With loads of nice Westerns on the market, you’ll be able to’t ever go fallacious with John Wayne. The Duke starred in additional Westerns than simply about any Golden Age Hollywood star, together with a number of the most recognizable titles on the market. It is no shock, then, that just a few of them had been so widespread that they ultimately discovered new life on tv. Whereas Hondo is maybe one of the best instance of this, there’s one different notable Wayne image that was reborn on the small display screen, this time with a number of the essential forged intact. That is proper, for those who did not already know, the Duke’s 1972 Western, The Cowboys, ultimately spawned a tv sequence sequel, solely it was terribly short-lived.
2 Years After John Wayne’s ‘The Cowboys’ Film, ABC Made a TV Collection
Within the early Seventies, the agricultural purge had worn out virtually each Western on tv. Lengthy-running CBS and NBC hits Gunsmoke and Bonanza held out for a number of extra years, however ultimately they caved to the strain of urbanized storytelling and the rising recognition of the cop present. However that did not cease ABC from trying to carry on to the previous money cow, and that is the place The Cowboys got here in. Simply two years after the controversial The Cowboys hit theaters (controversial as a result of it being one of many few photos the place Wayne really dies), ABC launched a brand new half-hour Western below the identical title. Basically a sequel to the characteristic movie, Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh observe of their e-book, The Full Listing to Prime Time Community and Cable TV Reveals, 1946–Current, that the present “was a sort of teenage Western during which seven younger boys, ages 9 to 17, confronted the trials of rising into manhood whereas serving to a widow run a ranch within the New Mexico Territory within the 1870s.”
Now, The Cowboys doubtless is not the primary of Wayne’s theatrical Westerns that one would count on to be tailored for the small display screen. In any case, it is one of many solely productions that Wayne’s character is killed off in. The primary pull for audiences coming to the theater to see The Cowboys — itself an adaptation of the 1971 novel of the identical identify by William Dale Jennings, who co-wrote the screenplay — was because of the Duke himself. So, why would this identical viewers, who simply watched Wayne’s Wil Andersen die by the hands of Bruce Dern‘s Asa Watts, tune in for a Duke-less Cowboys follow-up? Properly, the reality is, the present was a big gamble from the start, firstly because of the declining recognition of the tv Western and likewise due to Wayne’s lack of involvement. Whereas the Duke reportedly voiced his approval of The Cowboys tv present, it did not have the identical impact on the model that his introduction to Gunsmoke did twenty years prior.
Nonetheless, Wil Anderson’s mentorship of the younger cowboys, successfully passing the Western torch to a brand new era of riders, was one thing the community needed to discover — and it is easy to see why. Whereas many contemplate The Shootist (the ultimate installment in Wayne’s intensive profession) to be the “end-all, be-all” finale to the Duke’s filmography, it was The Cowboys the place Wayne gave his seal of approval to the subsequent wild bunch of Westerneers. Thus, it stands to purpose that The Cowboys ought to have continued onto tv, the place these rising stars may make names for themselves and earn their maintain within the style earlier than shifting on to larger and higher issues. It is no surprise, then, that most of the stars from the movie returned below the steering of sequence producer David Dortort, whose earlier hits embrace The Stressed Gun, The Excessive Chaparral, and, most famously, Bonanza.
Who Returned to the TV Collection From the John Wayne Western?
As famous, the sequence itself adopted the identical characters from the characteristic movie, although many had been recast. A decade earlier than he tackled Father Murphy, Moses Gunn took over Roscoe Lee Browne‘s function as Jebediah Nightlinger for tv, and Diana Douglass did the identical with Sarah Cunningham‘s character, the widow Annie Andersen. Gunn and Douglass had been fairly succesful actors themselves, and did properly because the titular cowboys’ grownup supervisors as they battled stressed Comanches, grasping cattle rustlers, and loads of different black hats throughout the New Mexico Territory. Though Roscoe Lee Browne, specifically, was a standout performer within the 1972 movie, Gunn was an impressed forged for the tv adaptation.
In fact, the actual knockouts of The Cowboys had been at all times the titular heroes themselves, and it actually helped that lots of them returned from the characteristic movie. Future Longmire star A Martinez is maybe probably the most well-known of the bunch, reprising his function because the oldest boy, Cimarron, whose wild, no-nonsense perspective leads the cost with a fierce vitality that finds its means again to the small display screen. Alongside him is Robert Carradine‘s Slim Honeycutt, one other one of many older boys who likewise turns into a pacesetter within the group. These two had it out within the movie adaptation, however they usually work side-by-side right here. Additionally becoming a member of them within the sequence are Sean Kelly and Clay O’Brien, however whereas these two performed “Stuttering” Bob Wilson and Hardy Fimps, respectively, within the movie, they had been recast on tv as Jimmy Phillips and Weedy. It is arduous to say why Kelly and O’Brien had been recast for the present. Maybe the producers thought they’d aged out of their earlier roles, or perhaps they needed to present them higher materials to work with.
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In any case, the eleven cowboys featured within the movie are whittled all the way down to seven for the TV present, with Kelly’s authentic character, “Stuttering” Bob, being faraway from the present totally and O’Brien’s Hardy as an alternative performed by Mitch Brown. Different cowboys embrace Kerry MacLane‘s Homer Weems (changing Mike Pyeatt) and Clint Howard‘s Steve (changing Steve Benedict). Future Dallas star Jim Davis even joined the sequence because the recurring Marshal Invoice Winter, who usually discovered himself blended up with no matter drawback the cowboys had been making an attempt to unravel. With a forged like this, a TV sequence continuation of The Cowboys simply made sense. The one bother is that it happened on the fallacious time.
‘The Cowboys’ Western Collection Did not Final Lengthy on ABC
Airing from February 6 to Could 8, 1974, The Cowboys produced 12 episodes whole earlier than ABC gave it the axe. Whereas reruns ran on the community by mid-August, the present itself concluded abruptly with the ultimate episode, “Requiem for a Misplaced Son.” Whether or not the community simply did not absolutely imagine within the sequence or audiences failed to indicate up for a Wayne-less Cowboys, it appeared that the Western’s time on tv was over. Whereas just a few rural dramas, corresponding to Little Home on the Prairie, would discover success that exact same tv season, The Cowboys was sadly not certainly one of them. Had it been made a decade earlier, maybe it will be much more well-known as of late, however it has largely been misplaced to time. Even in comparison with different short-lived Western tasks, like Lloyd Bridges‘ The Loner, Kurt Russell‘s The Quest, or Josh Brolin‘s The Younger Riders, The Cowboys hasn’t discovered the identical post-cancellation love, and that is a tragedy.
Nowadays, it is not possible to seek out episodes of The Cowboys anyplace on-line. The present wasn’t even given the reward of a bodily media launch again when so many distribution firms had been re-issuing basic TV Westerns onto DVD. It is too dangerous, as a result of as of late there appears to be as a lot an viewers for it as ever. Although it could not have been as memorable as the long-lasting John Wayne characteristic that preceded it, The Cowboys was a present that dared to proceed the legacy by propping up new stars who, if given the correct likelihood, may have carried the style by the ’70s. As a substitute, it was clear that networks and audiences alike had been largely completed with Westerns. Fortunately, the style hasn’t stayed down.
The Cowboys
- Launch Date
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1974 – 1973
- Community
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ABC
- Administrators
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William Witney
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John Carradine
Oscar Schmidt
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