Die Monroes

As a young man growing up in Jackson Hole I had the privilege of working as a stunt double, stand-in for one of the Schultz twins on the TV show "The Monroes". My cousin provided the horses for the show and got me the job for the summer. My favorite person on the set was Ben Johnson who played the one armed cowboy Sleeve. He played football with us kids and was very kind to us when we were treated mostly as invisible or in the way by the other stars especially Barbara Hershey who was a perfect snob. In nearly all of the episodes when you see one of the twins from the back or from far away or in any rough action that is really me.

Underrated TV western that sadly only lasted a season. The sweeping vistas on location in the Grand Teton National Park were memorable. Nice theme song by David Rose, who would later do "Little House on the Prarie". Michael Anderson and Barbara Hershey were creditable as the older siblings, while the younger ones were thankfully un-precocious! All and all among the more realistic westerns of the era. One of the twins, Kevin Schultz, would go on to portray Tom Sawyer in live action/cartoon "New Adventures of Huck Finn" later in the 1960s. My folks loved the big white Great Pyrenees dog so much that our next dog was a Great Pyrenees! In answer to an earlier reviewer, the dog's name was Snow.

My generation, I actually remember and liked "The Monroes", glad she got out of the sea gull stuff,

Look forward to seeing her on Chicago Hope. Is she the new "stong woman"? It'll be hard to top Christine Lahti, I'll watch just to see Barbara.

I was only ten/eleven, but remember this series as though it was yesterday. I think any girl my age at the time would have loved to be one of the Monroe family. It never occurred to me that they would have a hard life! It was a very romantic adventure and it was a shame it didn't last longer. I loved this brilliant series and will never forget it as one of my childhood loves.

If course at ten, I was deeply in love with Michael Anderson Jr. and Barbara Hershey has always been one of my favourite actresses, although even as I watched Hannah and her Sisters, I still associated her with the Monroes!

The Monroes was an unfortunately short lived series that never found its audience in the year it was on television. My guess is the expense of shooting the show completely on location in Wyoming was a factor in its cancellation.

The Monroe family had homesteaded a piece of ground that was in the middle of a pair of feuding cattle barons. This is reminiscent of the plot of the classic William Wyler western, The Big Country. The barons were the British Liam Sullivan, a very proper English gentleman, but who was rich and employed people who made sure he got his way. And the other group was headed by Robert Middleton who was a self righteous fellow a whole lot like Burl Ives from The Big Country.

There was no organized law around, these two guys made the law wherever their territory was. Adding to that was that The Monroes were orphans. Eldest son Michael Anderson, Jr. and eldest daughter Barbara Hershey barely teens themselves try to keep their younger siblings Keith and Kevin Schultz and Tammy Locke together as a unit. If this was civilization, they'd have been dumped on some relative or sent off to an orphanage.

Both Sullivan and Middleton would love to buy them out, but the kids stand their ground and attempt to make a home in the wilderness. The Monroes was a beautifully photographed family show and it was unfortunate it wasn't given more of a chance.