4/5 looking back
  by Kerwin D. Cockrell (Chicago, Illinois United States)
I could remember hearing programs on the radio before we even had a television; and television was only in black and white; so looking back at old shows reminded me of the life I enjoyed more as a youth and the quality of television programs. Now days things have become more commercialized; and the programs not all decent and family orientated. But you can look with me and enjoy a multitude of great western shows.

4/5 TV CLASSICS WESTERNS VOLUMES 3 AND 4
  by Guy De Federicis (east of here)
My "TV Classics Westerns" is a 2 DVD set with both Volumes 3 and Volume 4, currently sold on Amazon as seperate volumes.

Saddle 'em up pardner and hit the trail of 1950s television where the hero is never less than perfect, certainly never complex, distinguished by the bad guys who are always as mean and ruthless as a springing rattlesnake. Before a television violence code turned westerns into dull character studies (Gunsmoke), they were shooting each other up, punching each other into head concussions, and employing bullets through the hearts of them varmint bank robbers, cattle rustlers, and law killers who always clutch their hearts after being shot, cry out, and die at the feet of the smirking god-like law abider. What refreshing violence. The code of the west preached in each and every episode here is, "Kill! Kill! Kill!". All so that peacefull minded Americans can live fearlessly in the name of freedom. Yahoo!

OK, smirk if you will, that The Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore) and Tonto (Jay Silverheels), spent all their time alone roaming the west and looking for a place to camp for the evening. They were simply exhausted after a long day of thwarting train robberies, chasing stagecoaches over cliffs, and galloping into oblivion. And every now and then a cry of "Hi Ho Silver!" could be heard from a campfire somewhere in the west. I'll have none of your Abe Lincoln theories of weird costumes and masks. I hear The William Tell Overture, (you may swear allegiance at this time, it excitedly opened every episode), and there is The Lone Ranger (at the beginning of every episode), perched on a cliff like a surveying hawk, eyeing the wide open west as if saying, "If so much as a mouse moves, I'm going to be there." And then a fantastic voice-over narration proclaiming our hero to be, among other things, a "marvelous" guy. Tightly knotted story lines would not fly over the head of a dull 5 year old. Clayton Moore's strange straddling walking gait, like John Wayne in a tutu, may throw impressionable young minds temporarily out of whack. The next generation of kids will grow up with Mr. Rogers. Go figure. Did you know that in the hundreds of episodes of "The Lone Ranger", he never killed a man? He just wounded them and hauled them off to the law, and they would kill them. What a guy.

There's one episode of "U.S. Marshall" here, a modern day Arizona western formerly called "The Sherriff of Conchise", a syndicated show not affiliated with a television network, and the episode is a hoot, with Jack Lord (Hawaii 5-O) guest starring as a violently crazed felon scheming to escape from the penetentiary. This guy's so mean, when asked by a desperate fellow inmate for just a puff of his cigarette, he says, sure, and proceeds to put the cigarette out in the poor guy's hand as he screams in agony. I laughed so hard I spilled coffee all over my Lone Ranger jammies.

Finally there's eight episodes of "Stories of The Century", an Emmy winning, also syndicated western, telling the tales of Matt Clark, Railroad Detective (he introduces himself just like that - "Matt Clark, Railroad Detective") played by Jim Davis, who played Jock Ewing on "Dallas". The serious minded adult show boasts it's story ideas were taken from newspaper archives and records from the 1890s, and it's authenticity is impressive as the sun goes down on true life notorious outlaws like Billy The Kid, The Dalton Gang, and Jesse James in each episode.

Happy Trails.