109 Fun Facts About TV Western

On the TV version of Gunsmoke, who played Marshal Matt Dillon?

James Arness: at 6 ft 7 he was ordered off the landing craft first at Anzio in 1944 to test the water's depth, and the leg wound he took there troubled him on Gunsmoke, where riding scenes could set the pain off.

Gunsmoke is set in which Kansas cattle town?

Dodge City: the series was shot on Hollywood backlots and California ranch land, never in Kansas, yet the real town embraced it, and its Boot Hill Museum still carries a Gunsmoke tribute.

Which actress played Miss Kitty for 19 of Gunsmoke's 20 seasons?

Amanda Blake: she once brought her pet lion, Kemo, onto the set, and she and her husband ran one of the first successful cheetah-breeding programmes in captivity.

Which Gunsmoke deputy, played by Ken Curtis, replaced Chester in 1964?

Festus Haggen: the scruffy deputy's nasal twang was put on, because Ken Curtis was a smooth-voiced crooner who had sung with Tommy Dorsey's band and the Sons of the Pioneers.

Which first name did actor Milburn Stone choose for his Gunsmoke character, Doc Adams?

Galen: Doc went years without a first name until the producers let Stone pick one, and he borrowed that of the ancient physician who treated Rome's emperors.

CBS planned to cancel Gunsmoke in 1967 but instead axed which sitcom to free a Monday slot?

Gilligan's Island: Gunsmoke took over its early Monday slot and the gamble paid off, as the ageing Western jumped back into the top ten and ran for eight more seasons.

The Cartwrights of Bonanza lived on a ranch called the Ponderosa near which Nevada town?

Virginia City: a real silver boomtown where, in the 1860s of the show's setting, a failed prospector turned newspaperman first signed his work 'Mark Twain'.

Who played patriarch Ben Cartwright on Bonanza?

Lorne Greene: Canadians knew the voice long before Bonanza, because his deep-toned reading of grim war news on CBC radio had earned him the nickname 'the Voice of Doom'.

Which Cartwright brother on Bonanza was played by Dan Blocker?

Hoss: when Dan Blocker died suddenly in 1972, the writers let the character die too rather than recast him, and Bonanza lasted only one more season without its gentle giant.

In Bonanza's opening titles, what bursts into flames to reveal the Cartwrights on horseback?

A hand-drawn map: the 1959 original survives, having hung for decades in creator David Dortort's home before it went on permanent display at the Autry museum in Los Angeles in 2011.

Why did NBC keep Bonanza after nearly dropping it early on?

It sold color TV sets: Bonanza was one of the first shows broadcast in color, so parent company RCA used it to sell its sets, and after a move to Sunday nights it became America's top-rated show for three seasons.

What was the name of the Cartwright family's cook on Bonanza?

Hop Sing: Victor Sen Yung, who played him, really could cook. He demonstrated Cantonese dishes on television and published his own Great Wok Cookbook in 1974.

Who starred as rancher Lucas McCain in The Rifleman?

Chuck Connors: Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was such a fan of The Rifleman that on a 1973 visit to America he greeted the actor with a bear hug.

The Rifleman was set in which fictional town in New Mexico Territory?

North Fork: the series is set there in the 1880s, yet McCain's spinning, rapid-fire rifle is a Winchester Model 1892, a gun that would not exist for another decade.

The Rifleman's pilot, "The Sharpshooter", was first shown as an episode of which anthology series?

Zane Grey Theatre: Sam Peckinpah had written the script for Gunsmoke, which turned it down, so he reworked it for the anthology and it grew into a series of its own.

Which future movie star played drover Rowdy Yates on Rawhide?

Clint Eastwood: he tired of clean-cut Rowdy, 'the hero who kisses old ladies and dogs', so in 1964 he went to Spain to play a poncho-wearing antihero in A Fistful of Dollars.

Which singer performed Rawhide's theme song on the CBS series?

Frankie Laine: fifteen years later Mel Brooks hired him to belt out the Blazing Saddles title song, and he sang it in deadly earnest, unaware the film was a spoof.

James Garner's breakout role was as a wandering poker player in which 1957 Western?

Maverick: its hero would sooner bluff or bolt than shoot, a send-up of the stern TV lawman that soon pulled Sunday-night viewers away from The Ed Sullivan Show.

