The first significant American film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), was a western, even if it was shot in New Jersey, and the genre proliferated a decade later when the movie industry set up shop in Hollywood—just down the road from real working ranches and a talent pool of riders and cowpokes. When television took off in the 1950s, the western followed, and continued to fill prime time through the ‘60s when—suddenly—the world changed and they largely disappeared from big and small screens. Many western themes, however, were absorbed by contemporary crime dramas, with Dirty Harry as the implacable sheriff and Charles Bronson as the wronged man out for vengeance on the lawless frontier of America’s mean streets.
TV westerns have been appearing on DVD in great number and a pair of new releases represents their last years of prevalence in the ‘60s.
“Bonanza: The Official Fifth Season Vols. One & Two” covers 1963-1964. Color TV was the new thing and the NBC peacock proudly spread its wings at the start of each episode. At least by season five, “Bonanza” had little to do with the traditional lessons of the western—a genre where individualism and community, savagery and civilization, sang in precarious harmony. “Bonanza” was a family message show leavened by humor, literally “My Three Sons” in the Old West with dignified Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) presiding over a trio of young men on the sprawling Ponderosa Ranch abutting Lake Tahoe. Ben was a CEO in a Stetson; the six-gun at his hip seemed more a concession to local fashion than a necessity. The Ponderosa was an odd little boys’ world—the three sons slept in the “bunk house” and a Chinese servant cooked their meals in the rustic, manly main house. When the dumbest of the trio, Hoss, falls in love, the equilibrium is threatened.
“Gunsmoke” was a better fit for the western genre. Originally aired in 1962, the episodes on “Gunsmoke: The Seventh Season Volume Two” are still in black and white, a palette that endows its stories with the patina of legend. James Arness stars as U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon, a stoic figure who imposes civil society on Dodge City with a steady hand. Although the intro to each episode shows him firing his gun, many episodes passed without the Marshall drawing his weapon. Along with Doc Adams, who administered medical science with a dose of good sense and a tincture of compassion, Dillon was a solid presence, dependable as the noon train in a culture of violent sociopaths, townies who fell silent when trouble came and powerful men who grabbed the law into their hands and twisted it to suit themselves.
For a prime time program in an era of rigorous TV censorship, it’s interesting to see Miss Kitty, mistress of the demimonde, as Dodge City’s third pillar of stability, even with her call girls in plain sight. Although suitable for all ages, “Gunsmoke” was obviously written by adults who realized that some problems have no easy solution, and sometimes no solution at all.
