Recently, Dr, Tobor and I were conversing about the glut of westerns on TV in the 50s and 60s. Certainly Warner Brothers' TV Division created and cloned them ad nauseum, even rewriting scripts from one show and using it on another. There were many classics like Maverick, Cheyenne, Law Man, Wyatt Earp etc.... but as the tube became crowded with them, the premise of each show began to revolve around a gimmick. Often the kind of modified sidearms the hero used often took the spotlight. The Mare's Leg, the Sixshooter with the capability of firing a shotgun shell, the rapid firing rifle etc were some. Can you name some of the more obscure TV westerns and their gimmicks that distinguished them?

Well two shows come to mind. SHOTGUN SLADE and THE REBEL. The first used a shotgun (obviously) as his main weapon and the hero of THE REBEL had a sawed off shotgun which he used as a pistol. There was also a series, whose title I have foregotten, which concerned two twins who had a lot of adventures in the west. One was a hotheaded deputy I believe and the other was a lawabiding lawyer. Anyone out there remember the title?

One piece of trivial from the Steve McQueen "Wanted Dead Or Alive" 1958 TV series where he starred as a bounty hunter, concerned his side-arm. Dubbed "The Mare's Leg", it was a sawed off Winchester repeating rifle. The stock and barrel had been cut down to turn it into a hand gun that strapped into a holster on his leg. Originally, the blanks used when he fired the piece were so loaded that they had to put a screen of clear plastic between the camera, and especially the script girl as her pages would fly everywhere. A close inspection of the bullets on his cartridge belt show that their size of four inches long would have been far too big to put into the loading slot of the rifle. Even giving them benefit of a doubt that the rifle had been modified to permit the loading of these giant cartridges, the reduced magazine tube due to being sawed off would not been able to hold more than a few rounds at best...but in the series McQueen is seen firing off rapid shots like the weapon as a semi-automatic. Never once do we see McQueen loadin his weapon from his cartridge belt, which amazingly stays full throughout the series.

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