The Rifleman

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The Rifleman
Format Western
Starring Chuck Connors
Johnny Crawford
Paul Fix
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons 5
No. of episodes 168
Production
Running time 30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel ABC
Picture format Black and white
Original run September 30, 1958 – April 8, 1963
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The Rifleman was a Western television program that ran from 1958-1963 on ABC, a production of Four Star Television. The black-and-white program starred former athlete Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a widower, Union veteran of the Civil War (lieutenant in the 19th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment), and a homesteader. McCain and his son Mark (singer Johnny Crawford) lived on a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory.

The pilot episode was telecast on CBS on Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. Regulars on the program included Marshal Micah Torrance (Paul Fix) (R. G. Armstrong was the original marshall for two episodes, the 1st and the 4th), Sweeney the bartender (Bill Quinn), and a half-dozen other denizens of North Fork (Hope Summers, Joan Taylor, Patricia Blair, John Harmon, and Harlan Warde were regulars). Fifty-one episodes of the series were directed by Joseph H. Lewis, the director of the classic film noir Gun Crazy (1950), which accounts for some of the show's virtuoso noir lighting and dark, brooding quality. Ida Lupino directed one episode, The Assault. Connors wrote several episodes himself. Robert Culp wrote one two part episode.

The February 17, 1959, episode of The Rifleman proved to be a spin-off of an NBC series, Law of the Plainsman starring Michael Ansara in the role of Marshal Sam Buckhart. In the story called "The Indian", Buckhart came to North Fork to look for Indians suspected in the murder of a Texas Ranger and his family.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

According to network publicists, the series was set in the 1880s. There are also numerous episodes where the date is given in the 1880s. A wooden plaque next to the home stated that it was rebuilt by Lucas McCain and his son Mark in August, 1881.

Westerns were popular when The Rifleman premiered, as producers struggled to find gimmicks to distinguish one show from another. The Rifleman's gimmick was a modified Winchester rifle with a trigger mechanism allowing for rapid-fire shots. Connors demonstrated its rapid-fire action during the opening credits as McCain dispatched an unseen bad guy on North Fork's main street. Although the rifle may have appeared in every episode, it was not always fired, as some plots did not lend themselves to violent solutions, e.g., a cruel teacher at Mark's one-room school. There were several episodes where McCain dispatched the bad guys without the use of the rifle at all and he once threw the rifle to knock the bad guy off his horse instead of killing him because he was a friend. In one episode McCain even "spiked" the barrel of his own gun when he knew it was going to fall into the hands of the villian so that it would backfire. McCain was also well versed in the use of a six gun although he did not own one and this aspect was rarely shown.

The various episodes of The Rifleman promote fair play toward one's opponents, neighborliness, equal rights, and the need to use violence in a highly controlled manner ("A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark," McCain tells his son, "But that doesn't mean you go looking to run TO one!"). In other words, the program's villains tend to be those who cheat, who refuse to help people down on their luck, who hold bigoted attitudes, and who see violence as a first resort rather than the last option. Indeed, a curious aspect of the program is that when they meet African-Americans, the people of North Fork are truly color-blind. In "The Most Amazing Man", a black man (played by Sammy Davis, Jr.) checks into the only hotel in town; for the entire show, no one notices his race. Not only is this noteworthy for the 1880s setting, it was radical for Hollywood of the early 1960s. While the message was clear, it was neither heavy-handed nor universal. A certain amount of xenophobia drifts around North Fork, however, forcing McCain to defend the right of a Chinese immigrant to open a laundry ("The Queue") and the right of an Argentine family to buy a ranch ("The Gaucho"). This racial liberalism does not extend to villains, however. The Mexicans in "The Vaqueros" are portrayed as indolent, dangerous, and speak in the caricatured way of most Mexican outlaws in Westerns of the time.

Another fundamental value of the series is that people deserve a second chance. Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic. Similarly, McCain gives an ex-con a job on his ranch ("The Jailbird"). Royal Dano appeared as a former Confederate States of America soldier, given a job on the McCain ranch, who encounters the Union soldier who had cost him his arm in battle. The soldier, now a general, arranges for medical care for the wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln's orders to "Bind up the nation's wounds." (Dano also appeared as a wealthy tanner who mistakenly believes Mark is his lost son and again as a preacher with a haunting gunfighter past in an episode where Warren Oates and L. Q. Jones, as unsavory brothers, try to goad him into a gunfight and attempt to bushwhack him.)

