a show based on a theme……”Tales of Wells Fargo”, “The Overlanders” and “Laramie” had stage coaches as the theme. “Wagon Train” and “The Travels of Jamie McPheeters”, “The Oregon Trail”  were set on the wagon trains west. “Bonanza”, “The High Chaparell” and “The Virginian” were set on ranches.

Indeed even in the mid 1960s , I must have been an apprentice socialist because I found Ben Cartwright, Big John Cannon and Judge Garth patronising…………rich men with a social conscience about their neighbours and ethnically different fellow Americans. And again……this was about USA in the 1960s……..more liberalism appeared towards the end of the 1960s. Always struck me that these self-made men might seem even more impressively liberal if they turned over some Ponderosa, Nevada land to the miners….or High Chaparell land to Arizona’s Apaches……..or Shiloh land to Wyoming’s farmers.

Black people rarely appear in TV Westerns except as a plot device. Yet quite a high percentage of “cowboys” were black and many emancipated slaves moved west after the American Civil War. Yet no western acknowledges it except of course in “Blazing Saddles”…a parody.

Nor indeed do the Irish do well out of “westerns”. Some feisty red-headed Maureen O’Hara clones show up in all westerns. And there is the occasional “no Irish here” theme and Sean McClory, seemingly the only Irishman in Hollywood in the 1960s casually over-acts his way thru most westerns…….usually as a charming fraudster. Even in “Alias Smith and Jones” a feisty red-headed reacts badly when Kid Curry tells her his folks came from “Londonderry”. “They must have been Orange” she tells him and that really is more about 1972 than 1872.

Of course after the American “civil rights” war had been won in the late 1960s, Hollywood felt emboldened. Take the fact that the “High Chapparel” had at least two episodes where “Buffalo Soldiers” were central to the plot. Even Uncle Buck seems happy to see them……and yet his back-story is that he proudly rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Civil War.

And take Hop Sing…..the Chinese cook on the Ponderosa. An entire episode is devoted to a family member framed for murder by a local anti-Chinese bigot. For the only time in the long running series “Bonanza”, Chinese people are seen on the streets of Virginia City. After that episode they are never seen again.

And what about “the Weary Willies” an episode towards the end of Bonanza’s run (1970 per IMDb) and guest starring Richard Thomas, a year before he went on to star in “The Waltons”. A large group of “civil war” veterans and their families from both Union and Confederate armies, set up camp on the “Ponderosa” land and are vilified as petty thieves and worse by the respectable citizenry of Virginia City. Of course this episode is NOT about the aftermath of the American Civil War at all. It is actually about Vietnam veterans.

Of course some western series were played for laughs………”Maverick” for example. And somehow all series had lighter and darker episodes…and curiously they sit side by side. “Gunsmoke” (“Gun Law” in USA) for example is a series with which I am not very familiar. It was shown on ITV here…..and in pre-VCR days my family was watching BBC that night.

And it was the Daddy of Them All……running yearly for over twenty years and making stars out of James Arness, Burt Reynolds and Dennis Weaver. So I watch it every lunchtime and I never quite know if I am getting a light or dark episode.

As a rule of thumb…….when Marshall Dillon (James Arness) is central to the story…it is a serious story. But when Festus Haggan (Ken Curtis) his hillbilly deputy who rides a mule..is central to the story …then it is a comedy story. For Festus and his mule and hillbilly ways is a comedy sidekick……Ken Curtis plays him as Gabby Hayes played characters in 1940s movies.

So take today’s episode of “Gunsmoke”. It is called “MayBlossoms” and was made in 1964.

Festus plays a game of poker and wins a new fangled joinery tool…….a spirit level and immediately discovers every floor and wall in Dodge City is not straight. And his hillbilly cousin……rides into Dodge (on a mule of course) and she has come to marry the much older Festus because she was betrothed to him at her birth. Festus is of course set in his ways……..so the set up is comic……albeit a clichéd and stereotypical representation of the hillbilly. For example, Mayblossoms is asked to leave the town’s boarding house as she wants to share her room with the mule. As Festus says “these city folk have mighty peculiar ways”. So Festus buys a little run down shack for Mayblossoms.

It is a strange episode. It is as if The Man With No Name wandered into Petticoat Junction. But then something which should be VERY dark happens. The gambler who has lost that spirit level to Festus pays Mayblossoms a visit. And we dont see what happened. It is after all ….1964.

But when festus returns to the shack….mayblossoms tells him “I guess I aint fit for marrying nobody now”. In other words…..she has just been raped. While Marshall dillon and the Doc are kindly, there is no serious thought that this is actually a very serious crime. In fact…..the tone is that this is……well……unfortunate.

But there is twist. Festus walks up to the bad guy and shoots him dead. And he is relunctantly arrested but as Matt Dillon says no jury will convict. Meanwhile another hillbilly cousin tracks down Mayblossoms and takes her back home to marry. Nobody mentions the rape. And everybody lives happily ever after…….including Festus in his prison cell………noting that everything in this world is at the wrong angle, including the bars in his cell.

Truly an odd experience…….to watch a comedic episode of “Gun Smoke” and be ambushed by a story of the very darkest kind. I still cant work out if it was grossinsensitivity in 1964 or if there was a subtle shock tactic embedded in the plot. I wish I thought the latter.