Perhaps the first series to feature a handicapped character
in the lead role, Tate was a summer
replacement western that ran for only 13 episodes, filling in for the second
half of the regular-season Perry Como
Show. The series, which aired on NBC, was sponsored by Kraft Foods and
produced by Como's Roncom Productions. The title character, played by David
McLean, who was then appearing in Marlboro cigarette ads as one of the early
versions of the Marlboro Man, is a Civil War veteran who was shot in the left
arm during the Battle of Vicksburg, rendering him lame in that arm. He keeps
the arm covered in a black leather glove and sleeve up to his elbow and wears a
sling to support it. Despite this handicap, Tate is an expert marksman and
faster on the draw than anyone else he encounters. He loans himself out as a
gun for hire, though never an assassin, and has been compared elsewhere to the
character of Paladin on Have Gun -- Will Travel, though Tate, who goes only by his last name, is not a foppish dandy
with Shakespearean pretensions. Instead, he wears corduroy and carries a Bible.
We learn his back story in the series' opening episode,
"Hometown" (June 8, 1960), in which Tate returns to his unnamed
hometown after a 10-year absence that began when the Civil War broke out,
placing the timeframe in 1871. (Two other episodes--"The Mary Hardin
Story" (June 29, 1960) and "The Gunfighters" (August 31,
1960)--specifically mention in their openings that they are set in 1871.) He
has returned at the request of Sheriff Morty Taw, who needs his gun as a backup
so that he can hang convicted murderer Joey Jory, whose brothers and friends
aim to rescue him. Taw takes Tate out to the gravesite where his wife Mary is
buried. Oddly, this is the first time he has been to her grave. Being a widower
gives Tate a sympathetic past, showing that he is capable of love and being
loved, while allowing him to roam free to pursue any and all employment
opportunities. In various episodes, he takes assignments in Wyoming, Nebraska,
Montana, and Texas. The remainder of the "Hometown" episode plays out
like High Noon in which Tate and Taw
are the only ones brave enough to stand up to the Jory gang.
In other episodes, Tate is hired as a bounty hunter who then
must answer the challenge of a young gun eager to establish a reputation
("Stopover," June 15, 1960), fend off a bounty hunter himself hired
by a vengeful young man whom Tate is forced to kill in self-defense ("The
Bounty Hunter," June 22, 1960), defend a widow from a land-grabber who
refuses to acknowledge her right to her property via the Homestead Act
("The Mary Hardin Story," June 29, 1960), and help a group of farmers
get what they're owed from a double-crossing cattle rancher ("The
Gunfighters," August 31, 1960). In other words, each episode presents a
different problem that usually can be resolved only with a gun, or so the
narrative would have us believe. However, the episode "Reckoning"
(August 24, 1960) ends with Tate not having killed anyone nor made good on his
assignment. He is originally sent to bring back Abel King for killing the son
of the man who hires him, but after King rescues Tate from sickness brought on
by drinking contaminated water, Tate decides to delve deeper into the case and
learns that King had killed the man's son to defend the honor of his daughter,
who got the reputation of having had intimate relations with the son. But Tate
is able to determine that the rumors were only that, spread by King's hired
hand Luke Corey to ward off rival suitors. Once Tate uncovers what really took
place, he allows Corey to merely walk away, perhaps convinced that the shame he
has brought on himself will be a harsher punishment than anything the law could
hand out.
