Frontier Circus (1962)

 

The failure of Frontier Circus to last beyond a single season of 26 episodes certainly was not due to the efforts of the Revue Productions publicity department. Besides a December 16, 1961 TV Guide photo feature showing how they filmed the hot-air balloon shots for "The Balloon Girl" episode, which aired on January 11, 1962, the series scored two more TV Guide features in 1962--a 2-page photo spread of the three male stars and a menagerie of animals in the February 3, 1962 issue, and a biographical feature on leading man Chill Wills in the April 28, 1962 issue. But while the publicity department did its part and the casting crew lined up such A-list guest stars as Sammy Davis, Jr. in "Coals of Fire" (January 4, 1962), Mickey Rooney in "Calamity Circus" (March 8, 1962), and Red Buttons in "Never Won Fair Lady" (April 12, 1962), the script department failed to come up with much in the way of new stories, instead recycling such shop-worn plots as the shotgun wedding (used twice, in "The Courtship" [February 19, 1962] and "The Clan MacDuff" [April 26, 1962]), the Romeo and Juliet family feud (also in "The Clan MacDuff"), the ugly duckling tomboy ("Stopover in Paradise" [February 22, 1962]), the con-man takeover ("Quick Shuffle" [February 1, 1962]), the impractical pacifist ("The Good Fight" [April 19, 1962]), the jealous husband ("The Daring Durandos" [May 17, 1962]), and the quarantine story ("Incident at Pawnee Gun" [September 6, 1962]). And for a show dubbed "Wagon Train with animals" (see our post on the 1961 episodes as well as the aforementioned TV Guide photo feature), the animals rarely figure prominently in the plots, other than a six-gun-shooting chimpanzee in the final episode, which was aired 3½ months after the penultimate show obviously as a placeholder before the new season got started. Despite all the money spent on the animal acts and special effects for gimmicks like a runaway hot-air balloon, the series itself couldn't deliver on the most fundamental aspect of quality TV--a good story.

In fact, some of the stories are downright awful, beginning with the previously cited Sammy Davis, Jr. guest spot "Coals of Fire" in which Davis plays ex-slave Cato Richards who is bent on revenging the Union Army officer who shot his master. In this Confederate-friendly fantasy, Richards' master was a "good" slave owner who treated his slaves like family, while the Union officer who killed him is a sadist, so evil that it drives Richards to join the Confederate army in a support role so that he can learn how to handle firearms and gather intelligence to help him track down his target. Both Richards and Frontier Circus regular Tony Gentry tell each other that they didn't fight in the Confederate cause in support of slavery, but regardless what they may tell themselves or each other, the Civil War was fought to protect the institution of slavery. Plenty of westerns from the era attempted to whitewash the Confederacy and those who fought for it (see The Rebel, for example), but few stoop to the levels of this episode of Frontier Circus. It does, however, bestow on Wills' Casey Thompson character perhaps the best line uttered in the series when he mutters to himself that man is the only animal who will kill his own kind for reasons other than hunger. The Old South is treated as a quixotic curiosity in "The Courtship" when Gentry rides into the isolated community of New Atlanta hoping to arrange for the circus to perform there only to learn that they don't allow such entertainment in their genteel reconstruction of the Old South out on the frontier (the uncouth subject of slavery is never mentioned). And in "The Good Fight" Ben Travis rediscovers an old flame who has had her family plantation reconstructed in the Nevada valleys, again as if this is some whimsical trifle. Of course, white audiences and TV producers were completely unaware of the power of these antebellum symbols in the pre-Civil Rights Act era.

