Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok

Having almost nothing to do with the historical Wild Bill Hickok except for the name, this Guy Madison, Andy Divine series did have a lot of action, adventure, and comedy. As I recall the show began with Wild Bill riding his horse, Buckshot, in fast gallop while shooting his pistol at the camera. Way in back rode Andy Divide on his trusty steed, Joker, holding his hat and yelling in his gravel voice, "Hey, Bill, Wait for Me!"

Guy Madison had starred in a few feature length western films, most of them average at best. (I remember seeing one of his westerns in 3-D with arrows loosed into the audience). Though a rather handsome guy (no pun intended), his screen personality was somewhat bland. We buckaroos tuned in more to see Jingles than Wild Bill for Andy Divide was a funny sidekick, both in appearance and in high jinks. Wild Bill wasn't a fellow to mess with so there was plenty of hard riding along with straight shooting for kids of all ages to enjoy.

It was nice reading the other posts, for I too was a huge fan of The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock. Although I was very young, I still remember sitting on a hassock in front of the TV set on Saturday mornings, following the exploits of Wild Bill and, as he was referred to in the intro, "his pal" Jingles. Being so young and it being so long ago, I can't remember any of the plots or anything, but I do remember being 'totally' engrossed with the show. The last poster tweaked my memory about the sponsor too...I seem to remember the intro showing Wild Bill and Jingles zooming across the range on their horses while the Kellogg's sugar pops overlay flashed on the screen. What a thrill! At that time, for me, it just didn't get any better than that!

When these programs began they were sponsored by Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops which had a really snappy jingle stating the cereal had been ' shot with sugar, through and through ' and where Guy Madison as Wild Bill Hickok would shoot straight at the camera as if he was doing the loading of the sugar in the sugar pops ...

Originally called Sugar Pops in 1951, this name was later changed to Sugar Corn Pops, and then to Corn Pops, during a time when many cereals dropped the word Sugar from their titles ...

This process helps to prevent the Pops from going stale and from secreting a sticky substance that causes the corn pops to stick together (a problem caused by the method that the cereal is processed)...

Being a lifelong cereal eater I can attest to them tasting very much better back in that era than they have since the 1970s and today should not even be considered a decent cereal at all, unfortunately.

That Andy Devine always yelling at Wild Bill Hickok to slow down and allow his to catch up. Hickok's appaloosa Buckshot had a lot less weight to carry than Andy's trusty pinto steed Joker, given the handicap allowance, Andy was right to complain.

This television series had nothing to do with the story of the real James Butler Hickok, nicknamed Wild Bill by his contemporaries. You'd hardly know from this show that Hickok would meet an abrupt demise in Deadwood. Or that his famous tenure as Marshal of Abilene lasted slightly over a year.

Guy Madison was a fine Wild Bill, a cowboy hero in the tradition of movie cowboy heroes and Andy who had been doing sidekick roles for Roy Rogers in his feature films just prior to signing on for this television series was the comic relief as Wild Bill's deputy Jingles Jones. We all know how good a marshal Andy would have been, we have only The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for reference.

I can still hear Andy yelling impatiently at Wild Bill to slow down at the end of every episode. It was a tag line like the one where some knowledgeable citizen identified that masked man as the Lone Ranger.

Still I wouldn't mind if TVLand channel would acquire this series and run some of these. I don't care if they're black and white, no one else should either.

One of a dozen or so top of the line TV Westerns of the fifties. Just great fun for a young kid and someone to look up to. Just a wonderful part of my TV childhood.