Which future James Bond joined the Garner poker-player series as cousin Beau after its star left?

Roger Moore: the studio first flew in Sean Connery, who turned the part down, so one future 007 made way for another years before Moore inherited Bond from him as well.

Who played Bart, brother of Garner's poker-playing hero Bret, alternating leads from week to week?

Jack Kelly: he was added because each episode took more than a week to film, so a second crew shot his Bart stories in parallel and the brothers could alternate in a weekly slot.

In Have Gun – Will Travel, gunfighter-for-hire Paladin made his home at which San Francisco address?

The Hotel Carlton: there he lived as a dandy in ruffled shirts and tailored suits, then rode out to work dressed all in black, the colour TV Westerns usually kept for the villain.

In Have Gun – Will Travel, the hero Paladin took his name from what?

The knights of Charlemagne's court: hence the chess knight on his calling card and holster, and a theme song that hails him as 'a knight without armor in a savage land'.

Have Gun – Will Travel reversed the usual route for a 1950s Western when its TV success spawned what?

A radio version: Westerns such as Gunsmoke had gone from radio to TV, but Paladin went the other way, and the radio series even wrote him an ending, in which he leaves San Francisco to claim an inheritance back East.

Who starred as the masked hero in the 1949–1957 TV series The Lone Ranger?

Clayton Moore: he went on appearing in costume for decades, and when the character's owner won a 1979 court order against the mask he switched to wraparound sunglasses until he got it back.

Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto, was a member of which Indigenous nation?

Mohawk: a chief's grandson whose mother's line was Mohawk, he reached Hollywood with a touring lacrosse team, where comedian Joe E. Brown talked him into a screen test.

Wagon Train's original wagon master, Major Seth Adams, was played by which John Ford regular?

Ward Bond: the series was inspired by John Ford's 1950 film Wagon Master, and when Bond died suddenly in 1960 it rolled on under a new wagon master without ever explaining where Major Adams had gone.

Billed as 'Michael Morris', which film star made a shadowy cameo as General Sherman in a 1960 episode of Wagon Train?

John Wayne: the credit was a play on his birth name, Marion Morrison, and viewers had to know him by voice and outline, since director John Ford kept him half hidden in shadow for his one line.

Which Hollywood legend played matriarch Victoria Barkley in The Big Valley?

Barbara Stanwyck: she did her own stunts on the show wherever she could, as she had in the film Forty Guns, where she let a horse drag her after the stuntmen refused.

The Barkley ranch in The Big Valley was near which California city?

Stockton: the Barkleys held the valley for four seasons, and the show's renewal cost co-star Lee Majors the lead in Midnight Cowboy, which went to Jon Voight instead.

Which NBC Western filled a 90-minute slot every week from 1962, with James Drury in the title role?

The Virginian: the title is the only name its hero ever gets, because the series kept a secret from Owen Wister's novel, which left the foreman nameless to make him a man of mystery.

Besides James Drury's title character, which character stayed at Shiloh Ranch for the NBC Western's entire nine-season run?

Trampas: Doug McClure played him as the hero's rowdy friend in every season, which turned the book inside out, since in Owen Wister's novel Trampas is the villain the hero finally shoots.

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman leaves Boston to practise in which town?

Colorado Springs: the show's version stood in California, on a Western street at Paramount Ranch where fans could watch the filming, until the 2018 Woolsey Fire destroyed most of it.

Which Bond girl starred as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?

Jane Seymour: by her own account she was about to lose her house when she told her agent she would take anything, CBS came back with Dr. Quinn, and the job ran for six seasons.

Ian McShane's saloon-owning villain in Deadwood, Al Swearengen, ran which establishment?

The Gem: the real Al Swearengen ran a notorious theatre and brothel of that name in Deadwood, rebuilt it bigger after the great fire of 1879, and left town when it burned for the last time in 1899.

Deadwood's first season opens in 1876, soon after which historical event?

Custer's Last Stand: the battle was fought that June, and by early August Wild Bill Hickok, who rides into camp as the series opens, had really been shot dead at a Deadwood poker table.

HBO's 2019 Deadwood film reunites the camp's survivors in 1889 to celebrate what?

South Dakota's statehood: the series had been cancelled in 2006 without a proper ending, and fans waited almost thirteen years for its creator to write this one.

