The Rifleman

As a kid growing up in the 70s, "The Rifleman" was one the only other western besides "Wild, Wild, West" that I really liked--I envied Mark McCain and the great father he had on the show (played by Connors). Yes, each show was a morality play but so were many other shows of the 50s & 60s (including "Star Trek"). They made their point at a time when there was still some innocence in America, and even taught tolerance for people from other countries/cultures (for example, in the episode of "Rifleman" where a Japanese man gets insulted & pushed into a fight with one of the locals & uses Judo to defend himself). Lucas McCain taught his son by example NEVER to use a gun or fight unless it was self-defense. It sounds silly now, but when I was a kid I wished my dad had explained things to me the same way Chuck Connors did to his son in the show--ah well, thank goodness for TV writers! :)

I loved the opening to the Rifleman. It starts out with Chuck Connors firing off a salvo from that cool looking Winchester slung down low. Man, he meant business. And then the theme song began. I just had to watch it. I saw many episodes in reruns, when I was about 10 or 11, in the middle 60's , usually on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. The original was a little before my time. It was really my kind of show. Great cast. Luke was great. (Ah Paaaah!)Chuck Connors was awesome! And you knew that at some point in the show he was going to have to use that awesome rifle. I still remember the episode where he had a big fist fight and got a fat lip and winced and then chuckled while taking a sip of coffee to end the show. That was back in the day when Westerns were king.

I first saw this show as a 6-year-old kid and didn't think too much of it at first but once I got a few years older, I really started to appreciate it and now I consider it one of my all-time favorites...not so much as a replication of authentic Western living (I recall Chuck Connors' quote during the show's run: "We offer relaxing entertainment. If you want period realism, go read a book")as it was an interesting show with GREAT background music by Herschel Burke Gilbert, one of my all-time favorite TV composers. I've noticed that people usually have pretty strong opinions about the show....they either really like it or they hate it...usually those who hate the show focus on the violence (they claim Lucas would kill over nothing, which certainly never happened in any episode)...and those who love the show tend to focus on...well, the violence! I've heard comments like, "If there were N number of Rifleman episodes, the body count during the show's run would be >N"...a funny quote, to be sure, but simply not true. In fact, there were episodes where a bad guy would draw on Lucas, he'd sense it, and fire near him to show that "I've got enough firepower to cut you in half"..there'd be other episodes when somebody would draw a gun and Lucas would "sting their hand" to keep from having to shoot them. (hokey, yeah, but that's TV for ya). You have to remember that the TV audience and the ABC network in particular expected action in its Westerns and crime dramas. The ABC network wanted a lot of action in its shows at that time because they were trying hard to get established as a network and compete with NBC and CBS. Some claim "The Rifleman" was something of a gimmick show. It slipped close to becoming one from time to time but the warm interaction between Connors and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark were part of what kept the show from becoming a "Colt .45" or "Hotel de Paree" period parody. Fans of the show often mention the cinematography. Yes, it was good, indeed. In fact, until I started seeing episodes on DVD, I didn't know just how good the film work was. Was it a grim show? No. Those who really don't care for dramatic, near-baroque background music probably get that "grim" idea. Was Micah the sheriff near-useless? Yes, I admit that. Lucas usually ended up being a one-man North Fork SWAT team, to be sure. But man oh man, could a viewer get revved up! They got great character actors like Jack Elam, Martin Landau, James Coburn, and John Anderson to play bad guys...and they'd just work you to this crescendo, just get you where you couldn't wait for Lucas to get out that gun and wail on' em! I'd recommend by-passing most of the last-season (1962-63) episodes of the show. By then, Johnny's Mark was now into puberty, Chuck looks bored and tired of the show (he, in fact, WAS tired of doing it and afraid of being typecast by the Lucas character by then)and although Patricia Blair looks great, the shows are pretty uneventful and stale and they tried too much to play to the Ricky Nelson angle and give Crawford an excuse to sing. "The Rifleman" has really aged well, from the dramatic opening sequence right down to the Four Star Banner logo at the end. It's a TV classic near and dear to my heart, regardless of the body count, heh heh...

I think much of the success of "The Rifleman" TV series was due to the casting of Chuck Connors as the "hero." We quickly grew used to him in this part but at the time the series started, he was probably regarded by many casting directors as a "bad guy" -- such as the part he played in "The Big Country." There was something mean and menacing about him. But by casting him as the boy's father in "The Rifleman," the show used Connors' toughness to counteract the sentimentality that might otherwise have enveloped this series. (Can you imagine how syrupy "The Rifleman" would have been had Doug McClure played the lead?)

After some people thought that Chuck Conners as the "bad guy" in such films as "The Big Country",it was quickly misjudged by his character when he played Lucas McCain in "The Rifleman". The show was centered around him and his son Mark in the town of Northfolk. But the coolest thing on that show was that Winchester rifle he had,and he could fire at any range from it!!! He never used a six shooter. The way he took on the baddies with that rifle was the absolute trademark of that show which was one of the coolest and most exciting TV westerns ever to come out of the 1950's,and to this day it still holds up to other TV westerns that would endure years later. A great classic from that golden age of grand TV.