Lessons learned from TV Western heroes

DVDs of The Rifleman, a 1958-1963 television series, are now readily available at Amazon.com and elsewhere. The series, set in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s, starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain. Connors had briefly played both in the major leagues and the NBA. As a Boston Celtic in 1946 he was apparently the first professional basketball player to shatter a glass backboard. But the premise of the TV series probably drew me in more than the star’s biography: Lucas McCain was both a pioneer in his work—his Winchester rifle had a modified trigger mechanism that allowed for rapid-fire shots—and a warm-hearted father.

Connors in an interview emphasized that “The warm father-son relationship was the heart of the program.” The shows would typically have a scene at the end where Mark would be proud of his dad for beating the bad guys—he killed two or three of them per show. Then Lucas would explain, “A man doesn’t run from a fight, Mark. But that doesn’t mean you go looking to run to one.” Lucas was someone to revere at a time when I was starting to think my own father fell short. As Lucas gave Mark lessons in heroism, Marvin was listening in.

Eric Metaxas writes about an episode of The Rifleman in his new book, Seven Men and the Secret of Their Greatness: “I was absolutely stunned by how the story was clearly trying to communicate what it means to be a real man, a good man, a heroic and brave man. And it was showing the difference between that and being a coward or a bully. This is vital in raising up young men who aspire to do the right thing. But one look at TV today will tell you this is entirely gone.”

The other series from that era that I hope will become readily available is Have Gun, Will Travel (some episodes are available on YouTube). Richard Boone starred as Paladin, a gunfighter who would come to the rescue of those in need (paladins were Charlemagne’s knights in French legend, like the Knights of the Round Table in English lore.) As the theme song went, he was “a knight without armor in a savage land. … A chess knight of silver is his badge of trust.”

That was a particularly affecting touch for a boy like me who relished chess. Each show opened with a shot of a white chess-knight emblem on a black background—and then the camera pulled back to show that that the emblem was on the black pistol holster of a gunman dressed entirely in black. He was ready to kill when necessary, but seemed to prefer reading and chess. He loved the knight, my favorite chess piece, and mused in one episode that “It can move in eight different directions, over obstacles, and it’s always unexpected.”

Paladin was obviously smart—screenwriter Sam Rolfe, who created the series, said the success of the show hinged on Richard Boone’s ability to “play a high-IQ gunslinger and get away with it.” Paladin quoted Shakespeare (for the benefit of 9-year-olds, someone would say, “That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it?”). Paladin dropped so many references to Aristotle that one TV critic exulted, “Where else can you see a gun fight and absorb a classical education at the same time?”