AMC's Hell on Wheels follows the construction of what?

The first transcontinental railroad: the title was a real 1860s nickname for the rolling town of saloons, gambling dens and brothels that followed the Union Pacific's track-layers west.

Why does ex-Confederate Cullen Bohannon sign on with the work crews in AMC's Hell on Wheels?

To hunt his wife's killers: the revenge quest fades as the seasons pass, and the gunslinger who arrived only to settle a score stays on to help run the whole project.

Walt Longmire is the sheriff of which fictional Wyoming county?

Absaroka: it shares its name with a would-be state that fed-up ranchers tried to carve out of northern Wyoming and its neighbours in 1939, going as far as crowning a Miss Absaroka.

Which network aired Longmire's first three seasons before Netflix picked it up?

A&E: it dropped its most-watched original series, reportedly because the audience skewed too old for advertisers, and after a loud fan campaign Netflix gave the show three more seasons.

Justified is based on stories by which crime writer, particularly "Fire in the Hole"?

Elmore Leonard: he approved of the series so much that he wrote a new novel, Raylan, with it in mind, borrowing back characters the show's writers had invented.

Justified is set mainly in which Kentucky county, where Raylan Givens grew up?

Harlan: on screen it was mostly somewhere else, with western Pennsylvania playing the coal county in the pilot and California standing in for it afterwards.

Yellowstone's John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, owns the largest cattle ranch in which state?

Montana: at first Utah often stood in for it, with the Dutton lodge's rooms rebuilt on Park City soundstages, though the log house itself is a real working ranch near Darby.

Yellowstone was created by John Linson and which screenwriter-turned-showrunner?

Taylor Sheridan: he began as an actor, with an early part on Walker, Texas Ranger and a bigger one as a deputy police chief on Sons of Anarchy, and took up screenwriting only after he turned 40.

In the Yellowstone prequel 1883, which country-music couple play James and Margaret Dutton?

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill: the pair became a couple on their joint 1996 tour, which was named Spontaneous Combustion, and married within months, long before they played the Dutton pioneers.

Chuck Norris's Walker, Texas Ranger was inspired by which of his earlier films?

Lone Wolf McQuade: the series reworked the film's Texas Ranger hero so closely that the film's makers took CBS to court, arguing that Walker was too close a copy.

Ronald Reagan's final acting roles came in 1965 on which Western series?

Death Valley Days: he played a frontier marshal in one of his last episodes, then left show business in 1966 to run for governor of California, and won.

Creator Michael Garrison pitched The Wild Wild West as what?

"James Bond on horseback": Garrison knew 007 well, because in the 1950s he had been a partner in an early plan to film Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale.

Why did CBS cancel The Wild Wild West in 1969?

To appease Congress over TV violence: the fights were real enough that star Robert Conrad, who did his own stunts, was rushed to hospital after losing his grip on a saloon chandelier and landing on his head.

At the 1959 peak of the TV Western boom, roughly how many Westerns filled network prime time?

30: tallies for the 1959 peak run from 26 to 30, a glut that puzzled even its makers, one scriptwriter telling TIME he couldn't see why people spent so long 'staring at the wrong end of a horse'.

Which children's Western, made up of William Boyd's old B-movies, became one of early television's biggest crazes?

Hopalong Cassidy: Boyd had staked everything on it, selling his ranch and mortgaging his car to raise some $350,000 for the rights to his own old films, and the reruns made him a fortune in Hoppy merchandise.

In Kung Fu (1972), Kwai Chang Caine roams the West searching for whom?

His half-brother: the search for Danny Caine runs through the series, though its star was no martial artist, since David Carradine knew no kung fu when he was cast and leaned on his training as a dancer.

What was the nickname of the cut-down Winchester carried by Steve McQueen's Josh Randall?

The Mare's Leg: the hefty cartridges on McQueen's gun belt were only for show, chosen because they looked more impressive, and were too big for the sawn-off rifle to fire.

Which Steve McQueen series spun off from a 1958 episode of Trackdown?

Wanted Dead or Alive: when its producers would not release him to make The Magnificent Seven, McQueen is said to have staged a car crash and used the sick leave to shoot the film.

Which 1955 ABC Western made a star of Clint Walker as a towering drifter roaming the frontier?

