Television Westerns

Six Decades of Sagebrush Sheriffs, Scalawags, and Sidewinders

By (author) Alvin H. Marill

Hardback - £57.00

Publication date:

01 June 2011

Length of book:

190 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

ISBN-13: 9780810881327

Westerns have featured prominently in films almost since motion pictures were first produced at the end of the nineteenth century and when televisions invaded American homes in the late 1940s and early '50s, Western programs filled the small screen landscape. Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, these shows dominated television with such long-running successes as Bonanza, Wagon Train, and Maverick. And though the genre has fallen on hard times over the years, it has never died, as Hollywood continues to produce films, mini-series, and shows that keep the west alive.

In
Television Westerns: Six Decades of Sagebrush Sheriffs, Scalawags, and Sidewinders, Alvin H. Marill looks at the genre as it was represented from the beginning of television—from the twenty-year run of Gunsmoke to the brutal revisionist take of Deadwood. This volume encompasses all manifestations of the Western, including such series as Rawhide, The Virginian, and The Wild, Wild West, as well as movies-of the-week, mini-series, failed pilots, animated programs, documentaries, and even Western-themed episodes of non-Western series that provided their own spin on the genre.
Alvin H. Marill's Television Westerns offers an overview of small-screen offerings that covers the last six decades, focusing on production and broadcast....The series and televised films covered are not only significant in their role as American entertainment— many of these are, as Marrill points out, the cornerstones of popular culture— they are part of an ongoing web of intertexuality that includes adaptations, appropriations, visual and textual references, borrowings, and inspirations in literature, music, film, and of course, television.