In retrospect, The Rifleman holds up better than most Westerns of its era, partly because Connors fit so well into the role (his gravestone reads "The Rifleman") and partly because the father-son interactions between Connors and Crawford seem genuine. And the Lucas McCain character has an angry, vindictive streak that makes him more human. The lighting and camera angles give the program a mildly artistic look. The excellent musical score, one of the most remembered aspects of the program, was composed by Herschel Burke Gilbert.

Most importantly, however, the show was created and initially developed by a young Sam Peckinpah, who would go on to become the last legendary director of classic Western movies (The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, etc.). Peckinpah, who wrote and directed many of the best episodes from the first season, based many of the characters and situations on real-life scenarios from his childhood growing up on a ranch. He also used many character actors such as Warren Oates and R.G. Armstrong who would later feature prominently in his films. His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations, as well as his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt that the Rifleman's son needed to learn about life, soon put him at odds with the show's producers at Four Star. He left the show and created another classic TV series, "The Westerner," starring Brian Keith, which unfortunately was short-lived.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Recurring cast

  • Bill Quinn as Sweeney the Bartender
  • Patricia Blair as Lou Mallory
  • Joe Higgins as Nils Swenson
  • Harlan Warde as John Hamilton
  • Joan Taylor as Milly Scott
  • Hope Summers as Hattie Denton
  • John Harmon as Eddie Halstead
  • Richard Anderson as six different characters: Tom Birch; Lariat Jones; Duke Jennings; Jason Gowdy; Harry Chase; and Griff (IMDB)

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The Rifleman's Rifle The trick feature of the rifle was a screw pin attached to the large loop lever which was positioned so as to trip the trigger when the ring was slammed home, thus allowing Lucas to rapid-fire the rifle, similarly to a semi-automatic pistol. The trigger trip screw pin was also used in two configurations. Sometimes Chuck had the screw head turned inside close to the trigger. Most of the times he had it on the outside of the trigger guard with a lock nut on the outside to further secure its position. In some of the episodes the screw was taken out completely when rapid fire action was not needed. When properly adjusted, this screw “squeezed” the trigger when the lever was fully closed. From:The Rifleman's Rifle Website
  • Michael Landon guest-starred in two episodes, "End of a Young Gun" and "The Mind Reader"
  • Chuck Connors fires twelve shots from this 11-round rifle during the opening credits. Seven shots in the first closeup as the credits open and then five more shots are shown as the camera switches to another view. Then he swings the rifle to cock it and reaches for a round from his shirt pocket. The rifle was chambered in .44-40 caliber which could be used as six-gun cartridges or rifle rounds.
  • The opening titles of The Rifleman featured Connors rapid-firing thirteen shots as he walked down the street of North Fork. Actually, he fired only twelve shots; the 13th had to be dubbed in to time out with the music.[2]
  • The Rifleman has a villainous twin/lookalike relative, a plot staple of practically every television series of the era; sooner or later on almost every series, the evil exact duplicate with precisely the same voice (eerily enough) inevitably turns up for a single episode.
  • Former NBA player Chuck Person, a prolific long-range shooter, was known as "The Rifleman", since he has the same names (first and middle) as Chuck Connors.

[edit] How Many Shots?

Question: "How many shots were fired in the opening of the TV series the rifleman?"
Answer: The opening scene of The Rifleman starring Chuck Connors was edited as are all T.V. shows. The 1892 Winchester in .44/.40 caliber used on the show only holds eleven bullets. The audio track was dubbed over the video track. They are not entirely in sync. You may hear 12 or 13 shots fired in the audio portion, and you may watch him pull the lever back on the rifle a different number of times. This is what makes it a trick question. The editors could have made it look like he fired as many shots as they like by piecing the two segments of the opening scene together as they did. The difficulty with this question is that as that when the editors dubbed in the rifle sound they crammed in as many shots as they could in the given time period for the opening instead of noticing how many times Chuck Connors was pulling the lever on the rifle to fire the gun. This Q&A is from WikiAnswers.com.

[edit] References

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Rifleman Episode Guide List
  2. ^ The Legendary Rifle: A Closer Look

[edit] Further reading

Christopher Sharrett, The Rifleman (TV Milestones Series), Wayne State University Press, 2005

[edit] External links

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