Cheyenne: when Clint Walker walked out in 1958 over his studio contract, Warner Bros. carried on for a whole season without its star, slotting in a substitute drifter named Bronco Layne.

Gene Barry's Bat Masterson preferred to get out of trouble using what rather than a gun?

A cane: the real Bat Masterson left the frontier behind and spent his last years in New York as a boxing columnist and a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave him a federal job.

The High Chaparral followed the Cannon family's cattle ranch in which territory of the 1870s?

Arizona: instead of a Hollywood backlot, the cast and crew went to the real desert, shooting the outdoor scenes at Old Tucson and in nearby Saguaro National Park.

Which 1989 miniseries starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as retired Texas Rangers?

Lonesome Dove: its author meant the story as an anti-Western that punctured the cowboy myth, then watched the public embrace it as what he called a Gone with the Wind of the West.

Alias Smith and Jones was TV's answer to which late-1960s outlaw film?

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: the series added a catch of its own, a secret amnesty that frees its heroes only if they stay out of trouble for a year, while lawmen who know nothing of the deal keep hunting them.

Which 1960s science-fiction series did its creator first describe as a spacefaring Wagon Train, after the hit Western?

Star Trek was framed by Gene Roddenberry as a frontier show among the planets: each episode a self-contained adventure inside one continuing voyage, just as on the wagon series.

Which piece of classical music, written for an 1829 opera, became the galloping theme of The Lone Ranger?

William Tell Overture closes with the March of the Swiss Soldiers, a gallop from Rossini's last opera. The masked rider's adventures turned it into musical shorthand for a horse at full gallop.

Fess Parker's Davy Crockett adventures on Disney's television show set off a 1950s craze for which headgear?

Coonskin caps led a merchandise boom worth over $300 million by the end of 1955, all from a serial that began as just three episodes.

Which Bonanza regular went on to produce, direct and star in the frontier drama Little House on the Prairie?

Michael Landon moved from youngest son Little Joe to pioneer father Charles Ingalls a year after his first hit was cancelled, and wrote for the new show as well.

Which actor, later television's bionic Steve Austin, got his big break as Heath Barkley on The Big Valley?

Lee Majors was picked from more than 400 young hopefuls to play the family's hot-tempered outsider, and turned down Midnight Cowboy when the ranch saga was renewed.

In Kung Fu's monastery flashbacks, blind Master Po calls his young pupil Caine by which insect nickname?

Grasshopper came from a playful lesson about awareness, in which the sightless teacher pointed out the insect resting at the boy's feet.

Gail Davis starred as which real-life sharpshooter in a 1950s series made by Gene Autry's production company?

Annie Oakley kept little of the real markswoman's life beyond her aim: the show gave her a kid brother called Tagg and a deputy sheriff as her quiet admirer.

Which HBO series, based on a 1973 Michael Crichton film, is set in a frontier theme park staffed by androids?

Westworld lets paying guests act out any fantasy on robot hosts whose memories are wiped each night, until some of the machines begin to remember.

Which future 1970s box-office king spent three seasons as blacksmith Quint Asper on Gunsmoke?

Burt Reynolds beat 300 other actors to the newly invented part and left in 1965; he was later voted America's top box-office star five years running.

Which film star played rancher Jacob Dutton opposite Helen Mirren in the Yellowstone prequel 1923?

Harrison Ford plays the childless family patriarch who raised his brother's sons, steering the ranch through Prohibition, drought and the first tremors of the Great Depression.

Which singing cowgirl wrote Happy Trails, sung with her husband over the end credits of The Roy Rogers Show?

Dale Evans wrote some 200 songs and made more than 30 films, but on the couple's television series she played the owner of the Eureka Café.

Which saloon on Gunsmoke shared its name with a real Kansas cattle-town bar that burned down in 1885?

The Long Branch began with a bet on a ball game between cowboys and soldiers, and a later co-owner named it after his home town in New Jersey.

The Cartwrights' thousand-square-mile Ponderosa on Bonanza sat on the shore of which Sierra Nevada body of water?

Lake Tahoe later got a Ponderosa of its own: a theme park with a scale replica of the family's ranch house drew tourists near the shore until it closed in 2004.

Hugh O'Brian carried a long-barrelled Buntline Special as which real-life lawman in a 1955 ABC series?

