The Rifleman

The Rifleman: Mail Order Groom

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Johnny Crawford and Chuck Connors, with his trademark rifle

The Rifleman is an American Western television program starring Chuck Connors as rancher Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1870s and 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in black-and-white, half-hour episodes. “The Rifleman” aired on ABC from September 30, 1958 to April 8, 1963 as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first prime time series to have a widowed parent raise a child.

Main Cast:

• Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a rancher, a veteran Union Army officer of the American Civil War and widowed father
• Johnny Crawford as Mark McCain, Lucas’ son
• Paul Fix as Micah Torrance, marshal of North Fork, New Mexico

Recurring Cast

• Bill Quinn as Sweeney, the North Fork Saloon bartender
• Patricia Blair as Mallory House hotel owner Lou Mallory
• Joe Higgins as blacksmith Nels Swenson
• Harlan Warde as banker John Hamilton
• Joan Taylor as general store owner Milly Scott
• Hope Summers as general store owner Hattie Denton
• John Harmon as hotel clerk Eddie Halstead

Seven actors played the town doctor during the series (usually known as “Doc Burrage”): Edgar Buchanan, Fay Roope, Rhys Williams, Jack Kruschen, Robert Burton, Ralph Moody and Bert Stevens. Several actors also played blacksmith Nels Swenson.

Guest stars

More than 500 actors made guest appearances in more than 970 credited roles during the five-year run of the series.  Guest stars included veteran actors: John Anderson,Richard Anderson, Whit Bissell, John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Jr., Ellen Corby, John Dehner, Jack Elam, Dabbs Greer, Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr., Agnes Moorehead, Denver Pyle, and Lee Van Cleef, most appearing multiple times in different roles. Several then-newcomers also appeared in the series, including Claude Akins, James Coburn (credited as “Jim”) Mark Goddard, Dennis Hopper, Michael Landon, Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton, and Robert Vaughn. Notable people in other fields also made cameo appearances such as singer Sammy Davis, Jr., future baseball Hall of Famers Duke Snider and Don Drysdale, comedian Buddy Hackett and writer, director and producer Paul Mazursky.

Overview – List of The Rifleman episodes

Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Crawford and Chuck Connors (left to right) in 1962

The series centers on Lucas McCain, a widowed Union Civil War veteran (a lieutenant in the8th Indiana Infantry Regiment) and a homesteader. McCain buys a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory, in the pilot episode. He and his son Mark came from Enid, Oklahoma, after his wife died when Mark was 6 years old.

The pilot episode, “The Sharpshooter”, was originally telecast on CBS as part of Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater on March 7, 1958; it was repeated (in edited form) as the first episode of the series on ABC. Regulars on the program included Marshal Micah Torrance (R. G. Armstrong was the original marshal for two episodes, the first and the fourth), Sweeney the bartender (Bill Quinn), and a half-dozen other residents of North Fork (played by Hope Summers, Joan Taylor, Patricia Blair, John Harmon and Harlan Warde). Fifty-one episodes of the series were directed by Joseph H. Lewis (director of 1950’s Gun Crazy and known for his film noir style). Ida Lupino directed one episode, “The Assault.” Connors wrote several episodes. Robert Culp (of CBS’s Trackdown) wrote one two-part episode, and Frank Gilroy wrote “End of a Young Gun.”

The February 17, 1959 episode of The Rifleman was a spin-off for an NBC series, Law of the Plainsman, starring Michael Ansara as Marshal Sam Buckhart. In the episode “The Indian”, Buckhart comes to North Fork to look for Indians suspected of murdering a Texas Ranger and his family.

Beverly Englander and Chuck Connors in the 1961 episode “Lariat”

The series was set during the 1880’s; a wooden plaque next to the McCain home states that the home was rebuilt by Lucas McCain and his son Mark in August 1881. Westerns were popular when The Rifleman premiered, and producers tried to find gimmicks to distinguish one show from another. The Rifleman’s gimmick was a modified Winchester Model 1892 rifle, with a large ring lever drilled and tapped for a set screw. The lever design allowed him to cock the rifle by spinning it around his hand. In addition, the screw could be positioned to depress the trigger every time he worked the lever, allowing for rapid fire. Despite the anachronism of a John Browning-designed rifle appearing in a show set 12 years before it was designed, Connors demonstrated its rapid-fire action during the opening credits on North Fork’s main street. Although the rifle may have appeared in every episode, it was not always fired; some plots did not require violent solutions (for example, one involving Mark’s rigid new teacher). McCain attempts to solve as many problems as possible without having to resort to shooting, yet still manages to kill 120 villains over the show’s five-year run. It is notable that McCain almost never carried a pistol.

A common thread in the series is that people deserve a second chance; Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and McCain gives a convict a job on his ranch in “The Marshal”. Royal Dano appeared as a former Confederate States of America soldier in “The Sheridan Story” who is given a job on the McCain ranch and encounters General Philip Sheridan, the man who cost him his arm in battle. Learning why the man wants him dead, Sheridan arranges for medical care for his wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln‘s last orders to “…bind up the nation’s wounds”.

McCain has human foibles. In an episode with Phil Carey as former gunman (and old adversary) Simon Battles, he is unwilling to believe the man has changed and become a doctor. It takes a gunfight (with Battles fighting alongside him) to make him admit he is wrong. In “Two Ounces Of Tin” with Sammy Davis, Jr. as Tip Corey (a former circus trick-shot artist turned gunman), McCain angrily orders him off the ranch when he finds him demonstrating his skills to Mark. McCain has a reputation in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, where he first acquired the nickname “the Rifleman,” and where Lucas’ wife died in a smallpox epidemic.

The series was created by Arnold Laven and developed by Sam Peckinpah, who would become a director of Westerns. Peckinpah, who wrote and directed many episodes, based many characters and plots on his childhood on a ranch. His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations and his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt the Rifleman’s son needed to learn about life put him at odds with the show’s producers at Four Star. Peckinpah left the show and created a short-lived series, The Westerner with Brian Keith.

U.S. Nielsen Ratings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rifleman