59 Fun Facts About TV Western

On the TV version of Gunsmoke, who played Marshal Matt Dillon?

James Arness: at 6 ft 7 he was ordered off the landing craft first at Anzio in 1944 to test the water's depth, and the leg wound he took there troubled him on Gunsmoke, where riding scenes could set the pain off.

Gunsmoke is set in which Kansas cattle town?

Dodge City: the series was shot on Hollywood backlots and California ranch land, never in Kansas, yet the real town embraced it, and its Boot Hill Museum still carries a Gunsmoke tribute.

Which actress played Miss Kitty for 19 of Gunsmoke's 20 seasons?

Amanda Blake: she once brought her pet lion, Kemo, onto the set, and she and her husband ran one of the first successful cheetah-breeding programmes in captivity.

Which Gunsmoke deputy, played by Ken Curtis, replaced Chester in 1964?

Festus Haggen: the scruffy deputy's nasal twang was put on, because Ken Curtis was a smooth-voiced crooner who had sung with Tommy Dorsey's band and the Sons of the Pioneers.

Which first name did actor Milburn Stone choose for his Gunsmoke character, Doc Adams?

Galen: Doc went years without a first name until the producers let Stone pick one, and he borrowed that of the ancient physician who treated Rome's emperors.

CBS planned to cancel Gunsmoke in 1967 but instead axed which sitcom to free a Monday slot?

Gilligan's Island: Gunsmoke took over its early Monday slot and the gamble paid off, as the ageing Western jumped back into the top ten and ran for eight more seasons.

The Cartwrights of Bonanza lived on a ranch called the Ponderosa near which Nevada town?

Virginia City: a real silver boomtown where, in the 1860s of the show's setting, a failed prospector turned newspaperman first signed his work 'Mark Twain'.

Who played patriarch Ben Cartwright on Bonanza?

Lorne Greene: Canadians knew the voice long before Bonanza, because his deep-toned reading of grim war news on CBC radio had earned him the nickname 'the Voice of Doom'.

Which Cartwright brother on Bonanza was played by Dan Blocker?

Hoss: when Dan Blocker died suddenly in 1972, the writers let the character die too rather than recast him, and Bonanza lasted only one more season without its gentle giant.

In Bonanza's opening titles, what bursts into flames to reveal the Cartwrights on horseback?

A hand-drawn map: the 1959 original survives, having hung for decades in creator David Dortort's home before it went on permanent display at the Autry museum in Los Angeles in 2011.

Why did NBC keep Bonanza after nearly dropping it early on?

It sold color TV sets: Bonanza was one of the first shows broadcast in color, so parent company RCA used it to sell its sets, and after a move to Sunday nights it became America's top-rated show for three seasons.

What was the name of the Cartwright family's cook on Bonanza?

Hop Sing: Victor Sen Yung, who played him, really could cook. He demonstrated Cantonese dishes on television and published his own Great Wok Cookbook in 1974.

Who starred as rancher Lucas McCain in The Rifleman?

Chuck Connors: Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was such a fan of The Rifleman that on a 1973 visit to America he greeted the actor with a bear hug.

The Rifleman was set in which fictional town in New Mexico Territory?

North Fork: the series is set there in the 1880s, yet McCain's spinning, rapid-fire rifle is a Winchester Model 1892, a gun that would not exist for another decade.

The Rifleman's pilot, "The Sharpshooter", was first shown as an episode of which anthology series?

Zane Grey Theatre: Sam Peckinpah had written the script for Gunsmoke, which turned it down, so he reworked it for the anthology and it grew into a series of its own.

Which future movie star played drover Rowdy Yates on Rawhide?

Clint Eastwood: he tired of clean-cut Rowdy, 'the hero who kisses old ladies and dogs', so in 1964 he went to Spain to play a poncho-wearing antihero in A Fistful of Dollars.

Which singer performed Rawhide's theme song on the CBS series?

Frankie Laine: fifteen years later Mel Brooks hired him to belt out the Blazing Saddles title song, and he sang it in deadly earnest, unaware the film was a spoof.

James Garner's breakout role was as a wandering poker player in which 1957 Western?

Maverick: its hero would sooner bluff or bolt than shoot, a send-up of the stern TV lawman that soon pulled Sunday-night viewers away from The Ed Sullivan Show.

Which future James Bond joined the Garner poker-player series as cousin Beau after its star left?

Roger Moore: the studio first flew in Sean Connery, who turned the part down, so one future 007 made way for another years before Moore inherited Bond from him as well.

Who played Bart, brother of Garner's poker-playing hero Bret, alternating leads from week to week?

