TV WESTERNS—SUGARFOOT

TV WESTERNS

SUGARFOOT

The terrific Television's New Frontier: The 1960s blog has numerous detailed and informative posts on many of our favorite westerns. Below is the opening paragraph of their post on Bronco. For the full post click on the link at the end...

 

Though it had hit the top 30 in the Nielsen ratings in its first two seasons, reaching #24 in its 1957-58 debut and inching up to #21 the next season, Sugarfoot was the first of the three rotating Warner Brothers westerns to be canceled, with only 5 episodes airing in 1961, the last on April 17. Even though Bronco (hatched a year after Sugarfoot to combat Clint Walker of Cheyenne in his dispute with the studio's skin-flint practices) never reached the top 30, it was kept around until 1962, the same year that Cheyenne bit the dust. But Warners didn't entirely abandon westerns that year because they also launched a new series, The Dakotas, in the fall of 1962, though it lasted only a single season. So it's unclear exactly why Sugarfoot got the axe when it did.

 

Without evidence to the contrary, it appears that the decision to cancel the series may have been an impulsive one. Warner Brothers was still employing their crossover scheme of having Bronco's Ty Hardin guest star on Sugarfoot in the third-from-last episode "Angel" on March 6, 1961. The following week Will Hutchins' Tom Brewster character was featured in the Bronco episode "Yankee Tornado." The crossover scheme was intended to lure fans of one series to watch the other series, so if Sugarfoot were on the way out, it makes little sense to have Hutchins appear on Bronco a month before his show was to be canceled. Secondly, the introduction of sidekick wannabe Toothy Thompson in the January 16, 1961 episode of the same name hardly seems like a move for a dying series.

 

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WARNER WESTERNS—SUGARFOOT

WARNER WESTERNS

SUGARFOOT

Another TV western from the Warner Bros. stables, Sugarfoot starred Will Hutchins as easterner gone west Tom Brewster, nicknamed Sugarfoot for his apparent total lack of cowboy skills—Sugarfoot being a designation even below that of a tenderfoot.

 

Writer/producer Hugh Benson created the character of Sugarfoot as a gentle itinerant cowpuncher who was also a law school correspondence student determined to become an attorney someday. Some of his adventures had a comedic flair while others were deadly serious.

 

Like many of his contemporaries, Sugarfoot had a run of Dell comics and a series of U.K. Annuals, which ran under the title, Tenderfoot, which was what  the program was called in Britain.

 

TV WESTERNS—BRONCO

TV WESTERNS

BRONCO

The terrific Television's New Frontier: The 1960s blog has numerous detailed and informative posts on many of our favorite westerns. Below is the opening paragraph of their post on Bronco. For the full post click on the link at the end...

 

As Bronco moved through the second half of Season 3 and the beginning of Season 4 in 1961, nothing really changed from the previous year--former Confederate soldier Bronco Layne continued to drift about the west, former Confederate soldier Bronco Layne continued to drift about the west, often called by an old friend to help deal with a difficult situation, assigned by a territorial government to escort a detainee to prison, or summoned to help bring in a fugitive who happens to be an old army commander of his. Sometimes we find him already working as a buffalo hunter, as the sheriff of Silver City, or as a deputy. And then occasionally he just wanders into trouble, as in Stage to the Sky when he rides up just in time to stop a lynching but then becomes the target of various attempted assaults for defending the intended lynching victim. One thing remains constant, however—Bronco will never have the same job from week to week or settle down anywhere for any length of time, though he contemplates marriage and a ranching life in One Came Back only to have his bride-to-be take a bullet to save him from her criminal former boyfriend, a fate as predictable as all the other plots in the typical Warner Brothers recycling factory.

 

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WARNER WESTERNS—LAWMAN DELL COMICS

WARNER WESTERNS

LAWMAN DELL COMICS

Lawman starring John Russell as Sheriff Dan Troop and Peter Brown as his deputy was another of the classic Warner Westerns that aired on ABC in beginning in the late ’50. Dell Comics published their first four color TV tie-in comic for Lawman, an adaptation of the first TV episode The Deputy, shortly after the show premiered. It wasn’t until Lawman proved popular enough to be renewed for a second that Dell published a second tie-in issue. 

 

A total of nine Lawman tie-in comics were eventually published, however, only the first issue was adapted from a series episode. The remainder of the stories were written by regular Dell scripters Robert Ryder, Paul S. Newman, Eric Freiwald, and Robert Schaefer. 

 

Issued quarterly until the show was cancelled, each issue featured two Lawman tales all illustrated by Dan Spiegle, whose work provided satisfactory likenesses of Russell and Brown. Most issues also contained had short four page generic filler stories by various artists. It was noted on the Western Clipping website that the likeness of actress Peggie Castle, who appeared as the character of saloon madame Lilly Merrill on the TV series, never appeared in the comics—perhaps Dell’s clean-cut reputation being the reason she was kept of screen. 

 

WARNER WESTERNS—THE DAKOTAS U.K. ANNUAL

 

WARNER WESTERNS

THE DAKOTAS U.K. ANNUAL

The Dakotas was a twenty episode western TV series produced by Warner Bros. in 1963 for ABC Set in the Dakota Territory, episodes revolved around the efforts of Federal Marshal Frank Regan and his deputies to maintain law and order in the vast area. Larry Ward starred as Federal Marshal Frank Ragan, with Jack Elam as Deputy JD Smith, Chad Everett as Deputy Del Stark, and Mike Greene as Deputy Vance Porter.

 

The Dakotas was exactly comfort television. What set the show apart from the glut of other westerns on TV at the time was its edgy, dark tone and its willingness to be morally ambiguous. This was also what cut the run of the show short. In the episode Sanctuary at Crystal Springs, two of the deputies, JD and Del, gundown two murderous outlaws inside a church. Outraged viewers besieged the network with complaints and The Dakotas was abruptly cancelled.

 

Surprisingly, even though it had a relatively short TV lifespan, there were no Dell tie-in comics for the show. Dell made an effort to publish comics for even minor TV Western series as soon as they began to air, but somehow The Dakotas missed being called up. The only printed tie-in to the show was the single U.K. annual pictured above.

WARNER WESTERNS—CHEYENNE ANNUALS

WARNER WESTERN

CHEYENNE ANNUALS

The comics also appeared in the United Kingdom in the traditional form of their yearly hardcover annuals. Cheyenne Annuals chronicled the adventures of Cheyenne Bodie in reprints of the American Dell comics, text stories, games, and supplemental content from the comics not featuring the Cheyenne character. There were eight Cheyenne Annuals published between 1958 and 1965 as well as several other similar publications.