The Rifleman

The Rifleman was a Western television program that ran from 1958 to 1963 on ABC and was produced by Four Star Television. The black-and-white western starred Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a widower and Union veteran of the Civil War. McCain and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford) lived on a ranch just outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. 

Regulars on the program included Marshal Micah Torrance (Paul Fix), Sweeney the bartender, and a half-dozen other denizens of North Fork. Two ladies in Lucas’ life were Milly Scott, played by Joan Taylor and Miss Lou Mallory, played by Patricia Blair.

According to network publicists, the series was set in the late 1880s. Unfortunately for historical accuracy, McCain seemed too young to have served in the Army 25 years earlier, as did guest stars who also portrayed veterans of the Civil War. It seems that the time period was pretty much whatever a writer wanted to make it. The 39th episode "Boomerang" (1st Season, aired May 23rd, 1959) has a scene where a newly created grave stone has the year 1871 marked as the year of death. 

The 45th episode "Tension" (Second season, aired October 27th, 1959) makes reference to a robbery that occurred in 1871 which, according to one of the characters, was seven years earlier. McCain carrying a Winchester Model 1892 rifle probably didn't matter much considering such a lack of effort on the part of the creators to keep the timeline consistent.

Westerns were extremely popular when The Rifleman premiered, forcing television producers to find gimmicks to distinguish one show from another. The Rifleman's gimmick was a modified Winchester rifle with a trigger mechanism allowing for rapid-fire shots. Connors demonstrated its rapid-fire action during the opening credits as McCain dispatched an unseen bad guy on North Fork's main drag. Although the rifle may have appeared in every episode, it was not always fired, as some plots did not lend themselves to violent solutions, e.g., a cruel teacher at Mark's one-room school.

The various episodes of The Rifleman promote fair play toward one's opponents, neighborliness, equal rights, and the need to use violence in a highly controlled manner (“A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark,” McCain tells his son, “But that doesn't mean you go looking to run TO one!”). In other words, the program's villains tend to be those who cheat, who refuse to help people down on their luck, who hold bigoted attitudes, and who see violence as a first resort rather than the final option. 

Indeed, a curious aspect of the program is that when they meet African-Americans, the people of North Fork are truly color-blind. In "The Most Amazing Man", a black man (played by Sammy Davis, Jr.) checks into the only hotel in town; for the entire show, no one notices his race. Not only is this noteworthy for the 1880s setting, it was radical for Hollywood of the early 1960s. While the message was clear, it was neither heavy-handed nor universal. 

A certain amount of xenophobia drifts around North Fork, however, forcing McCain to defend the right of a Chinese immigrant to open a laundry ("The Queue") and the right of an Argentine family to buy a ranch ("The Gaucho"). This racial liberalism does not extend to villains, however. The Mexicans in "The Vaqueros" are indolent, dangerous, and speak in the way of most Mexican outlaws in Westerns of the time.

Another fundamental value of the series is that people deserve a second chance. Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic and McCain once gave an ex-con a job on his ranch ("The Jailbird"). Royal Dano appeared as a former Confederate soldier, given a job on the McCain ranch, who encounters the Union soldier who had cost him his arm in battle. The soldier, now a general, arranges for medical care for the wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln's orders to "Bind up the Nation's wounds."

In retrospect, The Rifleman holds up better than most Westerns of its era, partly because Connors fit so well into the role (his gravestone reads "The Rifleman") and partly because the father-son interactions between Connors and Crawford seem genuine. And the Lucas McCain character has an angry, vindictive streak that makes him more human. The lighting and camera angles give the program a mildly artistic look. The excellent musical score, one of the most remembered aspects of the program, was composed by Herschel Burke Gilbert.

Most importantly, however, the show was created and initially developed by a young Sam Peckinpah, who would go on to become the last legendary director of classic Western movies (The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, etc.). Peckinpah, who wrote and directed many of the best episodes from the first season, based many of the characters and situations on real-life scenarios from his childhood growing up on a ranch. He also used many character actors such as Warren Oates and R.G. Armstrong who would later feature prominently in his films. 

His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations, as well as his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt that the Rifleman's son needed to learn about life, soon put him at odds with the show's producers at Four Star Television. He left the show and created another classic TV series, "The Westerner," starring Brian Keith, which unfortunately was short-lived.