Jack Kelly: he was added because each episode took more than a week to film, so a second crew shot his Bart stories in parallel and the brothers could alternate in a weekly slot.

In Have Gun – Will Travel, gunfighter-for-hire Paladin made his home at which San Francisco address?

The Hotel Carlton: there he lived as a dandy in ruffled shirts and tailored suits, then rode out to work dressed all in black, the colour TV Westerns usually kept for the villain.

In Have Gun – Will Travel, the hero Paladin took his name from what?

The knights of Charlemagne's court: hence the chess knight on his calling card and holster, and a theme song that hails him as 'a knight without armor in a savage land'.

Have Gun – Will Travel reversed the usual route for a 1950s Western when its TV success spawned what?

A radio version: Westerns such as Gunsmoke had gone from radio to TV, but Paladin went the other way, and the radio series even wrote him an ending, in which he leaves San Francisco to claim an inheritance back East.

Who starred as the masked hero in the 1949–1957 TV series The Lone Ranger?

Clayton Moore: he went on appearing in costume for decades, and when the character's owner won a 1979 court order against the mask he switched to wraparound sunglasses until he got it back.

Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto, was a member of which Indigenous nation?

Mohawk: a chief's grandson whose mother's line was Mohawk, he reached Hollywood with a touring lacrosse team, where comedian Joe E. Brown talked him into a screen test.

Wagon Train's original wagon master, Major Seth Adams, was played by which John Ford regular?

Ward Bond: the series was inspired by John Ford's 1950 film Wagon Master, and when Bond died suddenly in 1960 it rolled on under a new wagon master without ever explaining where Major Adams had gone.

Billed as 'Michael Morris', which film star made a shadowy cameo as General Sherman in a 1960 episode of Wagon Train?

John Wayne: the credit was a play on his birth name, Marion Morrison, and viewers had to know him by voice and outline, since director John Ford kept him half hidden in shadow for his one line.

Which Hollywood legend played matriarch Victoria Barkley in The Big Valley?

Barbara Stanwyck: she did her own stunts on the show wherever she could, as she had in the film Forty Guns, where she let a horse drag her after the stuntmen refused.

The Barkley ranch in The Big Valley was near which California city?

Stockton: the Barkleys held the valley for four seasons, and the show's renewal cost co-star Lee Majors the lead in Midnight Cowboy, which went to Jon Voight instead.

Which NBC Western filled a 90-minute slot every week from 1962, with James Drury in the title role?

The Virginian: the title is the only name its hero ever gets, because the series kept a secret from Owen Wister's novel, which left the foreman nameless to make him a man of mystery.

Besides James Drury's title character, which character stayed at Shiloh Ranch for the NBC Western's entire nine-season run?

Trampas: Doug McClure played him as the hero's rowdy friend in every season, which turned the book inside out, since in Owen Wister's novel Trampas is the villain the hero finally shoots.

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman leaves Boston to practise in which town?

Colorado Springs: the show's version stood in California, on a Western street at Paramount Ranch where fans could watch the filming, until the 2018 Woolsey Fire destroyed most of it.

Which Bond girl starred as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?

Jane Seymour: by her own account she was about to lose her house when she told her agent she would take anything, CBS came back with Dr. Quinn, and the job ran for six seasons.

Ian McShane's saloon-owning villain in Deadwood, Al Swearengen, ran which establishment?

The Gem: the real Al Swearengen ran a notorious theatre and brothel of that name in Deadwood, rebuilt it bigger after the great fire of 1879, and left town when it burned for the last time in 1899.

Deadwood's first season opens in 1876, soon after which historical event?

Custer's Last Stand: the battle was fought that June, and by early August Wild Bill Hickok, who rides into camp as the series opens, had really been shot dead at a Deadwood poker table.

HBO's 2019 Deadwood film reunites the camp's survivors in 1889 to celebrate what?

South Dakota's statehood: the series had been cancelled in 2006 without a proper ending, and fans waited almost thirteen years for its creator to write this one.

AMC's Hell on Wheels follows the construction of what?

The first transcontinental railroad: the title was a real 1860s nickname for the rolling town of saloons, gambling dens and brothels that followed the Union Pacific's track-layers west.

Why does ex-Confederate Cullen Bohannon sign on with the work crews in AMC's Hell on Wheels?

To hunt his wife's killers: the revenge quest fades as the seasons pass, and the gunslinger who arrived only to settle a score stays on to help run the whole project.

Walt Longmire is the sheriff of which fictional Wyoming county?

Absaroka: it shares its name with a would-be state that fed-up ranchers tried to carve out of northern Wyoming and its neighbours in 1939, going as far as crowning a Miss Absaroka.

