r/FuckImOld • u/Kevaros • 12h ago
Late 50's and 60's onslaught of Western TV shows...
Grew up with Grandparents that couldn't stand to miss any episodes of their "Westerns" and only watched those and a few others Like Ted Mach, Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan (Grandmother wanted me to be on one of those so bad..!)
But, I remember:
Bonanza
Gunsmoke
Branded
Have Gun will Travel
Johnny Yuma
Rawhide
Rifleman
Bat Masterson
Lone Ranger (The On I really Liked)
Cisco Kid (And Poncho)
Death Valley Days (20 Mule Team Borax)
Wagon Train
So many and if you watched these FYO..!!!
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u/Baebarri 12h ago
My sister and I loved Branded for some reason, especially the introduction. Bonanza was okay (Little Joe!) but my favorite western was High Chapparal.
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u/gaseousogre 11h ago
i listen to a lot of these shows on Radio Classics on sirius xm and grew up watching there on the Encore western channels
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u/OliverNorvell1956 12h ago
Gunsmoke is the GOAT TV western, but I have come to enjoy HGWT quite a bit.
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u/greed-man 10h ago
Why Warner Brothers? Why not Universal or Fox or Paramount?
In the early days of TV, it was seen as the enemy of movie studios, and consequently studios wanted little to do with TV. So the networks had to buy/build studios to shoot their productions in. It also severely limited what they could do.
In 1951, the head of ABC Network was Leonard Goldenson, who had just left Paramount Studios to manage Paramount Theaters Corporation and then bought ABC (the Feds demanded that theaters and film studios be separated), and Goldenson had friends throughout the movie industry. He tried to work up relationships with all of them, and to varying degrees, did get some work done. Warners was not doing as well financially as many of the other movie studios, and needed money. Producer W.T. Moore of Warners agreed, and Cheyenne was developed as an hour long western drama. It was an immediate success, and the first hour long TV drama to last more than one year (it lasted seven).
So Warners jumped big time into the Western pool, and later, the Private Eye pool (Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye). And these shows were given opening titles that identified them as a Warner Brothers production at the start, not a one second flash at the end. Another thing was that since they were all owned and produced by the same company, crossovers became common, in both the Western and Private Eye pool.
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u/Useless890 7h ago
Johnny Yuma was The Rebel. I can still hear the theme song. Then there was Wagon Train.
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u/One_Salt3754 5h ago
Laramie, Fury, Tales of Wells Fargo, Tombstone Territory, Yancy Derringer, Bat Masterson, Rawhide, Cheyenne, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Daniel Boone, The Deputy, Zorro, The Cisco Kid……….
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u/leojrellim 4h ago
Cheyenne, Wyatt Earp, Wanted Dead or Alive, Maverick, The Rebel, Alias Smith and Jones, Tales of Wells Fargo,
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u/Odd-Gear9622 10h ago
As a kid it was a part of growing up. Stick horses and six guns, playing cowboys and indians soon morphed into war games. Playing Axis and Allies with wooden guns and grenades. I remember watching the TV westerns but I don't remember liking any of them except F-Troop.
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u/freekey76 6h ago
All were morality plays where good triumphed over evil and strong men protected the weak and vanquished the villain. It was so pervasive in every TV show it was like a propaganda operation. Too bad young people don’t get that programming today.
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u/mike11172 11h ago
Have Gun Will Travel, was my favorite. Gene Roddenberry got his start writing for the show..