The Virginian

With no less than the presidential imprimatur of Theodore Roosevelt on the novel by his good friend Owen Wister, many consider The Virginian to be the first realistic western novel. Before that the rather discredited prose of people like Ned Buntline dominated the field and none of their 'literature' survives today.

This television series takes the basic characters of The Virginian, Trampas, Steve, and Molly Wood from the novel and makes them all friends. The guys are foreman and his two best buddies all working at Shiloh Ranch. They're played by James Drury, Doug McClure, and Gary Clarke. Pippa Scott plays Molly Wood, school teacher in the novel, but in the TV series newspaper editor of the Medicine Bow periodical. The Shiloh ranch is owned by Judge Garth who lives there with his daughter Roberta Shore.

That's how it started but regulars came and went. The Shiloh ranch changed hands first to John McIntire and his real life wife Jeanette Nolan. Later on it went to Stewart Granger and the series changed its name to Men Of Shiloh as the women regulars were all eliminated. And we never learned what The Virginian's real name was or his past as in the novel.

The Virginian had the distinction of being the first 90 minute series on television. It must have been grueling shoot, it's like shooting several feature films in a year. It also had some name guest stars like that other series from Revue Productions Wagon Train.

The Virginian ran for 9 seasons before NBC pulled the plug. But in that time it gave us good and memorable television western shows.

Good series, it's sad it's been kinda forgotten. It's easy to write it off as another 'Bonanza' knockoff-Big Valley, High Chapperell, for example, but it wasn't that, not at all. In one episode, you get to see Lee J Cobb, Richard Anderson, Harry Morgan, Arthur Hunnicutt and a host of other Very familiar character actors doing the 'Stagecoach' routine-while McClure, Drury and co weren't exactly chopped liver either.

It had heart, it was well acted and was on forever. I would watch this over Bonanza any day.

*** outta ****

Quite simply, I grew up watching 'The Virginian' and I have to thank it, for being very watchable, and mainly for keeping my attention span for 90 minutes. This was unheard of for a show in those days. It led me to becoming an avid cinema addict, for which I am eternally grateful. Probably my favourite western series, although 'Alias Smith and Jones' threatened to equal it until Pete Duell committed suicide. Great memories, from the early days of colour and BBC2, I believe...

I first saw the Virginian in England in the 1960s. It became my favorite Western series. The characters were honest, likable and honorable. The acting was good and the stories were compelling and well written. The show also seemed more subtle and complex than the average western series. The stories usually had a moral message and the good guys always came out on top.James Drury, Doug McClure and Lee J.Cobb were all excellent.

The Virginian came from a time when American TV shows were very popular in the UK.During the 1960s and 1970s we tended to see a lot of American shows in prime-time in Britain, but that changed in the 1980s. This show is being shown on Encore and I'm enjoying watching it in color for the first time.

This was an ambitious series, which made use of first class actors and magnificent location photography.

In its early years the series had five main characters: Judge Garth, owner of Shiloh, a great cattle ranch in Wyoming; his innocent young daughter Betsy; the Virginian, his heroic foreman; and two likeable ranch hands, Trampas and Steve. The relationships between these five, as they were developed and tested, provided the most affecting and amusing moments.

The series gave us strong, intelligent stories, which could be tragic or light-hearted, and often the direction was imaginative, sometimes even poetic. Issues such as injustice through prejudice, individual responsibility and the necessity for compromise were explored, and 'Shiloh' came to stand for the virtues of tolerance, compassion, courage and optimism. Compared with earlier Western series, The Virginian was amazingly deep yet subtle.

As the series ran on over the years it created a hopeful vision of a society slowly progressing towards order and peace.