Wagon Train on the Encore Western Channel

[moira finnie]

Ooh, thank you, Moira! I will definitely give it a listen when I get home!

Did a little quick reference to Eyman's bio and it said Wardy may have ruined his health by overwork on the show. He was apparently involved in all aspects of the production, and scripts. So while the success of the show is due in large part to him, maybe it cost too much in terms of his life. However, looking at him he seemed in poor shape, and I suspect poor diet and drinking were the real culprits. It's sad, because he really had something to be proud of. Oh well, though he died rather young he certainly worked harder than many ten other actors.

That was my impression too, Miss G., though Bond certainly appears to have had his problems, he could never have been called "lazy."

You'll probably enjoy hearing the way that the producer handled things when Ward went overboard in trying to produce as well as act in Wagon Train.

[MissGoddess]

I can just imagine! Ward probably tried to roll over everyone like a one-man wagon train!

[movieman1957]

He probably had more experience than anyone. Even if it wasn't his job he may have been the most qualified. I'm looking forward to listening to the interview too.

[mrsl]

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This month the Western Channel on Encore started showing Wagon Train episodes. When this channel telecasts a series of any kind, they always do so in chronological order, starting with the very first episode, even though the actors may change eventually. As it happens however, Encore is playing the Ward Bond/Robert Horton, original Black and White episodes, but on METV, on Saturday mornings, the later, color versions are playing with John McIntyre/Robert Fuller. In these later hour and a half episodes, we still have the same Charlie Wooster as the cook for the head wagon, but somehow during the travels Terry Wilson, who, in the B&W epis is a travelor with the train (as Bill Hawks), later becomes a regular with the head wagon, still with the same name - I could be wrong, and I will continue watching to try to find out, but I don't think so. Beside all of that, we also have big, blond, gentle Denny Miller who has guested on numerous shows as another regular part scout, part cowboy, and friend to all.

Today's show was a special one for me. A lot of my favorite people from the 60's were in it. Carolyn Jones was a young wife who had been kidnapped by Indians while her husband ran away, leaving her and her baby to fend for themselves. Years later she escapes and catches up with her family, forming the center of the story. She finds her 'baby' daughter is still alive as is her husband (Ray Danton), playing his normal sleazy self. During the time with the Indians, for punishment for some misdemeanor, her cheeks and chin were literally carved, leaving little raised ' V's' all around her mouth. But the fun part of this episode is Barbara Stanwyck appearing as a hard, headed mule skinner with a whip. She is just wonderful handling the men with an iron fist and cracking that whip, but gentle as a flower with the damaged escapee. Carolyn had also adopted a little white toddler who had been stolen and raised him as her own, and he adds another dimension to the story.

I love these 90 minute episodes. They are longer than some movies, and I'll watch for this one and DVR it next time, because I think I want to see it again. I'm still debating with myself which team I prefer, Ward and Robert, or John and Robert.
.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Anne, I remember that episode with Carolyn Jones, and it was based on a true story of capture of a young woman whose name was Olive Oatman whose facial skin had also been horribly disfigured, and it was a great dramatic peace, a real tearjerker for me. ( I last saw it about 35 years ago, but it so affected me that I never forgot it.)

They also played that great episode with Linda Darnell. I hope you got to see that one, too.

Thanks for the heads up on the John McIntyre/Robert Fuller episodes. I need to check those out. I think they also changed the theme song from the B/W to the color episodes, didn't they?

[mrsl]

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Hi Sue Sue:

The B&W's are on daily at 5:00 p.m. following The Virginian, but the newer color episodes are only on Saturday morning on the new METV channel. You're right, the theme we are used to was adopted with the color episodes, but I'm glad they kept the prologue going. For some reason, those little one or two sentence intros add an interesting dimension to the show.

I know I prefer Robert Fuller to Horton, but I'm still on the fence about Ward and John McIntyre.

Stagecoast West:

There's another show on at 3:00 a.m. on METV called Stagecoach West which I never heard of at all. It stars Wayne Rogers in his pre-M.A.S.H. days, and he shares honors with Robert Bray who I've never noticed before and his son Richard Eyer. I know you would know him if you saw him. He's that cute little guy who the goose kept chasing after in Friendly Persuasion. But he's a teenager in this one and rides as his dad's partner on the stage coach. I guess they alternated weeks between father and son and Wayne. Both are good leads. I don't think it ever played in the Chicago area, and if it did, it was not advertised much, and played on a night that I was unconscious or something. I like it because like Wagon Train, you have a new story every week, about the guest instead of the regulars. With the regulars, you know they will always be okay no matter if they are in a cave in, or a shoot out, or a stampede, or whatever, but sometimes the guest is written off. (poor souls)s.

[pvitari]

Forget Fuller and Horton. :)

THE actor of Wagon Train for me was Michael Burns as Barnaby. ;) I had such a crush on him when I was a little 'un. He grew up, gave up acting, and became a professor of Modern European History at Mount Holyoke College. Now he's a professor emeritus and I feel about a thousand years old knowing that. :)

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Mount Holyoke ! Omigosh! That is wild, Paula. I can't believe Barnaby studied Modern European History so much that he taught it, and is now a professor emeritus. How many of his students tried to beg off the day's lesson by asking for one of his Wagon Train tales...

