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 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.
Cimarron City is an American Western television series, starring George Montgomery as Matt Rockford and John Smith as Lane Temple, that aired on NBC from October 11, 1958 until April 4, 1959. The name "Cimarron City" refers to a boom town in Logan County north of Oklahoma City. Rich in oil and gold, Cimarron City aspires to become the capital of the future state of Oklahoma, created in 1907.
Bronco is a Western series on ABC from 1958 through 1962. It was shown by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The program starred Ty Hardin as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate officer who wandered the Old West, meeting such well-known individuals as Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Theodore Roosevelt, Belle Starr, Cole Younger, and John Wesley Hardin.
Wanted: Dead or Alive is an American Western television series starring Steve McQueen as the bounty hunter Josh Randall. It aired on CBS for three seasons from 1958–61. The black-and-white program was a spin-off of a March 1958 episode of Trackdown, a 1957–59 western series starring Robert Culp. Both series were produced by Four Star Television in association with CBS Television.
The series launched McQueen into becoming the first television star to cross over into comparable status on the big screen.
Frontier Justice is a CBS television Western anthology series which had thirty-one telecasts over the summers of 1958, 1959, and 1961. It was a repackaging of episodes from CBS's Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, and was hosted by Lew Ayres, Melvyn Douglas, and Ralph Bellamy, one each summer. The program was a production of Four Star Television.
Starring in various episodes were Eddie Albert, Phyllis Avery, Russ Conway, John Derek, William Fawcett, Dean Jagger, David Janssen, Ida Lupino, Strother Martin, Jack Palance, John Payne, Judson Pratt, Denver Pyle, Robert Ryan, Stuart Whitman, and James Whitmore, among others.
The half-hour, black-and-white program, a summer-replacement series, debuted on Monday, July 7, 1958, and ended its run on Thursday, September 28, 1961. It was produced by Four Star Television, co-owned by Dick Powell, David Niven, Charles Boyer, and Ida Lupino.
Buckskin is an American Western television series starring Tom Nolan, Sally Brophy, and Mike Road. The series aired on the NBC network from July 3, 1958 until May 25, 1959, followed by summer reruns in 1959 and again in 1965.
Union Pacific is a Western television series starring Jeff Morrow, Judson Pratt and Susan Cummings that aired in syndication from 1958 until 1959. This show was inspired by the 1939 film also named Union Pacific, starring Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Preston.
The series follows the exploits of Bart McClelland, played by Morrow, as he supervises the construction and extension of the Union Pacific Railroad west of Omaha, Nebraska, to Promontory, northwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. McClelland was mostly concerned with right-of-way issues, which could be affected by stubborn landowners, ranchers, Indians, outlaws, and other factors. Helping McClelland with his work was surveyor Billy Kincaid, played by Pratt. Susan Cummings rounded out the cast as Georgia, proprietor of the Golden Nugget Saloon, the rolling bar that followed the railroad workers along the tracks. Union Pacific never developed a following and was cancelled after a single season.
Union Pacific was filmed by California National Productions a
Jefferson Drum, also known as The Pen and the Quill, is an American Western television series starring Jeff Richards that aired on the NBC network from April 25 to December 11, 1958.
Man Without a Gun, is an American western television series produced by 20th Century Fox television and presented in first-run syndication in the United States from 1957 to 1959. Set in the town of Yellowstone near Yellowstone National Park in the then Dakota Territory during the 1870s, the program starred Rex Reason as newspaper editor Adam MacLean, who brought miscreants to justice without the use of violence or gunplay but through his Yellowstone Sentinel. The co-star was Mort Mills, as Marshal Frank Tallman, who intervened when the "pen" proved not to be "mightier than the sword".Harry Harvey, Sr., was cast in twenty-one episodes as Yellowstone Mayor George Dixon.
The program is considered to have been unique because it showcased MacLean's moral ethics and common sense to bring outlaws to justice. The show was also used as a schoolroom to teach the youngsters of the 1950s about decency and the differences between right and wrong.
Colt .45 is an American Western series which aired on ABC between October 1957 and September 1960. Christopher Colt was apparently a gun salesman but was in fact a government agent tracking down notorious bad guys.
The half-hour program is loosely based on the 1950 Warner Bros. film of the same name, starring Randolph Scott. Colt .45 was part of the William T. Orr-produced array of westerns which Warner produced for ABC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Tombstone Territory is an American Western series starring Pat Conway and Richard Eastham. The series' first two seasons aired on ABC from 1957 to 1959. The third and final season aired in syndication from 1959 until 1960.
26 Men is a syndicated American western television series about the Arizona Rangers, an elite group commissioned in 1901 by the legislature of the Arizona Territory and limited, for financial reasons, to twenty-six active members. Russell Hayden was the producer of the series and the co-composer of the theme song. The series aired between October 15, 1957 and June 30, 1959, for a total of 78 episodes.
Diego de la Vega, the son of a wealthy landowner, returns from his studies in Spain and discovers that Los Angeles is under the command of Capitan Monastario, a cruel man who relishes in the misuse of his power for personal gain. Knowing that he cannot hope to single-handedly defeat Monastario and his troops, Diego resorts to subterfuge. He adopts the secret identity of Zorro, a sinister figure dressed in black, and rides to fight Monastario's injustice.
Trackdown is an American Western television series starring Robert Culp that aired on CBS between 1957 and 1959. More than seventy episodes of this series were produced by Dick Powell's Four Star Television and filmed at the Desilu-Culver Studio. The series was itself a spin-off of Powell's anthology series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater.
San Franciscans during the goldrush of the 1850s attempt to maintain law and order in their wild city. Newly arrived Matthew Wayne becomes sheriff, then marshal, and organizes the city police force while expressing interest in the young widow Fanzler and sparring with attorney Pitt. Adam Kennedy appears as Dion Patrick, an Irish newspaperman who helps the local vigilante committee.
The Restless Gun is an American western television series that appeared on NBC between 1957 and 1959, with John Payne in the role of Vint Bonner, a wandering cowboy in the era after the American Civil War. A skilled gunfighter, Bonner is an idealistic person who prefers peaceful resolutions of conflict wherever possible. He is gregarious, intelligent, and public-spirited. The half-hour black-and-white program aired seventy-eight episodes. Jeanne Bates appeared in varying roles with Payne in five episodes of The Restless Gun.
The Restless Gun theme song begins: "I ride with the wind, my eyes on the sun, and my hand on my restless gun..." The song composer is probably Paul Dunlap, credited as the primary series composer, but could have been contributed to by either of the two other series composers, Dave Kahn and Stanley Wilson, also. Two versions are currently posted on YouTube, but neither posting lists any composer or performance credits.