But white male superiority isn't only promoted by reminders of the Old South: "The Inheritance" (March 15, 1962) has Casey Thompson "inherit" the guardianship of a son and daughter of an old Japanese performing friend of his, but the real purpose of the episode is to denigrate the treatment of women in traditional Japanese culture. The son, Yuki, spends the first half of the episode repressing his sister Hideko--she has to sit at another table when he eats and is not allowed to speak for herself. One of the white male circus performers, Rolando, voices his approval of this arrangement before being put in his place by the "more liberated" American female circus women. When the American women help Hideko dress up in western wear, Yuki feels his heritage is disgraced but holds Ben Travis responsible and has to fight it out with him to try to restore honor, a fight he is bound to lose despite whipping much bigger men earlier in the episode. The episode ends not with a resolution to Hideko's subjugated position in relation to her brother but with Ben and Yuki fighting off the bigger ruffians and then shaking hands, the implication being that once the males have settled their differences everything else will fall into place.

The irony of this episode is that it suggests that American women have it better than their Asian counterparts when, as we covered at length in our post on the 1961 episodes, the women  on Frontier Circus are hardly liberated--they are most often damsels in distress. But in the 1962 episodes women become more devious and dangerous. In "The Courtship" southern belle Amelia Curtis attempts to lure Casey into marrying her because he bears a striking resemblance to her late father who established and ran the resurrected Old South community of New Atlanta. But she, being a woman, does not have the skill to maintain the town's economic prosperity, so she is looking for a man to take over. When he declines her offer, she threatens to seize his circus. He is only able to escape her clutches by persuading her town marshal, who has always loved her but never had the backbone to stand up to her, to put her in her place by repeatedly telling her to shut up. So much for the liberated American woman. As alluded to above, "Stopover in Paradise" recycles the worn-out tale of a tomboy who has to be shown by a man, in this case Ben Travis, how to be a woman. Saloon performer Naomi Champagne in her eponymous episode needs Ben to defend her against snooty easterners who try to convince her that historically women like Joan of Arc and Cleopatra always sacrificed themselves so that men could survive and prosper after a Mexican bandito captures Naomi and the easterners and threatens to kill them unless she becomes his paramour. While Naomi has the courage to kill the outlaw during a private dinner, she and the others need Ben's swashbuckling rescue to escape the outlaw's henchmen. In "Mighty Like Rogues" (April 5, 1962) we see bank robber's widow Ma Jukes forcing her children into a life of crime to eke out an existence after they are left destitute. In "The Good Fight" Ben's former lover Hannah Cabot is a greedy land-grabber who pushes her father in trying to drive out a sect of pacifists who own land she covets. And in "The Daring Durandos" younger sister Tina Durando manipulates Ben to sow discord between her older sister and her husband to try to break up their trapeze act so that she can reform a better version and restore the family name to the luster it enjoyed when their father was still alive. By contrast, white male manipulator Will Grady, who has made a living romancing and then fleecing a series of single women, is portrayed as a devilish old rascal in "Mr. Grady Regrets" (January 25, 1962) who is redeemed when his long-lost daughter decides to disregard his perfidious past and reconcile with him. To be fair, the aforementioned Ma Jukes is also rehabilitated by episode's end when Ben and Casey hire her as a kind of store detective to spot pickpockets circulating amongst their circus customers, but she does so only upon threat of being sent to jail and therefore separated from her children.

The one female who manages to hold her own against the male stars of Frontier Circus is Stella Stevens' balloon entrepreneur Katy Cogswell in "The Balloon Girl." Initially she comes off as another damsel in distress when her hot-air balloon crashes into a hotel in the town where the circus is playing, and she has no money to pay for repairs. Ben and Tony, both finding her attractive and wanting to woo her, offer to have their circus hands repair her balloon if she agrees to join them as a performing act. She agrees, but has no intention of sticking around once the repairs are made (thus casting herself from damsel in distress to manipulative female), but when she takes off she does not realize that Ben has rigged her balloon to only go so far, forcing her to land in the wilderness, where he is easily able to find her and tries to convince her that it is no place for a lady because of the many dangers, in other words, returning her to the role of damsel in distress. However, he overreaches when he recruits a trio of faux Indians, who have been performing with the circus but then walk out in a pay dispute, to scare her into thinking it is best to return to the safety of the circus. When she sees the same "Indians" sneak back into camp, she recognizes that Ben has played her, and once again she takes off in her balloon, though this time Ben does not see it coming, and she leaves behind a note for him saying that she was as honest with him as he was with her. Casey tries to make lemonade out of the episode by pointing out that the name of their circus is plastered on the side of her balloon, meaning they will receive advertising wherever she goes, but it is clear that for once Ben has been outmaneuvered at his own game. Perhaps had the series used a little more of that humility it may have found more success.

