S*W*W*AT (SPECIAL WESTERN WEAPONS AND TACTICS)

[cmvgor]

A recent exchange concerning Yancy Derringer, of fond memory, brings up the taste for specially adapted weapons during that Golden Age of TV
Westerns (late 50's, early 60's). The Rifleman's rifle and Bat's bat have had some coverage Over There. A friend of mine swore that Bat Masterson's cane masked a hidden sword. I didn't argue, but it seemed that would be a card that would play only once, unless Masterson was in a different town every week. How many refugees remember the weapons
gimmicks?

[Dewey1960]

How about THE ADVENTURES OF JIM BOWIE from the mid-50s? A relatively little known actor named Scott Forbes played the knife-wielding (hence the "Bowie" knife) frontiersman.

[jdb1]

One of the TV western heroes had an extra long pistol (no, really, his gun) - was it Nick Adams or Steve McQueen? Like a very sawed-off shotgun. I remember my mother reading out to us from some newspaper or magazine that such a gun was called a "mare's leg."

In the 50s, I recall that there were many debates among TV watchers about the relative merits heroes toting one, or two guns.

[Lzcutter]

Judith,

I think your referring to the gun that McQueen carried in "Wanted: Dead or Alive" where he played Josh Randall. Ran from 1958 to 1961 and then was syndicated throughout the 1960s.

[cmvgor]

Jbd1 & Lzcutter;

Correct. It was Steve McQueen as Josh Randall who carried the "mare's
leg". It was a basic lever-action Winchester with a shortened barrel and the stock cut down to a pistol grip. Meant, I suppose, to deliver extra power at pistol range. As for a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun, also cut
down to pistol grip, there may have been such an item, and it may have been used by "Johnny Yuma, The Rebel". I can not say in this case because he appeared at a time when I saw television only when home for holidays. Anybody who knows, please log in. Oh, -- does anybody know
(remember actually) squat about the Buntline Special?

[jdb1]

I've researched the topic, and found that both blond cowboys carried similar weapons. No wonder I was confused - they look interchangeable.

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[mrsl]

I watch Bat Masterson nearly every day and he does not have a knife or sword hidden in it. He uses the cane primarily to knock pistons out of bad guys hands, or to push someone away when they get too close.

Anne

[cmvgor]

Dewey 1960;
That's right about Jim Bowie and the Bowie knife. Unlike most of the weapons we're discussing here, it has a specific counterpart in history. A chopper and slasher, not a stabbing weapon. I have one, and I can attest
to one thing: If you have your Bowie on your camping trip, it doesn't matter if you forgot the hatchet.
Another question on the edged-weapons front. In Chuck Conners' other
western series, 'Branded', he carried around a broken calvary saber. Did it
ever figure in to a plot for that saber to be used as a weapon?

jdb1;
Thanks. Your info, with photos, clears up decades of confusion for me. I
thought I remembered something about Johnny Yuma packing a sawedoff,
but I only saw it a couple of times. Where I resided then, there was no
TV, but there was radio. Johnny Cash sang the theme song of that show,
and the radio station that I got most clearly played it about three times a day.



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[jdb1]

Another question on the edged-weapons front. In Chuck Conners' other
western series, 'Branded', he carried around a broken calvary saber. Did it
ever figure in to a plot for that saber to be used as a weapon?
I think he carried the broken saber as a symbol of his disgrace and a hope for vindication, a sort of holy grail. If you will recall, at the beginning of each episode, the ritual of Connors' character being "drummed out of the corps" was shown -- the breaking of the saber, the tearing off of the brass buttons and other insignia of his uniform, etc.

I thought it was a show with a lot of potential that never quite got off the ground. I always thought Connors was a lot better than most of the material he was given to work with.

[cmvgor]

mrsl;
Re: Masterson's bat

Of course there was no hidden blade. The source of my young friend's
speculation: Right about that time, if a new Western showed up, some
just naturally looked for a weapons gimmick. The historical Masterson carried a long billyclub while on duty as a constable, and developed a
reputation for using it efficiently, thus the nickname "Bat". I'm not sure he carried a club OR a cane otherwise. I think the gold-headed cane is
an invention of the TV writers.

