Wanted: Dead or Alive

It seems to me that Steve McQueen's Wanted: Dead or Alive is a standout from many of the other Westerns of the great Western era, despite the intense competition of Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, and all the rest, because of McQueen himself and many great stories shown throughout its three years, credited to the talents of the superb writers mentioned by other reviewers. I think too much emphasis is put on the technical aspects of the sawed-off Winchester. Most viewers thought--and think--it is a cool gun because of the looks and the noise it makes, and don't care enough to analyze its workings. It's a TV prop, for heaven's sake. McQueen used it effectively enough to impress his viewers. My only criticism is that he tended to blow away everybody he aimed at, when he could have been a little more discriminating.

But again, the reason I watch the show--on the Westerns channel, by the way--is for the stories. There are some really different stories, that make you think, some with twist endings, some really original tales on this show. I especially like the ones with kids in them, that I can share with the little kids in my family--the Christmas story; the one about the little boy (Richard Eyer) who is the outlaw's adopted son; and also the karate story with actor Robert Kino. The importance of story is what we're missing in many of today's TV and movie offerings, and that is why I like many of the older classic TV shows.

I was not expecting such high quality when I first starting watching this show, as I was new to it (I was a year old when it was released, so never saw it firsthand) but am now a fan of the very young Steve McQueen as well as the older McQueen whose movies I remember later in my life. It's wonderful that so many of these shows are being rebroadcast!

Wanted, Dead or Alive was a star vehicle in the truest sense of the term. It was a western calculated to exhibit the talent and charisma of its star, Steve McQueen. It lasted for three seasons before McQueen decided to devote full time to the big screen.

McQueen was after some of the most dangerous fellows in the old west, plenty who could shoot a lot better than he. His character Josh Randall needed an equalizer.

In John Wayne's classic western El Dorado, you remember that Duke discovers that James Caan can't hit the broad side of a mountain with a regular six shooter. Before going to El Dorado to aid Robert Mitchum, they stop off and see a gunsmith who fixes Caan up with a Josh Randall special. After that Caan's of considerable help to Wayne and Mitchum.

Of course the sawed off shotgun was also an evil weapon in the wrong hands. Take note of the Dan Duryea western, The Bounty Killer, a very Freudian piece where Duryea becomes hated and feared as a bounty hunter until an innocent bystander gets shot with it.

But with McQueen you knew the weapon was on the side of law and order. As for his Josh Randall character, you can see a bit of him in all the people Steve McQueen brought to the screen like Virgil Hilts, Nevada Smith, all the way to his last two films, Tom Horn and Pappa Thorsen.

Wanted, Dead or Alive was most folks first exposure to a screen legend. I wish that westerns like that were made today.

I'm just old enough to remember when Wanted Dead or Alive was first run, when I first went to the show to see The Magnificent Seven, and when I first realized Steve McQueen was on his way to being a "star".

I received the boxed set of the first season of this groundbreaking show this past Christmas and have been having great fun with it ever since. McQueen is the real star of the show, honing his craft for later career moves, with the truly offbeat story lines and resolutions coming in a close second.

Forget that it's 1877, he was in the Union Army in 1864, which would make him 8-10 years older than his real age at the time. Forget that his sawed off Winchester 1892 didn't exist in this time frame, that it fired short pistol ammunition like .44-40 and possibly .45 Colt, that it couldn't possibly accept the long .30-30 cartridges on his belt that weren't developed until the Winchester 1894 came along. In the first episode he has to bury a murdered doctor and he pulls a U.S. military shovel circa 1944 from under his saddle. While he puts 19th century cuffs on some prisoners, ties some with rope, on one occasion he puts old fashioned leg irons on a prisoner's hands, way too dangerous and way too stupid for a pro like Josh Randall. In a feat too fantastic to believe, an outlaw takes away his sawed off Winchester and removes the firing pin without the aid of tools and without so much as removing the bolt from the receiver. Of course there's also that sawed off rifle of his that sometimes has a D-ring on the lever and sometimes a teardrop ring, a gun barrel that changes from round to hexagon, and a gun barrel that always has a bigger bore than the .30 caliber slug in a .30-30 shell. And let's not forget that the outdoor scenes seldom match the geography of the story lines and that more times than not they use the same western street sound stage for towns ranging from Wyoming to Arizona to Texas with just the store front names changing! All this in just the first half of the first season. LOL

The show is all about watching McQueen, watching the offbeat stories that sometimes beg for more time for storytelling, and watching for all the goofs. It's great fun and well worth the time even 50 years later!

"Wanted-Dead or Alive" was a half hour western series appearing on CBS television for three seasons from 1958-1961. The series actually got its start as an episode of another popular TV series of the time, "Trackdown", during the second half of the '57-'58 TV season. "Wanted-Dead or Alive" starred Steve McQueen as bounty hunter Josh Randall in what was a very good start to an outstanding acting career in feature films. As played by McQueen, Josh Randall was the most laconic of a broad television landscape of would-be laconic western series heroes.

Josh Randall carried a sawed-off 44/40 Winchester carbine (his "Mare's Leg", as he called it) on his hip instead of the traditional Colt 45 pistol. This of course played into the TV "cool factor" as his weapon made a much louder, more devastating sound when fired and of course had much more "stopping power" upon impact with the intended victim. Cool! Although "Wanted-Dead or Alive" was truly nothing out of the ordinary in terms of content or quality compared to other like fare of the period but Steve McQueen as Josh Randall and his unique weapon made this a "must watch" series. Only Paladin was better and "cooler" than Josh.

This show has been a favorite of mine from the time it first aired in the late fifties. As another reviewer astutely pointed out, TV westerns of the day were rife with 'gimmick' weapons such as "The Rifleman"'s "rifle", or maybe "Yancy Derringer's", umm, "Derringer". In "Wanted Dead Or Alive", the gimmick weapon-du-jour was Josh Randall's sawed-off Winchester. These "weapons" were never meant to portray reality (well, "Yancy Derringer's" Derringer may be an exception). Rather, they were meant to catch the attention of those rabid "baby boomer" kids whose parents were fortunate enough to own a television. Realistic or not, these weapons were "cool" to every "boomer" kid, and the networks were keenly aware of that fact. As such, the networks may have felt compelled to "out-weapon" one another from time to time. Few who were born after, including most all of the reviewers here who have focused on the technical inaccuracies, ambiguities, and anachronisms of Josh Randall's weapon, have meaningful first-hand insight into what any of this was about.

"MeTV" has been airing re-runs of "Wanted Dead Or Alive" for several months now. I watch it every day. To me, it has been like renewing the acquaintance of a long-lost friend. Steve McQueen's portrayal of the "benevolent bounty hunter" is so convincing, and the story lines so compelling, that you come away believing that bounty hunters were the ultimate "good guys". And as those of us "boomer kids" fondly remember, the "good guys" always won.

Steve McQueen's first big exposure in either film or television was, of course, "The Blob", the filming of which was completed long before WDOA went into production. According to IMDb, it was McQueen's performance in "The Blob" that caught the attention of Four-Star executive Dick Powell. This, in turn, resulted in McQueen's casting as Josh Randall. As I recall, it was some time after "Wanted Dead Or Alive" first aired on television that "The Blob" finally went into theatrical release. By that time, McQueen was already a "star" (at least to us "boomer" kids), and we went to the theater, not just to see "The Blob", but also to see "Josh Randall" as a "teenager". Talk about an anachronism!!