As this episode shows, Tate is a man driven more by
principle than monetary interest. He is willing to forget the bounty he was
promised for King because he comes to believe that King was justified in his
behavior (whether we agree with it or not). Likewise, he isn't above thwarting
the interests of his employers if they conflict with his morals. In "A
Lethal Pride" (July 20, 1960), Tate is faced with a similar position: he
is hired by Mexican father Arriaga to bring justice to privileged young white
man Clay Barton for taking liberties with his daughter Carmela. But Tate
refuses to turn over Barton to Arriaga to exact his revenge, insisting that he
be taken to the legal authorities for any warranted punishment. Arriaga has a
hard time accepting this because, as a Mexican, he expects not to receive
justice from the white legal system and is too eager to believe that Tate plans
to conspire against him with the other whites. In "Comanche Scalps"
(August 10, 1960) Tate has no problem providing backup for his old war friend
Amos Dundee when he meets him in a Montana town to shoot down the man Dundee
says killed his younger brother. But when Dundee receives word that his other
brother Tad has married the woman he loves while he was away, he is determined
to go back home and kill his own brother. However, Tate refuses to stand aside,
even after being paid. He goes with Dundee, urging him the entire way not to
seek vengeance against his brother, and finally draws his pistol against Dundee
when the latter bull-whips Tad, who refuses to fight back. But Tate is spared
the task of gunning down Dundee because a band of Indians come by at that
moment and fatally shoot him with an arrow. Still, we get the sense that Tate
would not have allowed Amos to kill Tad.
Since Tate's physical handicap is so unusual for the era, it
is remarkable that it is not more central to the plots. He occasionally is
insulted, called half a man or "one wing," but these incidents are
never the driving force of the narrative. He does not seem particularly
offended by such remarks because he seems to feel that he is not at a
disadvantage, despite the loss of one arm. Occasionally his lame arm is a kind
of identifying badge, as in "Hometown" where two of Jory's cohorts
find him camping outside town and ask what his name is. When he refuses to
provide it, one of them asks him to step out into the light and once they see
his arm in a sling, Joss Jory immediately recognizes him as Tate. Whereas it
would have been easy to use the handicap as a means for eliciting more sympathy
for his character, that never seems to be the intent. Even when it comes to
hand-to-hand combat, Tate more often than not holds his own, even though the
scenes where he pushes another man clear across the room with his good arm
strain the show's credibility. Rather than a man pitied by women, Tate is more
often seen as desirable, as the wife of one of the aforementioned farmers
considers him a man of action who is willing to fight, while she sees her
husband as a coward who has to hire someone else to fight his battles. And in
"Reckoning," the sullied young woman Lulie Jean King is disappointed
that Tate intends to leave after her reputation has been restored because she
has become infatuated with his worldliness. All of these elements combine to
depict Tate as a man who refuses to be limited or defined by his handicap. As
such, the series is considerably ahead of its time in providing a positive role
model for the disabled without resorting to cheap emotionalism.
Though there are no credits for the theme song or individual
scores, musical supervision is credited to Irving Friedman, whose biography can
be found in the post for Father KnowsBest.
The complete series has been released on DVD by TimelessMedia Group.
The Actors
David McLean
Born Eugene Joseph Huth in Akron, Ohio in 1922, McLean began
his acting career on the stage in Ohio, eventually moving to Los Angeles, where
he continued his stage work and broke into credited screen work on the TV
western Sugarfoot in 1957. Other than
an uncredited appearance in the 1955 TV movie Captain Fathom, this was his only documented film work before being
cast as Tate in the series of the same name. However, he had developed a
national identity as the Marlboro Man in both print and television ads. While
trying to launch his acting career, McLean worked as a cartoonist and sketch
artist. He also was said to be an accomplished woodworker.
His lead work on Tate
led to four film appearances and a TV guest spot the following year, most
notably an uncredited role in Irwin Allen's film version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which
preceded the TV series of the same name. McLean's other film roles were in B
movies, like the sci-fi classic X-15,
which also included Charles Bronson, Mary Tyler Moore, Stanley Livingston of My Three Sons, and narration by Jimmy
Stewart. Guest appearances on a host of TV shows continued throughout the
1960s, despite the fact that McLean was diagnosed with cancer in 1964 due to
his heavy smoking. McLean then became an anti-smoking advocate, going before
the board of Philip Morris to plead with them to limit television advertising
and joining the campaign that eventually took cigarette ads off the air. Meanwhile,
he continued his acting career and had a recurring role as Craig Merritt on the
daytime soap Days of Our Lives in
1965-66. TV guest roles continued into the mid-70s and at the end of the decade
there was more B movie work in films like Kingdom
of the Spiders (1977) and Deathsport
(1978), his last work. In 1985 he began suffering from emphysema and had a
tumor removed from one of his lungs in 1994. He died the following year on
October 12, and after his death his widow and son filed a wrongful death suit
against William Morris. This sequence of events was dramatized in the book and
subsequent film Thank You for Smoking.