[klondike]

Among gimmicky weapons, let us not forget Paladin's secret belt-buckle derringer on Have Gun Will Travel; I was often rather perplexed at that one, as Paladin was typically portrayed as the ultra-concientious contract adjudicator, always giving opponents multiple warnings, before he ended up quoting Milton or Keats over their dead bodies.
But, given how often the Man with the Chess Knight Holster found himself under an adversary's "drop", I guess it made sense for him to have a sneaky back-up close at hand; and this was no .25 caliber "riverboat" shooter, mind you, but a hefty-looking over/under, at least a .38!
As for Lucas McCain's Winchester, bear in mind that that was one thoroughly modified repeater: besides the visible alterations of the "rotary" style lever-loop, and the striker-bolt that bisected the trigger guard (and worked the trigger), the hammer and action-springs had all been shortened, along with modifications to the firing pin and cocking gears. Somewhere in between being a soldier, sailor & saddletramp, Lucas must have apprenticed, somewhere, sometime, to a gunsmith!
As for Connors' role as Jason McCord on Branded . . have you ever held a cavalry sabre? I used to own a dandy one, a real first class antique, and I'm here to tell ya, you couldn't bust one like that without a blacksmith's anvil, and probably a good sized shoulder maul to boot!
And yes, on at least 2 occasions, he did hurl that demi-sabre at an enemy (in contradiction to practical physics) as a devastating sort of dagger.
But Hey, to quote my Dad, on TV, you can do anything!

Klondike

[cmvgor]

Klondike;
Re 'Branded': LOL and thanks I saw it only once as I remember.
Noting the start & stop dates on the series, I think I was then in a dorm
environment. One TV in the Common Room; majority ruled on program
selection, and sports fans dominated. But I would have been willing to
bet that the saber came into play at least once. No director or writer would ignore a prop like that. Not forever, they wouldn't.

Re Paldin's derringer, thanks again. I now remember seeing it, but it
had slipped my mind completely.

Regards

[cmvgor]

WHO REMEMBERS SHOTGUN SLADE?

--I just barely do. Saw one episode of this Scott Brady syndicated series,
just enough to notice the jazz background score. I knew Marshal Dillon and I knew Peter Gunn, and I wasn't flexible enough to put them together. Over There, in a discussion about the music, correspondent
danthemoviefan casually adds, "another example of a tv western with a
gimmick: in this case a gun that fires shotgun shells from one barrel and
rifle bullets from the other."
Another of those cases with gaps in my exposure or in my memory. I
have to rely on the memory of others. Slade was a frontier private detective, working for various clients. I don't remember if I ever saw the
shotgun in use.

[cmvgor]

I've been hoping someone would log in who knows and remembers more about this subject than I do. I remember very little; I'm flying mostly on research, and the research is inconclusive. Did the "Buntline Special", the special-order Colt revolver carried by Hugh O'Brian in The Life And
Legend Of Wyatt Earp really exist? There are sources that claim it did not. There are claims that dime novelist "Ned Buntline" wrote very few
Western-themed stories anyway, and the "news" accounts of him giving the long-barrel Colts to several lawmen, one of them Wyatt Earp, is pure
fiction. There is confusion as to wheather the barrels were twelve inches
or sixteen inches. The records of the Colt company do not support the
special-order story.

If I remember correctly, the series has O'Brian carrying two long-barrel pistols, and still outdrawing everybody who challenged him. My conclusion, subject to change if solid evidence shows up: If the Buntline
Special existed and Wyatt Earp had one, I doubt that it was his workaday
sidearm. One thing I notice: Of all the movies about Wyatt Earp -- some of which were striving for some accuracy -- I don't remember any of them even mentioning the dadburn thing. But the series evidently went with the "Liberty Valence" rule -- print the legend.

[cmvgor]

To backtrack a little and loop in from another Topic the reference that started this one:

They say that Yancy Derringer
Had ruffles at his wrist,
Something in his something,
And iron in his fist...

Yancy (Jock Mahoney) had a derringer in his hat. His Indian friend Pahoo
(X. Brands) had a large-gauge shotgun under his blanket. Between them
they had a real circus act going with the way they could toss around knives, getting them to just the right place when needed, and only the proper people getting hurt. When you were just topping off Junior High, that's what Cool looked like.