User Reviews

The Marie Dupree Story Mar 19, 1958 A Man Called Horse Mar 26, 1958 The Sarah Drummond Story Apr 2, 1958 The Sally Potter Story Apr 9, 1958

The first and last of these episodes are pretty similar. An attractive woman joins the train and two men - one older, one younger both fall for her and wind up fighting over her. Major Adams is concerned that the lady involved, (the stunning Debra Paget, with blonde hair and a very 'Hollywood' make-up job as Marie Dupree and the attractive but more down to earth Vanessa Brown - except for the first scene, where she's dolled up as if for the Easter Parade - as Sally Potter), will cause him problems. Robert Lowery and Nick Adams are the rivals in the first one, Lyle Bettger and Martin Milner in the second. In both the older man unexpectedly relents and the episode comes to an abrupt ending, as if they were running out of film. Milner rides off to convince Sally not to go off with Brad Dexter and his gang, who want her to be a show girl in the salon they will set up in Virginia City. But we never see their confrontation, just a shot of Milner and Brown smiling at each other while sitting in the front of his wagon. Neither the DVD, the IMDB or James Rosin's book on the series gives any information for the 'bug on a windshield' endings of these episodes.

'A Man Called Horse' is a huge disappointment due to the absolutely flat performance of Ralph Meeker in the lead. This is a version of the Dorothy Johnson short story that a dozen years later was made is a major movie, (with two sequels) starring Richard Harris. This is a 50 minutes black and white 1950's version of the story, made with the knowledge that children will be watching. Meeker plays a Boston bank clerk who wanted to marry the boss's daughter but is refused by her father because he was a foundling with no name. He responds by going west, in search of someone to be. He gets captured by a Native American tribe, (the Crow in the Wagon Train episode, the Sioux in the movie), and is at first treated like a slave eventually is accepted and even marries a native woman who has been kind to him and fallen in love with him. She dies and her mother, who has also been kind to him is dying and was left to do so in the tribe's custom. Meeker's character, who has dubbed himself 'horse' because he felt similar to one, takes her to the wagon train for help where, (for some reason) Major Adams narrates his flash-back story, not Horse. Meeker reads his lines as if they were an initial read-through at a table and smiles wanly at Major Adams and Flint as he describes his situation. His is a very dramatic story but Meeker puts no emotion into it. And this is the same actor who dominated the screen as Mike Hammer in "Kiss Me Deadly" two years before. I get the impression his agent signed him up for this TV show and he just didn't care about it.

This disc is rescued by The Sarah Drummond Story, the finest episode yet in this series. It plays like an excellent theatrical production with strong performances, a great script and its heart being in the right place. The only weakness is that it has nothing to do with the Wagon Train, but that's OK. The last scene ties it all together in an amusing way. Flint seeks shelter from a storm at the farm of Gene Evans and the very pregnant June Lockhart. It seems that the couple should be happy a child is coming but they are anything but. It's never directly said but Lockhart was raped by a Native American while Evans was away and they don't know if the child will turn out to be his or the rapists. If it's the latter he might not be able to accept it but he knows their neighbors would definitely not due to past conflicts with the local tribe. He wants to give up the child to the tribe to care for him/her and move out to start left over again elsewhere if the child appears to be Indian. Lockart wants nothing of the sort, creating a great deal of tension. The local midwife is the wife of Evans' best friend, played by William Tallman, (on vacation from playing Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason). But Tallman has a special grudge. His father was killed by Indians and his mother so traumatized that she hasn't spoken a word since. McCullough finds himself in the middle of all this but helps these people work through their prejudices.