The Gray Ghost

I think this was one of the better shows on TV. It was fairly accurate to history which was unusual for Hollywood. Tod Andrews was great as Mosby. This show showed a side of the Confederacy that some people didn't like. It actually showed a confederate as a hero. I believe that this was the reason the show did not last more than one season. All in all this was a very good show and one I would recommend especially to civil war buffs. The shows were based on events that happened as Major Mosby and his troops fought for what they believed. It is a shame that we do not have more episodes of this show to be able to view now. I plan on getting all of the episodes on DVD so that I can enjoy them again. I watched this show when I was a kid and I like it as much now as I did then.

The Gray Ghost aired in Australia in about 1959, when I was 9 or 10. I can remember the theme song, and little bits from various episodes. The show was my introduction to the American Civil War, including some basic US geography. To my young mind the northern capital, Washington, was farther north. The show taught me that Washington was a southern city, and that there was military activity around it.

I remember allusions to the Mason-Dixon line, and West Virgina--where one of the main characters (Sgt Miles?) came from. I remember an exchange between Mosby and a young lady driving a buck-board outside Washington. She had a picnic basket--perhaps delivering it to her Union boyfriend, which was confiscated by Mosby, and after indicating that she had prepared one of the items herself, Mosby called back with "Miles, save the (whatever) for me". And then he gave a salute and a half- wave." It was romantic and gallant.

Through the mists of my memories, it was a good show that taught me that there are two sides to every war.

This series first aired when I was 12; at that time, and I had just begin to develop an interest in the War between the States. Although it was hard to find at times due to the limitation on available channels, I did manage to watch even syndicated showings over the two or three years following its initial telecast season (1957-58). I would love to get this 39-episode series on DVD, but I have been able to find only one set, which has 27 episodes, with the note that the remaining ones apparently have been lost forever :-(

I have the two books by Virgil Carrington Jones upon which this series was based, and they are great reads. Maybe I will go with the "short" set since no complete set seems to be available, but I do recommend it as great adventure without the graphic violence seen in so much television nowadays.

I was reading the letters in the local fish-wrap's TV page yesterday, & somebody asked about The Gray Ghost, saying his friends thought he was crazy. I used to love that show....I couldn't think of any theme music for it, so had to content myself with the theme from "Swamp Fox"(of course, starring Lt Frank Drebbin, aka Leslie Nielsen as Francis Marion), but when I got to the part "...got no shelter when it rains, all we've got are Yankee brains.." I went, "Hey, that ain't right." Tried to find something on YouTube, but no luck, but actually, I think maybe I'd rather just remember it as really good. I've only run across a few shows that really have stood the test of time besides the mega-classics: I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, Real McCoys, Dobie, and The Bob Cummings Show/Love That Bob.

The series tried to do justice to a man who would require a full length movie for that purpose with a great deal more violence then television in the 1950s was able to display.

However, the overall thrust of the show was excellent in that it showed the humanity and valor of BOTH sides of the war, Confederate and Union. There are villains, but often they are people trying to take advantage of a tragic situation rather than being members of the opposing armed forces. Naturally, as it was only a half hour long and aimed at a younger audience, every effort was made to keep the violence and bloodshed to a minimum - but that didn't preclude a lot of great adventure and more than enough 'fightin'.

No effort was made to present Mosby realistically PHYSICALLY on the show. Tod Andrews was a fairly good sized fellow while Mosby was quite small (delicate actually) who wasn't more than about 5 foot 3 inches or so and never weighed more than about 128 pounds. As well, the producers of the series avoided the reality that had Mosby been captured by the Yankees he would have been hanged without trial by order of Ulysses S. Grant! Even at war's end, it took John Singleton Mosby over six months longer than just about every other Confederate officer to be paroled and return to civilian life! Up until Grant finally allowed him to be paroled, he existed as an outlaw with a price on his head hiding out in Northern Virginia where he had fought as a partisan.