The Rebel

I was an avid fan of "The Rebel" when it first came out and I was in high school. I was a shy, skinny kid who tended to get rammed into the hallway lockers by the beefy kids bruising by, so I liked the image portrayed in "The Rebel". In contrast to the big, imposing guys in the TV westerns of the late 50's and early 60's such as James Garner, Clint Walker, and Chuck Conners, Nick Adams playing Johnny Yuma was a small guy who was even kind of asking for it by wearing a Confederate cap which designated him as someone the big guys would take as a loser and therefore, a temptation to bully. The very first episode introduces Johnny Yuma as a loner riding into a small western town and leading his horse to the water trough. The town toughs immediately see the Confederate cap and start shoving him around. "Don't push," Yuma says not in a whiny voice but with warning menace. "You aught to be used to being pushed by now, Reb," one of the toughs smirks. By the time this episode is over, Johnny Yuma has emptied his Confederate cap and ball pistol into them and blasted them and with his sawed off double barreled shotgun. Then, he grabs from his saddle bag a cluster of dynamite with the fuse already fashioned, lights it, storms to the saloon, and tosses the explosive package over the swinging doors. Boom! Each week, Johnny Yuma encountered another version of bullying by the bad guys and apathy by the onlookers which kind of resembled Will Kane's isolation in "High Noon." And each week Johnny Yuma would fight and blast his way to vengeance and justice. I haven't seen any of "The Rebel" episodes for almost 40 years. On top of that I have been living in Asia since 1969. But in light of what I have read about the recent tendency in American high schools for certain alienated students to keep journals like Johnny Yuma did and to one day march into the cafeteria blasting away, I wonder if "The Rebel" serves as catharsis or provocation. Or just good entertainment.

Character actor Nick Adams was an unlikely choice for the lead on an action-packed television western series where the genre was dominated by "Gunsmoke","Wagon Train","Have Gun Will Travel","The Rifleman",and "Tales of Wells Fargo",and "Cheyenne" just to name a few were the stars that dominated the "western" genre were Ward Bond,Robert Horton,Chuck Connors,not to mention James Arness and Clint Walker. "The Rebel" came out when the television landscape was dominated by "westerns",and "family situation comedies" that ruled the late-1950's and early-1960's. The series portrays the adventures of a young Confederate Army veteran named Johnny Yuma(Nick Adams)who was an inspiring writer who kept details of his activities in his journal. Haunted by the memories of the Civil War,Yuma,in search of inner peace,roams the American West specifically the Texas Hill Country and the South Texas plains who also fights injustice wherever he finds it and takes care of manners in his own hands with a double-barreled sawed off shotgun. Whereas virtually all the others "westerns" consisted of work,romance and adventure,"The Rebel" was about Johnny Yuma "finding himself" and along the way his encounters with ruthless gunslingers,hostile villains,and the like while Johnny Yuma comes out of these episodes "victorious".

Out of the 76 episodes that this series produced,all in classic black-and-white,"The Rebel" had Nick Adams as not only the star of the series,but also was involved with the show's design,inception,and writing,not to mention serving as its creator and executive producer along with producer Andrew J. Fenady(who appeared twice in the series once as United States Army General Philip Sheridan in the episode "Johnny Yuma at Appomattox"). The series was one of the few that producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman,through their production company Goodson-Todman Productions did outside of their game show ventures. The other series that Goodson and Todman produced was another western called "Branded" starring Chuck Connors that ran for 23 episodes. "The Rebel" originally aired on ABC-TV from October 4,1959 until the series finale on June 18,1961. The show's sponsor was the Proctor & Gamble Company. This series was the first "teenage western" whose audiences were the younger crowd. The show's title song was done by Johnny Cash. It was grand western,but it ended up getting canceled with the powers that be over at ABC entered into a hostile relationship with the company that produced the series,ending up canceling one of their top rated shows. In 1962,"The Rebel" was picked up by NBC in repeats as a mid-season replacement where all 76 episodes were re-runs. After that the series went into syndication in repeats.

This is one of the best series that was made. The Rebel was a term given to the South and if anyone studied their untainted history they would see that they were not Rebels but good people. One person wrote derogatory comments which many liked. Jonny Yuma was a man and he went about doing good and seeking justice unlike the northern people. It shows a contrast which exists to this day about greed and helping others, The South was better at helping others while the northerners were greedy. That is what the civil war was about. The Northern greed as they needed the south's wealth. the North took it by force and labeled the ones who wished to leave the union as rebels. It is a great story of how the south stood for people and would help those in need.

In the 50s, as a kid, I watched Gunsmoke, Maverick, Have Gun Will Travel and the others.

When Johnny Yuma, 'The Rebel' came along, there was no need to watch the others. When it went off the air in two short years, I never watched Westerns again. This series said it all, the only one I thought projected the West as it might have been, the only one worth looking back at 50 years later.

It had decent scripts and all the technical trappings, but Nick Adams was a rebel from the first episode to the last.

I never cared for much Nick did before or after 'Rebel' but James Dean would have been proud of what his friend did in bringing a 'Rebel Without a Cause' to the west. I think Nick wanted it this way

One of the best Western series of all time. Johnny Yuma, The Rebel took no grief from anybody and was quick to help the underdog defeat injustice. I personally like the on going feature of Johnny's writing in his journal of his travels and people he meet along the way. I am proud to have all 76 episodes in my VHS collection.