Pistols 'n' Petticoats

Pistols 'n' Petticoats debuted on CBS back in 1966 and back in those days CBS was known as the rural network. With such shows as Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres, this was the network of red state America in that decade. You could forget about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Revolution, marijuana and other drugs, on this network it's like they never existed.

Unfortunately this show which had some really good moments did not quite finish its first season due to the death of its star Ann Sheridan, the movies former 'Oomph Girl'. As ill timed a demise as ever happened in Hollywood.

For those who never saw the show it concerned a rustic family named Hanks. Ann Sheridan and her parents Douglas Fowley and Ruth McDevitt and her daughter Carole Wells. They're a family of sharpshooters with a lot of rustic charm, right in keeping with the commitment of CBS to rural entertainment. In the first episode Carole Wells has returned from the east where the family has sent her to finishing school to learn some social graces.

When sufficiently provoked however Wells could match any of her family shot for shot. The finish came off her in a crisis moment.

Another regular on the show was Gary Vinson who played the inept son of a famous lawman who inherited his job. Carole despite his klutziness had a thing for him. Just a civilian version of Captain Wilton Parmenter from F Troop.

It wasn't a great show, but it had some good comic moments. And it was the farewell gig of one of the screen's reigning beauties Ann Sheridan.

I'm surprised by how many others remember this show. I still remember most of the theme song "Here's the legend about the Hanks..." and I remember the line "Henrietta could fire a gun with one hand milkin' a goat, and hit a coyote on the run in Pistols'n'Petticoats." A very catchy tune to the theme song and I remember my father started whistling it after watching the show. To this day he still whistles that tune and I recently asked him if he remembered where it came from. He had no clue! The show itself was a comedy/western and full of laughs each week. I remember watching the news one evening, in an era when they seldom showed footage, and they showed a photo of Ann Sheridan in her Henrietta Hank garb. The announcer said she had died that day and mentioned she was currently starring as Henrietta in Pistols 'n' Petticoats. I remember tuning in the next time it aired and the opening credits still showed the footage of Ann Sheridan, as Henrietta, driving a buggy. I thought they had simply replaced her with a look alike. Unfortunately, after the season run, Ann Sheridan was irreplaceable and the show went off the air. The theme song is a very catchy tune and I'm surprised it was not released on its own. "Here's the Legend about the Hanks in Pistols'n'Petticoats. Henrietta could fire a gun with one hand milkin'a goat and hit a coyote on the run in Pistols'n'Petticoats. They say that grandma was the best at shootin' buttons off a rustlers vest, grandpa kept his gun in trim, nobody messed around with him." Others have commented that they'd like to see this on DVD - well it is. It was released a couple of years ago by Platinum Disc as part of their TV Classic Westerns series. You can get four episodes of Frontier Doctor and six of Pistols 'N' Petticoats on the DVD. Search on ebay under Pistols 'n' Peticoats, not Pistols and etc... and you'll find it. Great to see it again.

I am not sure what was the first television series that suffered from the loss of a cast member by his or her death. I think it may have been WHAT'S MY LINE? because the original show had the great radio comic and wit Fred Allan as one of the players, and he died while still appearing on the show. That was in the 1950s.

But WHAT'S MY LINE? was game show, so replacing Allan was not hard. In 1966, a comedy show appeared on the CBS line-up on Saturday nights called PISTOLS 'N' PETTICOATS. In it the Hanks family, headed officially by grandpa (Douglas Fowley) and grandma (Ruth McDivitt), but really headed by Henrietta (Ann Sheridan) were known for their abilities as sharpshooters (even Henrietta's niece, Lucy (Carole Wells).

"The story goes that granma was best at shootin' buttons off a rustler's vest. Granpa kept his gun in trim - nobody messed around with him..." as the theme song went. All of the characters would surprise the villains with their skills in the episodes. It was just as well that they were so good, as the local sheriff (Gary Vinson) was a clumsy stumble-bum - and Lucy's boyfriend.

Sheridan was at the end of her career - really beyond that. She had not done anything really big on screen since her heyday in the 1940s (I suppose I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE was her last big production). But she was a favorite with audiences, who had named her the "Oomph Girl", and she had a spark opposite Cary Grant in WAR BRIDE, or Jimmy Cagney or Ronald Reagan or Bette Davis and Monty Wooley in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Still, I recall that when news of her casting came out in 1965 it struck many as odd. Why did she decide to do it?

I don't think we will ever know. Sheridan had appeared in about half the episodes when she left the series and died of cancer. It was a shocker at the time.

The show stumbled on, but unlike it's near contemporary F-TROOP it never found the proper balance that made the latter a big hit (and a revivable show too, for that reason). Both shows had a good ensemble, but the scripts of F-TROOP seemed better thought out, even experimental.

In one F-TROOP episode entitled "THE DAY THEY SHOT AGARN", the entire episode was about Agarn being court-martial-ed on the mistaken belief he murdered the missing Sergeant O'Rourke. All through the episode somebody is singing a mournful tune about his execution (which never is completed). At the end, when O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker) returns, and Agarn (Storch) is cleared, they are talking to Captain Parmenter (Ken Berry) and trying to figure out who has been singing this depressing song. O'Rourke and Parmenter look around and see some derby-hatted gentleman singing it nearby, and they order him out of the fort!

That did not happen on PISTOLS. The stories were rather routine, for all the hard work of the performers. I only can recall one for an ironic aspect - Pat Buttram played an unscrupulous mountain man whose family cheated people. In an early episode he is caught by the family and he ends up going to jail. He returns in another episode, and he is a "reformed man" now. I recall he notices a little boy dropped a silver dollar on the floor of a store, and (naturally) he steps on it to hide it from the boy. He picks it up, but suddenly he feels ashamed at his greed. He calls the boy over and returns the dollar to him.

Why should I recall this scene from a show? Well, it's Pat Buttram, and of course in the late 1960s he found his television immortality shortly as the great Mr. Haney on GREEN ACRES - the ultimate in weird swindlers. Haney would not, perhaps, have robbed a boy of his dollar, but the fact that both characters are swindlers made me remember Buttram's performance on PISTOLS. But note - he is a supporting player in an episode or two. It's not like recalling the performances of the leads. And I can't recall them too well now. But I recall performances by the leads from F-Troop to this day.

One can blame the death of it's star for the demise of PISTOLS 'N' PETTICOATS, but one can also recognize that good shows survive due to clever scripts above everything else.

I watched this show when I was 16 years old and have never laughed this hard since. I would laugh myself sick when this show was on. I was saddened when it went off the air. It was a lead-in to Gunsmoke and was a family tradition to watch the Saturday (I think) night Westerns. My mother didn't find it as funny but my dad did.

I was a pretty young kid when this show was on, but I can remember how much I loved it. I was surfing around on this site and came across Spring Byington's biography and I thought it was she who co-starred in the show as Ann Sheridan's mother, but come to find out, it was Ruth McDevitt. But I did remember the name of the show. I wish it would come out on DVD so I could see the show again. I loved all of the characters on the show. It didn't seem hokey or stupid or sappy to me, it seemed smart and funny, and so did all of the people on the show. Of course, like I said, I was just a kid. I was so sad when Ann Sheridan died and the show ended. I know sometimes if someone leaves a show, whether its a death or a career change, they will replace the person with another actor, but it sure wouldn't have worked in this case, so it was just as well the show ended, although all too early.