[ken123]

Michael Burns was Blueboy in an episode of Dragnet, Blueboy was a drug addict who always had to get higher & higher.

[pvitari]

Michael Burns was Blueboy in an episode of Dragnet, Blueboy was a drug addict who always had to get higher & higher.

Oh, Michael Burns was all over the tube in the 1960s and 70s. It was a real feast for us little girls with Michael Burns crushes. :) He pretty much grew up on the tube.

I also remember him as a crazed sniper in a Hawaii Five-O episode. :)

Every now and then I'd get an urge to e-mail him at his Mount Holyoke e-mail address to say, "Oh, Michael Burns, I had such a bad crush on you way back when" but I managed to suppress it each time. :)

He married the then-president of Holyoke and in 2002 they retired to an historic horse farm in Kentucky, which they restored and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some bio information:

Career
Burns was born in Mineola, Long Island, New York. He graduated summa cum laude in 1976 from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a B.A. and earned his M.A. in European history at the same institution. He entered Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1977, and earned his Ph.D. in Modern European history.

Actor
Burns was a well-known child actor, starring on the television program Wagon Train, as orphaned "Barnaby West" during seasons 4-8. He also co-starred with Glenn Corbett, Ted Bessell, and Randy Boone in a 19-episode NBC comedy/drama It's a Man's World in the 1962-1963 season. Burns played 14-year-old Howie Macauley, who lives on a houseboat called the Elephant on the Ohio River with his older brother Wes, played by Corbett. Bessell and Boone were the two other young men living with them. The program was hailed by its viewers and critics for its portrayal of restless youth but was quickly cancelled because of low Nielsen ratings.

Burns appeared with James Stewart in the film, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. He appeared as a guest star in over thirty-five series in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly Westerns, including CBS's Gunsmoke, NBC's The Road West, and ABC's The Legend of Jesse James. During his twenties, Burns appeared in several films, most notably in That Cold Day in the Park in 1969.

Historian
He became a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in 1980 and authored books on the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s. Upon his retirement in 2002, he was honored by Mount Holyoke as Professor Emeritus.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Paula, Thank you for all this great information on Michael Burns, and to you, Ken, for the Dragnet memory. I really enjoyed reading about him, because I had a small crush on him, too.

Interesting choice of his, the Dreyfus affair. It was a French political scandal involving Esterhazy, Emile Zola and false accusations. I wonder if he learned French while researching all this...

Imagine, Barnaby saying "liberte, egalite, fraternite..."

[moira finnie]

From an interview with director Joe Pevney (he acted too, notably in Body and Soul and Thieves Highway), who directed 24 episodes of Wagon Train. Please don't miss the line about "the sponge" named Ward Bond:

I remember my first [job directing Wagon Train], a 1959 episode was called "The Vivian Carter Story"-- at the end of the first day I was told I was 10 pages behind. But the cast pulled for me and we got through it. The guest stars were Lorne Greene, Jane Darwell, Patric Knowles and Phyllis Thaxter –that’s a better cast than I had in some of my movies. Two weeks later I completed a second with Frances Bavier and Vera Miles and next I found myself directing Dame Judith Anderson. There’s a funny story there--Ward Bond was a sponge of an actor. If he was acting opposite Lorne Greene he’d start behaving, talking like Lorne and not even know it. So how was I to tell him to stop speaking like Dame Judith Anderson? Another memory: I directed John McIntire in his first "Wagon Train" episode and that was years before he replaced Ward as the new wagonmaster.

[MissGoddess]

how funny, i do the same exact thing...unconsciously, i start mimicking the way the other person speaks.

[klondike]

From an interview with director Joe Pevney :

Another memory: I directed John McIntire in his first "Wagon Train" episode and that was years before he replaced Ward as the new wagonmaster.

Although he had a much smaller career than Randolph Scott, I would nevertheless like to make a motion that we initiate a "cue Western Chorus" tradition whenever the name of John McIntire is spoken, as well.
Anyone to second?

[moira finnie]

I really can't feel as fond of John McIntire as I do of Scott and Bond. Sorry, Klon. He's a good character actor, but I prefer him in film noirs.

Wagon Train is showing The Major Adams Story Part I today. It begins with Ward Bond unexpectedly meeting a woman (Virginia Grey) he had been in love with prior to the Civil War. As fast as you can say "cue the harp music and the wavy camera lens," we have a flashback within a flashback to the early days of the war when Ward Bond (with shoe polish dark hair and mustache as black as a raven's wing, which makes him look like a used car salesman) enlists in the Union Army, to the disgust of his best gal (Grey, looking terribly thin but pretty). I think this epi and the second part, which should be on Monday if this is being shown in order to look fairly entertaining and downright romantic since we have voice overs of both Ward Bond and Virginia Grey thinking how much they love one another. My stars! I never thought of Maj. Adams as having a private life! (Besides, I thought that he and Charlie Wooster [Frank McGrath] were sort of a chaste if testy couple, anyway.)

I hope Miss G. or someone else caught this show.