The Restless Gun

John Payne does an excellent job in caring solutions to others problems.

Entertaining series based on the Six- Shooter radio series starring Jimmy Stewart portraying a wandering gunfighter named Britt Ponsett. That series ran 39 episodes from 1953 to 1954. Several of the radio scripts were used on the televised version, much like the early TV version of Gunsmoke starring James Arness used the fine radio scripts with WilliamConrad as Matt Dillon. Always a John Payne movie fan, I was thrilled to find this series via YouTube. This was his last hurrah as a regular TV performer. He made several guest appearances on series through the 70s. John Payne passed away in 1989.

The Restless Gun sports one of the all-time great television titles. The show itself was dark, gritty, and a little slow. The show's star, John Payne, was a competent actor who graced television and movie screens for four decades. In this series, the long-faced Payne, who was only 45 when the show premiered, seemed a little old for the part. He was a lot of things, but not particularly restless. In the whole, the show was fairly typical of TV Westerns. It was a 30-minute long morality play in which Payne's character was always heroic. The Restless Gun wasn't a bad oater, but it wasn't spectacular either. That is probably why it only lasted 78 episodes.

It is showing on GETTV as I am writing this. I enjoy the show. Vint Bonner is always on the move. He was the only star who was on every week. One week he is a shotgun guard the next he gets in the middle of a range war. You never know where he will show up or what his job will be. I don't know how he was able to afford to travel around all the time. I guess it was easier to do in the old west.

I also just watched two episodes on Get TV. It's always instructive to see television or films made early, when production was extremely sparse, and yet the drama is propelled forward by real actors, scripts and dialog.

The second episode I watched dealth with accepting new german immigrants, a timely theme in the late 50s, and now for that matter.

Most of what I got out of this episode, and the earlier one which dealt with crime, calling a young murderer 'crafted not just by himself, but by society', was that America no longer has any sensible judgement or morality, and everyone is just spewing agendas based on faulty information, instead of taking one step and case at a time. A methodical approach to secular justice is expressed in these smart episodes, something this country has utterly lost, at least in its public discourse.

Of course, one particular side will blame the other for this condition. They are wrong. Everyone is responsible, especially the people blaming others. Regardless, these are excellent shows, totally watchable, with a strong, smart, just lead in John Payne. It makes America today look bad, and it makes modern film and tv scripts look average in general.