Notable Guest Stars
Season 1, Episode 1, "Hometown": James Coburn (shown on the right, starred
in The Magnificent Seven, Charade, Our Man Flint, and In Like
Flint and played Jeff Durain on Klondike
and Gregg Miles on Acapulco)
plays convicted killer Joey Jory. Hank Patterson (Fred Ziffel on Green Acres and Petticoat Junction and Hank on Gunsmoke)
plays his friend Charlie Simms. Royal Dano (appeared in The Far Country, Moby Dick,
and The Outlaw Josey Wales) plays
hometown sheriff Morty Taw.
Season 1, Episode 2, "Stopover": King Calder (Lt.
Gray on Martin Kane) plays Tate's
target Ben Tracy. Robert F. Simon (Dave Tabak on Saints and Sinners, Gen. Alfred Terry on Custer, Frank Stephens on Bewitched,
Uncle Everett McPherson on Nancy,
Capt. Rudy Olsen on The Streets of San
Francisco, and J. Jonah Jameson on The
Amazing Spiderman) plays the local sheriff. Vaughn Taylor (starred in Jailhouse Rock, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Psycho,
and In Cold Blood and played Ernest
P. Duckweather on Johnny Jupiter)
plays an unnamed bartender. Peggy Ann Garner (appeared in The Pied Piper, Jane Eyre,
Daisy Kenyon, and Thunder in the Valley) plays saloon girl
Julie.
Season 1, Episode 3, "The Bounty Hunter": Robert
Culp (shown on the left, starred in Sunday in New York, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,
and Breaking Point and played Hoby
Gilman on Trackdown, Kelly Robinson
on I Spy, Bill Maxwell on The Greatest American Hero, and Warren
on Everybody Loves Raymond) plays bounty
hunter Tom Sandee. Robert Redford (starred in Barefoot in the Park, Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The
Sting, and All the President's Men)
plays Sandee's employer Torsett. Robert Warwick (starred in Alias Jimmy Valentine, The Supreme Sacrifice, The Heart of a Hero, and Against All Flags) plays Irish poet and
station master Sean McConnell. Louise Fletcher (starred in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Exorcist II, and The Cheap
Detective and played Kai Winn on Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine) plays his wife Roberta.
Season 1, Episode 4, "The Mary Hardin Story": Julie
Adams (starred in Creature From the Black
Lagoon and played Martha Howard on The
Jimmy Stewart Show, Ann Rorchek on Code
Red, and Eve Simpson on Murder, She
Wrote) plays widow Mary Hardin. Mort Mills (Marshal Frank Tallman on Man Without a Gun, Sgt. Ben Landro on Perry Mason, and Sheriff Fred Madden on The Big Valley) plays land-grabber
Tetlow.
Season 1, Episode 5, "Voices
of the Town": Paul Richards (appeared in Playgirl and Beneath the
Planet of the Apes and played Louis Kassoff on The Lawless Years and Dr. McKinley Thompson on Breaking Point) plays townsman Will Ragan. William Mims (Editor
Dameron on The Life and Legend of Wyatt
Earp) plays an unnamed hotel clerk. Wendy Winkelman (younger sister of
Michael Winkelman of The Real McCoys)
plays the younger sister of a woman Tate shot.
Season 1, Episode 6, "A Lethal Pride": Gregory
Morton (Mr. Wainwright on Peyton Place and
Walter Williams on Ben Casey) plays proud
Mexican father Arriaga. Marianna Hill (Rita on The Tall Man) plays his daughter Carmela. Ted de Corsia (Police
Chief Hagedorn on Steve Canyon) plays
wealthy landowner John Barton. Kelton Garwood (Beauregard O'Hanlon on Bourbon Street Beat and Percy Crump on Gunsmoke) plays a scamming preacher.