Wyatt Earp probably never carried one: the gun came from a 1931 biography its author later admitted was highly fictionalized, yet the show's 12-inch barrel still set off a toy craze.

Guy Williams played which sword-fighting title hero for Disney before becoming the father in Lost in Space?

Zorro called for a duel in most episodes, so its star trained with the Belgian fencing master who had coached Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks.

Which actor, later the title villain of Kill Bill, played wandering Shaolin monk Caine in Kung Fu?

David Carradine came back to the part in a 1986 television film, then spent the 1990s playing the original monk's grandson and namesake in a sequel series.

Which actor played both Sheriff Seth Bullock in Deadwood and Marshal Raylan Givens in Justified?

Timothy Olyphant earned an Emmy nomination in 2011 for the modern-day lawman, and returned to both badges years later, in a 2019 film and a 2023 miniseries.

Robin Weigert earned an Emmy nomination as which hard-living real frontierswoman in HBO's Deadwood?

Calamity Jane rides into the camp alongside Wild Bill Hickok, and later helps the town doctor nurse the sick.

Which German Shepherd was adopted by the cavalry at Fort Apache with orphan boy Rusty in a 1950s series?

Rin Tin Tin and the boy were the only survivors of a raid on their wagon train, and the soldiers who took them in made the youngster an honorary corporal.

Which child actress beat more than 500 others to play Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie?

Melissa Gilbert played the family's second daughter for the whole run, from 1974 to 1983, and heard she had won the part from a schoolmate.

ABC's The Young Riders followed a band of teenage horsemen working for which short-lived frontier mail service?

The Pony Express crew included teenage versions of real legends, with Josh Brolin as a young Wild Bill Hickok and Stephen Baldwin as Buffalo Bill Cody.

Which 2012 miniseries starring Kevin Costner, set in Appalachia but filmed in Romania, drew record cable audiences?

Hatfields & McCoys pulled 13.9 million viewers to its first part, then the biggest non-sports audience in ad-supported cable history, and won its lead an Emmy as Devil Anse.

Which moustachioed, gravel-voiced actor led the wagon train as Shea Brennan in the Yellowstone prequel 1883?

Sam Elliott plays a former Union Army captain turned Pinkerton man, forever warning his charges of the danger and tragedy waiting on the trail.

Which English film star played Lady Cornelia Locke, crossing 1890 America in search of revenge, in The English?

Emily Blunt plays an aristocrat hunting the man she blames for her son's death, riding with a Pawnee former cavalryman played by Chaske Spencer.

Ben Cartwright's three sons on Bonanza had the same father but differed in which family detail?

Each had a different mother because the rancher had been widowed three times; flashback episodes gave his wives English, Swedish and French Creole roots.

Which actor won an Emmy as Marshal Dillon's limping deputy Chester before starring in the police drama McCloud?

Dennis Weaver, a decathlon winner in college, came up with the stiff-legged walk himself after a producer said a sidekick needed a flaw to look less heroic than the lead.

Which country music legend sang the theme song over the titles of the 1959 Western series The Rebel?

Johnny Cash's recording was held back as a single until April 1961, shortly before the series ended, and he turned up as a villain in one episode.

Which English actress played Beth, the ferocious daughter of rancher John Dutton, on Yellowstone?

Kelly Reilly had been Mary Morstan in two Sherlock Holmes films and a twice Olivier-nominated star of the London stage before she joined the ranch saga in 2018.

Ross Martin played which gadget-building master of disguise, partner to agent James West, on The Wild Wild West?

Artemus Gordon was, in his actor's words, a show-off's showcase: the part let him play over 100 different characters and try dozens of dialects.

Which star of the 1950s series Medic became famous as gun-for-hire Paladin in Have Gun – Will Travel?

Richard Boone directed 28 episodes himself, and later joked that his 1970s lawman Hec Ramsey was the same man, only fatter.

Which 1960s sitcom followed the misfit cavalrymen of Fort Courage and their business partners, the Hekawi tribe?

F Troop made its fort a dumping ground for the Army's least useful soldiers: two earlier commanders had deserted and a third suffered a nervous breakdown.

Which former Mouseketeer earned an Emmy nomination at 13 as Mark McCain, the hero's son on The Rifleman?

