The other day, a friend of mine mentioned the early Western TV series THE RANGE RIDER, which was syndicated for three seasons (a total of 78 episodes) in the early Fifties. By the time I was watching TV in the late Fifties and early Sixties, it was still showing regularly in reruns, and I was a big fan. I hadn't thought about it for a long time and probably hadn't seen an episode in almost 60 years, so I decided to check one out on YouTube. Since then I've watched several more. This series holds up pretty darned well, and I'm enjoying it.
The Range Rider (we're never told any other name for the character) is the sort of drifting troubleshooter we often encounter in Westerns. He doesn't seem to have any job other than riding around and helping out folks who need it. Along with his sidekick, young Dick West, he's always solving mysteries and catching bad guys. Granted, the plots aren't very complex, since we're talking about half-hour TV episodes, but the stories are well-constructed and have plenty of action. My friend who brought up the series mentioned speculation that it was based loosely on the Hashknife Hartley stories and novels by W.C. Tuttle. I've read quite a few Hashknife yarns, and if that rumor isn't true, it sure could have been, since THE RANGE RIDER features the same blend of action, mystery, and comedy.
The Range Rider is played by Jock Mahoney, former stuntman turned actor who was an early favorite of mine based on this show and his later series YANCY DERRINGER. Mahoney was never a great actor, but man, he has screen presence to spare and as a former stuntman does a great job with the action scenes. Dick Jones plays the sidekick Dick West (often called Dickie by the Range Rider) and is also very good, handling most of the comedy and romance in the same sort of performance Richard Martin gave as Chito Rafferty in dozens of Tim Holt movies. And like Chito, Dickie can be tough and competent when he needs to be.
Mahoney would have made an excellent Hashknife Hartley if we had ever gotten such a TV series. THE RANGE RIDER is the closest we'll ever come to it. I'm having a great time watching it, and it's nice to know that one of my early favorites still comes across as well-made and entertaining.
13 comments:
This is the link to "Comic Book Cowboys" by Boyd Magers who discuss the serie of stories related to the TV Serial.
http://www.westernclippings.com/comics/rangerider_comicbookcowboys.shtml
Best,
Tiziano Agnelli
Thanks, Tiziano. I'm sure I read some of those Range Rider comic books, back in those days.
James, my dad took me to one of Jock Mahoney's live Range Rider Rodeo and western shows when I was around 11- 12 years old. What a thrill it was, since I grew up watching Range Rider on TV in Philadelphia. In addition to rodeo events the show featured Jock and Dick Jones both doing the kind of stunts they did on the show. They had a barroom brawl with a couple of "bad guys" and fell off their horses, did some trick shooting. The works. And after the show we went to the back of the Philadelphia Arena and caught Jock and Dick loading up their cars to get ready to move on to the next city They were very nice to their fans, gave me an autograph on the photo of him contained in the program for the event. Had it for years, but somewhere along the trail it, along with my youth, got lost.
John M Whalen
I'm surprised that even though it was on a few years before my television watching started, I have no memory of this. I did watch Yancy Derringer (X Brands as Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah was his sidekick) and watched a lot of westerns then, but no memory of this at all.
There are 27 episodes of RANGE RIDER posted on the FREE TV app Tubi. I'm planning to start watching them when I finish MAN WITH A CAMERA. Even better, ALL (apparently) 34 episodes of YANCY DERRINGER are now available---archived in broadcast order---on TWO different free TV apps, Tubi and Pluto TV. I've been watching them. And they do hold up.
David, thanks for the tip on these.
John, that's a great story about meeting Jock and Dick in person. I saw Roy Rogers and Dale Evans performing at one rodeo, and Lorne Green and Michael Landon were at another one. I think I saw James Drury at a rodeo, too. But I never actually met any of them.
I have never seen an episode. When I was a kid, Jock Mahoney and Lex Barker were my favorite Tarzan’s. I had watched too many Jungle Jim’s.
Being a huge Tuttle/Hashknife I am curious if I make the connection. Hashknife and Sleepy were almost zen at times.
30 minute length is perfect for my current video attention span.
Spike,
As much as I like Mahoney, I have to admit that his Tarzan never really worked that well for me. I grew up watching the Weissmuller movies, so that was imprinted in my brain, I guess. However, I did like Lex Barker in the role and thought that his Tarzan movies were very good. I haven't seen any of them in probably 50 years or more. I ought to revisit them.
is a great blog!!! I liked the approach and also the comments: people who know things!!! I think Mahoney wasn't that bad as an actor. He made some good B westerns, played a memorable bad guy in a Tarzan movie with Gordon Scott and, magically (!) he became Tarzan !!! Until it went well with the two Tarzans he did. Of course inferior to the three biggest: Johnny Weissmuller, Lex Barker and Scott. I really miss those good times of the 50's and 60's !!!
As a schoolboy I enjoyed TV westerns on the BBC in the '50s, and Range Rider was always my favourite by far. You say his name was never mentioned - he was always addressed as "Rider" - but I've recently been going through all the episodes I can find online and, in Romeo Goes West, the Shakespearean actor's grandchildren call him "Uncle Jack".
For the Range Rider Brand — was there a marketing product? I have a 4 pane band label off of something.
There was bound to be some merchandising of the show. Seemed like almost every TV series had some kind of product tied to it in those days, especially shows that appealed to kids. But I have no idea of the details in this particular case and didn't turn up anything searching online.
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