Season 1, Episode 7, "Tigero": Martin Landau (shown on the right, starred
in North by Northwest, Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The
Fall of the House of Usher, and Ed
Wood and played Rollin Hand on Mission:
Impossible!, Commander John Koenig on Space:
1999, Dr. Sol Gold on The Evidence,
Bob Ryan on Entourage, and Frank
Malone on Without a Trace) plays sheepherder
John Chess. Robert Brubaker (Deputy Ed Blake on U.S. Marshal and Floyd on Gunsmoke)
plays local kingpin Abel Towey. Warren Vanders (Chuck Davis on Empire and Ben Crowley on Daniel Boone) plays his brother Mannen.
Ted Markland (Reno on The High Chaparral)
plays his other brother Bill. Harry Swoger (Harry the bartender on The Big Valley) plays an unnamed
bartender.
Season 1, Episode 8, "Comanche Scalps": Frank
Overton (starred in Desire Under the Elms,
To Kill a Mockingbird, and Fail-Safe and played Major Harvey Stovall
on 12 O'Clock High) plays Tate's
friend Amos Dundee. Robert Redford (shown on the left, see "The Bounty Hunter" above)
plays his brother Tad. Leonard Nimoy (shown below, played Mr. Spock on Star Trek, Paris on Mission:
Impossible!, and Dr. William Bell on Fringe)
plays the leader of the Comanches.
Season 1, Episode 9, "Before the Sun-Up": Warren
Oates (starred in In the Heat of the Night,
The Wild Bunch, and Stripes and played Ves Painter on Stoney Burke) plays troublemaker Cowpoke.
Peter Whitney (Sergeant Buck Sinclair on The
Rough Riders and Lafe Crick on The
Beverly Hillbillies) plays town bully Clay Sedon. Richard Whorf (starred in
Midnight, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Chain
Lightning and directed 18 episodes of Gunsmoke,
37 episodes of My Three Sons, and 67
episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies)
plays Doc Emmett Ealy. John Qualen (starred in The Three Musketeers(1935), His
Girl Friday, The Grapes of Wrath,
Angels Over Broadway, Casablanca, Anatomy of a Murder, and A
Patch of Blue) plays restaurant proprietor Sam.
Season 1, Episode 10, "Reckoning": Bing Russell (Deputy
Clem Foster on Bonanza) plays hired
hand Luke Corey.
Season 1, Episode 11, "The Gunfighters": Jack
Hogan (shown on the left, starred in The Bonnie Parker Story,
Paratroop Command, and The Cat Burglar and played Kirby on Combat!, Sgt. Jerry Miller on Adam-12, Chief Ranger Jack Moore on Sierra, and Judge Smithwood on Jake and the Fatman) plays farmer
Cromley. Ken Mayer (Maj. Robbie Robertson on Space Patrol) plays farmer Lathrop.
Season 1, Episode 12, "Quiet After the Storm": Hampton
Fancher (Deputy Lon Gillis on Black
Saddle and co-wrote the screenplay and was executive producer on Blade Runner) plays unfaithful husband
Coley. Cathy O'Donnell (starred in The
Best Years of Our Lives, They Live by
Night, Detective Story, The Man From Laramie, The Deerslayer, and Ben-Hur) plays his wife Amy.
Season 1, Episode 13, "The Return of Jessica Jackson":
Patricia Breslin (shown on the right, played Amanda Peoples Miller on The
People's Choice and Laura Brooks on Peyton
Place) plays stolen wife Jessica Jackson. John Kellogg (Jack Chandler on Peyton Place) plays her husband Milo. Henry
Corden (Carlo on The Count of Monte
Cristo, Waxey Gordon on The Lawless
Years, and Babbitt on The Monkees
and did voicework on The Flintstones,
Jonny Quest, The Atom Ant Show, The Banana
Splits Adventure Hour and Return to
the Planet of the Apes) plays his employee Leroux. Jon Lormer (Harry Tate
on Lawman, various autopsy surgeons
and medical examiners in 12 episodes of Perry
Mason, and Judge Irwin A. Chester on Peyton
Place) plays an Indian chief.
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