Johnny Crawford was cut when Disney halved its first club of 24 children, then became a teen idol with four Top 40 hits in the early 1960s.

On Rawhide, Paul Brinegar played which cantankerous trail cook with the first names George Washington?

Wishbone fed the drovers for eight seasons, and his actor revived the character decades later in a 1991 television film full of nods to old cowboy shows.

Which Battlestar Galactica star played Victoria Moretti, the sheriff's sharp-tongued deputy known as Vic, on Longmire?

Katee Sackhoff, the fighter pilot Starbuck in her earlier hit, played a former Philadelphia homicide detective transplanted to rural Wyoming.

Which 2017 Netflix miniseries is set around La Belle, a New Mexico mining town populated almost entirely by women?

Godless leaves the town to its widows after a mining accident kills nearly all the men, with Jeff Daniels as the outlaw whose gang threatens them.

Which Evil Dead star played a Harvard-educated lawyer turned bounty hunter in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.?

Bruce Campbell's hero is hired by robber barons to catch the outlaw who killed his father, in a cult Fox series that kept slipping science fiction into the frontier.

On a 1957–1962 NBC series, left-handed gunman Jim Hardie was a special agent for which real frontier company?

Wells Fargo gave its name to the NBC series, whose hero was invented but shaped by the life story of one of the firm's real detectives.

Rancher-pilot Sky King chased rustlers and spies from the cockpit of which twin-engine Cessna?

The Songbird was really two aircraft over the run, a Cessna T-50 and later a 310B, flown from the Flying Crown Ranch that the hero shared with his niece Penny.

David Oyelowo played which formerly enslaved frontier deputy marshal in a 2023 Paramount+ Western series?

Bass Reeves is credited with more than 3,000 arrests, once had to bring in his own son, and is one suggested inspiration for the Lone Ranger.

Which palomino, born Golden Cloud, carried Maid Marian in a 1938 Robin Hood film before partnering Roy Rogers?

Trigger was mounted after his death in 1965 and shown in his owner's museum; after it closed, the preserved horse sold at auction in 2010 for $266,500.

Which white stallion chose to carry the Lone Ranger after the masked hero saved him from an enraged buffalo?

Silver grew famous enough to earn a comic book of his own, which ran for 34 issues from 1952 and made the horse a hero in his own right.

Tonto first rode a horse called White Feller before switching to which pinto as his regular mount?

Scout is said to be a pinto because the makers of a 1938 film serial feared two white horses would confuse audiences, and the spotted look went down so well that it stuck.

Which horse of singing cowboy Gene Autry starred in 26 episodes of his own 1950s adventure series?

Champion was played by three official horses across the films and television shows; the singer bought the original for just $75.

Which buckskin Quarter Horse did Roy Rogers's wife and co-star ride on the couple's 1950s television series?

Buttermilk and his palomino stablemate were sold as toy replicas and even lamps, and after he died in 1972 his hide was mounted for the family museum.

On the 1950s series The Cisco Kid, the title hero rode which horse while sidekick Pancho rode Loco?

Diablo's rider was Duncan Renaldo, who joked that co-star Leo Carrillo's accent was so exaggerated that by the end of a shoot nobody on set could speak normal English.

Which stallion would let only orphan Joey ride him on NBC's Broken Wheel Ranch from 1955 to 1960?

Fury was played by a saddlebred stallion whom his trainer nicknamed Beaut, because the horse had already starred as Black Beauty.

William Boyd's black-clad cowboy hero rode which white horse through his B-movies and 1950s television series?

Topper carried a hero who broke the genre's rules: a white-haired good guy dressed in black, hat included, when black hats were supposed to mark the villain.

Young Ken McLaughlin raised which horse on Wyoming's Goose Bar Ranch in a 1950s series based on a Mary O'Hara novel?

Flicka's show was lavishly made and lasted a single season, yet reruns kept the horse and her young owner on screens for many years.

In Disney's 1950s adventure series, Don Diego de la Vega summons which black horse with a whistle?

Tornado could fetch the keys to a jail cell on command; for the episodes set in Monterey he gave way to a white horse named Phantom.

Which actor served out his six-year Bonanza contract, then left, so eldest son Adam was written out?

Pernell Roberts tired of the scripts and went back to the stage; viewers were told his character had moved away, and he later became television's Trapper John, M.D.