Television westerns : six decades of sagebrush sheriffs, scalawags, and sidewinders / Alvin H. Marill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marill, Alvin H.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Western television programs--United States.

Western television programs.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 177 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Summary:

Westerns have featured prominently in films almost since motion pictures were first produced at the end of the nineteenth century. And when televisions invaded American homes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Western programs filled the small-screen landscape. Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, such long-running successes as Bonanza, Wagon Train, and Maverick dominated television. And though the genre has fallen on hard times over the years, it has never died, as Hollywood continues to produce films, miniseries, and shows that keep the west alive.

In Television Westerns: Six Decades of Sagebrush Sheriffs, Scalawags, and Side winders, Alvin H. Marill looks at the genre as it was represented from the beginning of television -- from the twenty-year run of Gunsmoke to the brutal revisionist take of Deadwood. This volume encompasses all manifestations of the Western, including such series as Rawhide, The Virginian, and The Wild Wild West, as well as movies-of-the-week, miniseries, failed pilots, animated programs, documentaries, and even Western-themed episodes of non-Western series that provided their own spin on the genre. Book jacket.

Contents:

Foreword / by Jon Burlingame

Introduction

Defending range justice on the tube

Coming of age on the tv frontier

The western Disney style and the pivotal years

From Wagon train and Bonanza to The Virginian and The big valley

The made-for western saddles up

The great western miniseries

Cartoon westerns

Western documentaries

Western-themed series episodes

Heading, alas, thataway!.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810881327

0810881322

9780810881334

0810881330

OCLC:

702647624