Which network aired Longmire's first three seasons before Netflix picked it up?

A&E: it dropped its most-watched original series, reportedly because the audience skewed too old for advertisers, and after a loud fan campaign Netflix gave the show three more seasons.

Justified is based on stories by which crime writer, particularly "Fire in the Hole"?

Elmore Leonard: he approved of the series so much that he wrote a new novel, Raylan, with it in mind, borrowing back characters the show's writers had invented.

Justified is set mainly in which Kentucky county, where Raylan Givens grew up?

Harlan: on screen it was mostly somewhere else, with western Pennsylvania playing the coal county in the pilot and California standing in for it afterwards.

Yellowstone's John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, owns the largest cattle ranch in which state?

Montana: at first Utah often stood in for it, with the Dutton lodge's rooms rebuilt on Park City soundstages, though the log house itself is a real working ranch near Darby.

Yellowstone was created by John Linson and which screenwriter-turned-showrunner?

Taylor Sheridan: he began as an actor, with an early part on Walker, Texas Ranger and a bigger one as a deputy police chief on Sons of Anarchy, and took up screenwriting only after he turned 40.

In the Yellowstone prequel 1883, which country-music couple play James and Margaret Dutton?

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill: the pair became a couple on their joint 1996 tour, which was named Spontaneous Combustion, and married within months, long before they played the Dutton pioneers.

Chuck Norris's Walker, Texas Ranger was inspired by which of his earlier films?

Lone Wolf McQuade: the series reworked the film's Texas Ranger hero so closely that the film's makers took CBS to court, arguing that Walker was too close a copy.

Ronald Reagan's final acting roles came in 1965 on which Western series?

Death Valley Days: he played a frontier marshal in one of his last episodes, then left show business in 1966 to run for governor of California, and won.

Creator Michael Garrison pitched The Wild Wild West as what?

"James Bond on horseback": Garrison knew 007 well, because in the 1950s he had been a partner in an early plan to film Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale.

Why did CBS cancel The Wild Wild West in 1969?

To appease Congress over TV violence: the fights were real enough that star Robert Conrad, who did his own stunts, was rushed to hospital after losing his grip on a saloon chandelier and landing on his head.

At the 1959 peak of the TV Western boom, roughly how many Westerns filled network prime time?

30: tallies for the 1959 peak run from 26 to 30, a glut that puzzled even its makers, one scriptwriter telling TIME he couldn't see why people spent so long 'staring at the wrong end of a horse'.

Which children's Western, made up of William Boyd's old B-movies, became one of early television's biggest crazes?

Hopalong Cassidy: Boyd had staked everything on it, selling his ranch and mortgaging his car to raise some $350,000 for the rights to his own old films, and the reruns made him a fortune in Hoppy merchandise.

In Kung Fu (1972), Kwai Chang Caine roams the West searching for whom?

His half-brother: the search for Danny Caine runs through the series, though its star was no martial artist, since David Carradine knew no kung fu when he was cast and leaned on his training as a dancer.

What was the nickname of the cut-down Winchester carried by Steve McQueen's Josh Randall?

The Mare's Leg: the hefty cartridges on McQueen's gun belt were only for show, chosen because they looked more impressive, and were too big for the sawn-off rifle to fire.

Which Steve McQueen series spun off from a 1958 episode of Trackdown?

Wanted Dead or Alive: when its producers would not release him to make The Magnificent Seven, McQueen is said to have staged a car crash and used the sick leave to shoot the film.

Which 1955 ABC Western made a star of Clint Walker as a towering drifter roaming the frontier?

Cheyenne: when Clint Walker walked out in 1958 over his studio contract, Warner Bros. carried on for a whole season without its star, slotting in a substitute drifter named Bronco Layne.

Gene Barry's Bat Masterson preferred to get out of trouble using what rather than a gun?

A cane: the real Bat Masterson left the frontier behind and spent his last years in New York as a boxing columnist and a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave him a federal job.

The High Chaparral followed the Cannon family's cattle ranch in which territory of the 1870s?

Arizona: instead of a Hollywood backlot, the cast and crew went to the real desert, shooting the outdoor scenes at Old Tucson and in nearby Saguaro National Park.

Which 1989 miniseries starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as retired Texas Rangers?

Lonesome Dove: its author meant the story as an anti-Western that punctured the cowboy myth, then watched the public embrace it as what he called a Gone with the Wind of the West.

Alias Smith and Jones was TV's answer to which late-1960s outlaw film?

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: the series added a catch of its own, a secret amnesty that frees its heroes only if they stay out of trouble for a year, while lawmen who know nothing of the deal keep hunting them.