\nJAMES ARNESS IN ‘HOW THE WEST WAS WON’<\/h2>\n
Twenty years is a long time to play a character. And that was just the beginning. Arness kept pinning on his Marshal badge in\u00a0Gunsmoke<\/em>\u00a0TV movies up until the mid-1990s. Audiences could not get enough of Matt Dillon for four decades. In the middle there, from 1977\u201379, Arness headlined\u00a0How the West Was Won<\/em>, a loose adaptation of the 1962\u00a0film that began as a miniseries. The veteran\u00a0cowboy actor played\u00a0Zebulon “Zeb” Macahan, a rugged pioneer, tracker and Army scout who moves his family from Virginia to the frontier.\u00a0Bruce Boxleitner and\u00a0Eva Marie Saint rounded out the stellar cast.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI was a huge fan of How the West Was Won<\/em> and Zeb Machan was my favorite character.\u00a0 He was a no-nonsense frontiersman who seemed so different from the heroes on tv at that time.\u00a0 I’d like to see the series again to check out if it holds up to my memory of how good it was.<\/p>\n\nCHUCK CONNORS IN ‘BRANDED’<\/h2>\n
Former three-sport professional athlete Chuck Connors cut an impressive figure as a TV cowboy. His imposing presence also made him suitable as an indomitable villain, as he so often portrayed later in his career. However, two years after\u00a0The Rifleman<\/em>\u00a0star hung up his Winchester, he slid into a new uniform, portraying unjustly disgraced cavalry captain Jason McCord on\u00a0Branded<\/em>. McCord was a vagabond, wandering the country like the Fugitive or Incredible Hulk, seeking to prove himself. Connor’s broad shoulders wore the massive chip in it well. Alas, kicking off in 1965, the series lasted a mere two seasons. Perhaps it was doomed to be an outlier, as the show was a rare scripted drama from Goodson-Todman Productions, a studio best known for churning out hit game shows like\u00a0The Price Is Right<\/em>,\u00a0Family Feud<\/em>,\u00a0Match Game<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Password<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI was a huge fan of Branded<\/em>.\u00a0 It hit at a great time for me as I was really into the whole Custer legend.\u00a0 The thought that a man survived the battle and was unjustly branded a coward made for good drama.<\/p>\n\nJAMES GARNER IN ‘NICHOLS’<\/h2>\n
Nichols<\/em>\u00a0was a reunion between James Garner and Warner Bros., his first work for the studio since his iconic role as\u00a0Maverick<\/em>. The two lead characters had much in common, from their black hats to their sharp wit to their similar adventures. However, Nichols took some unexpected turns. For starters, our hero rode a motorcycle, not a horse. Then, after shaky ratings, producers killed off Nichols \u2014 only to replace him with his twin brother, Nichols. This new Nichols had a mustache. The great Margot Kidder co-starred as the love interest, yet somehow audiences just did not click.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nNicols<\/em> was a different spin on the western.\u00a0 It was set at the turn-of-the-century and the hero drove a motorcycle!\u00a0 I loved it… but you know the series is in trouble when they kill off the star’s character… even if he returns as his twin brother.<\/p>\nAround this same time there was another series set in the turn-of-the-century west called The Bearcats <\/em>that I liked.\u00a0 It didn’t last long either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fine folks at Heroes & Icons present The Overlooked Second Roles of TVs Greatest Western Stars.\u00a0 Here are three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20432,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20431\/revisions\/20432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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