Evolution of Television Photo Essay by CBS

This was so relevant to what I've been doing that I just have to post the link to it.  Thanks, CBS.  Evolution of Television

Dogies and Deuces

What the hell is a “dogie”?  And why do you have to keep them moving?

Frankie Laine had the answer:  your true love is waiting at the end of the line.  Each week,  a young and devastatingly handsome Clint Eastwood and the rest of the Rawhide cast drove “disapproving” cattle through the perils of outaws, Indians, the wilderness and each other and provided moral guidance to a generation of American boys (myself, of course, included.)  They were ubiquitous:  in 1959, 26 Western series competed for airtime, and eight of the top ten ratings went to Westerns. 

And I can still sing (privately, of course) many of the theme songs, complete with all the lyrics; so powerful was the influence of Westerns in the 50s and 60s that their songs and stories are indelibly imbedded in my mind.  I almost bought an expensive new hat the other day mainly because it was a Stetson.

A killer’s business card read “Have Gun Will Travel.”  Johnny Yuma was a rebel (and sounded an awful lot like Johnny Cash!)  I was introduced to classical music, the “William Tell Overture,” by Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger and symphonic splendor by Wagon Train and Bonanza.

And, of course, who was the tall, dark stranger there?  “Maverick is his name.”

These were the male role models of the postwar generation—and a strong link back to the role models of our fathers, as well.  Westerns had, of course, been a staple of “B” movies of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s (and of radio as well).   For an entire generation who’d witness Depression and impending war, they promoted the virtues of independence, self-reliance, physical power and gunfighting skill—virtues that in real life had withered away along with the frontier that bred them.

   

The sudden emergence of a new medium, television, demanded a vast supply of stories, and immediately, and Hollywood was able to recycle ready-made matinee movies-- The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, The Cisco Kid—and “C” list stars like James Arness, William Boyd and Ronald Reagan (who, among other accomplishments,  hosted Death Valley Days).  The “Greatest Generation” thus passed along their myths and values to the succeeding baby boomers.

Or so they thought.  But something happened in the transmission; somehow, some subversive force crept in.

Nobody apparently thought much of it at the time, but a surprising number of these “heroes” were former Confederates (a conceit resurrected in Joss Whedon’s late, lamented Firefly):   Johnny Yuma, Rowdy Yates, The Lone Ranger, Paladin, Josh Randall (Steve McQueen’s character in Wanted Dead or Alive) and, of course, the Maverick brothers.

They were conveniently scrubbed of overt racism (at least as it was understood at the time), but they exemplified plenty of other anti-authoritarian, “rebel” values.  I even learned to play poker from watching Maverick—hardly a prevailing establishment skill.  They drank, smoked, and exhibited an evident contempt for corrupt or inept representatives of “respectable” society, including law enforcement.  Having lost a war, they were perpetual outsiders, true to their own internal codes of conduct but hostile to those imposed upon them.

Just saying: is it just coincidence that in the wake of this wave of Westerns, my generation elected two Californians (one a certified cowboy actor) and two Texans?  Or that, buried deep within my liberal consciousness, plays the soundtrack of rebellion?

Burn the land and boil the sea.  You can’t take the sky from me.

P.S.:  here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a list of TV Westerns.