THE CAPTAIN SAM STORY WAGON TRAIN TV
Horton played the scout Flint McCullough in 189 episodes and was my favourite TV star when I was a boy until James Garner came bobbing down the bunny-trail as Brett Maverick! Horton was a class act who really should have gone on to bigger things. ‘Ward just dropped dead.’ The two men wept at either end of the phone. ‘Hold on’, he said to Wayne over the telephone. It fell to Terry to inform John Wayne of Bond’s sudden death in 1960. It was the original wagon master Ward Bond who insisted on Warner Bros signing on both Terry and Frank for the show. In fact he was a life-long friend of Frank McGrath and the two men performed together on the rodeo circuit and at prison rodeos before finding their way into the movies. He was a former US Marine who served in the Second World War, a football star and a stunt man/rodeo rider. Terry Wilson (1923-99) 267 episodes (1957-65)Ĭalifornian Terry Wilson played trail hand Bill Hawks in 267 episodes.
THE CAPTAIN SAM STORY WAGON TRAIN SERIES
Two years after the Wagon Train series ended, Frank succumbed to a heart attack at 64. He is right there alongside or just nearby the Duke in almost every scene. The next time you watch either Fort Apache (1948) or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), you might notice Frank as the bugler in both of these John Ford/ John Wayne westerns. A former stunt man and rodeo performer, he was notoriously fond of a drink, a weakness that often gave him the Dutch courage to pick fights which he invariably lost. Missouri-born Frank played the series’ comic relief character Charlie Wooster, the wagon train’s irascible cook, and would grace all but 13 of the 284 episodes shot over eight seasons. The other survivor is Robert Fuller, but more of them both later.įrank McGrath (1903-67) 271 episodes (1957-65) I actually watched that episode yesterday, unaware until today’s research that he must have struck a chord with the producers, for he would continue in the series for another 50 episodes. One of these survivors is Michael Burns who ‘evolved’ into a regular after appearing in an early episode as a boy stricken speechless by the murder of his father. I shall look at them in ‘episode total’ order, highest to lowest. There were eight actors who were more or less ‘regulars’ in Wagon Train. In short, she was one of those hundreds of bit players who made a living on both big and small screen, but whose careers never amounted to much. Kay was an uncredited telephone operator in the Bob Hope Hit The Ghost Breakers (1940) and a slave girl (also uncredited) in Spartacus in 1960. Her career would span 40 years and 99 screen credits, mostly TV spots. A minor actress named Kay Stewart popped up in eleven episodes from 1958 to 1964, playing eleven different women. Throughout those eight seasons only eight actors (no actresses) appeared in fifty or more episodes. The Major's suspicions are only aroused when the ""parson"" gives an unlikely off the cuff sermon, and his daughter gives Wooster a lesson in cardplay.From 1957 until 1965 the prairie schooners of TV’s Wagon Train series rolled over 284 episodes. The Major allows them to join the train, although Flint thinks the man is too similar in looks to the gambler he met. He claims to have been robbed by Ramero, who even took his bible. Later that day, a parson with his two small children, a girl and a boy, turn up at the wagon train. Flint is told that Ramero, a notorious Mexican bandit leader, is to be hanged there that day. The man, O'Malley, doesn't wish to see his old friend hang, especially as Ramero blames him for his capture. The bartender remarks that he thought the gambler would be at the hanging. He is standing by the bar when a man seated at a nearby table with a deck of cards in his hand, asks Flint if he wants to play a hand. When Ruth Owens sees the boy she recognises him as her brother, but to step forward and defend him would mean losing her new found rįlint is in town at a saloon.
![the captain sam story wagon train the captain sam story wagon train](https://simkl.net/episodes/57/5712880e83cb6c5b2_w.jpg)
The men on the train form a lynching party but Major Adams intervenes. Upset by the insinuation about his sister the boy lashes out and the man ends up dead. When one of the men hears the name of the ""hotel"" he laughs in the boy's face the place is infamous for one type of woman in particular. He explains that she was a waitress in a smart hotel. The first family he comes across asks him about her. He has had word that his older sister is on the train and he has come looking for her to tell her that their father is dead. One particularly hot night a young stranger rides into camp. Her husband is a teacher and they seem like any other average couple on the train.The weather has turned hot and the train has hit a dry patch.
![the captain sam story wagon train the captain sam story wagon train](https://simkl.net/episodes/56/5666488743d3d03dd_w.jpg)
![the captain sam story wagon train the captain sam story wagon train](https://simkl.net/episodes/56/5669452a9d6177795_w.jpg)
Ruth Owens, her little girl and her second husband are journeying west with the train.