 

The Actors

For the biographies of Chill Wills, John Derek, Richard Jaeckel, and J. Pat O'Malley, see the 1961 post on Frontier Circus.

 

Notable Guest Stars

Season 1, Episode 11, "Coals of Fire": Sammy Davis, Jr. (shown on the left, "The Greatest Living Entertainer," starred in Porgy and Bess, Ocean's 11, Robin and the 7 Hoods, A Man Called Adam, Sweet Charity, Salt and Pepper, The Cannonball Run, and Cannonball Run II and played Chip Warren on One Life to Live and Eddie Phillips on General Hospital) plays former slave Cato Richards. R.G. Armstrong (Police Capt. McAllister on T.H.E. Cat and Lewis Vendredi on Friday the 13th) plays former Union Army Capt. Uriah Foster. Chief Yowlachie (aka, Daniel Simmons, starred in Tonio, Son of the Sierras, With Sitting Bull at the Spirit Lake Massacre, The Paleface, Ma and Pa Kettle, and The Pathfinder) plays an Indian chief. Larry J. Blake (the unnamed jailer on Yancy Derringer and Tom Parnell on Saints and Sinners) plays the circus band leader. 

Season 1, Episode 12, "The Balloon Girl": Stella Stevens (shown on the right, starred in Girls! Girls! Girls!, The Nutty Professor, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Silencers, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows, and The Poseidon Adventure and played Lute-Mae Sanders on Flamingo Road, Phyllis Blake on Santa Barbara, Jake on General Hospital, and Doreen Krudup on Strip Mall) plays balloon entrepreneur Katy Cogswell. Chick Chandler (Toubo Smith on Soldiers of Fortune and Barney Hogan on One Happy Family) plays her ground man Luke Turlock. Claude Akins (Sonny Pruett on Movin' On and Sheriff Elroy P. Lobo on B.J and the Bear and on Lobo) plays Indian actor Powcheek. Hal Needham (Hollywood's highest-paid stuntman who invented numerous stunt devices, was a double for Richard Boone and Burt Reynolds, and directed Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper, and Cannonball Run) plays his performing partner Ralph Wexler.

Season 1, Episode 13, "Mr. Grady Regrets": Charles Ruggles (shown on the left, starred in Charley's Aunt, The Girl Habit, If I Had a Million, Alice in Wonderland, Ruggles of Red Gap, Bringing Up Baby, and Son of Flubber, voiced Aesop on The Bullwinkle Show, and played Lowell Redlings Farquhar on The Beverly Hillbillies) plays ex-con Will Grady. Anne Helm (starred in Follow That Dream, The Interns, and Honeymoon Hotel and played Molly Pierce on Run for Your Life and Mary Briggs on General Hospital) plays his daughter Rosa Blanchard. Lillian Bronson (Mrs. Drake on Date With the Angels) plays the woman who sent him to prison Dorothy Barker. Crahan Denton (appeared in The Parent Trap, Birdman of Alcatraz, and To Kill a Mockingbird) plays lawman Marshal Beckett. Michael Forest (starred in Ski Troop Attack, Atlas, and The Glory Guys and was the voice of Capt. Dorai on Street Fighter II: V and Olympus on Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue) plays Grady's former cellmate Roy Clatter. Dorothy Neumann (Miss Mittleman on Hank) plays Dorothy's neighbor Mrs. Hoskins. Tim Graham (Homer Ede on National Velvet) plays farmer Williams. S. John Launer (Marshall Houts on The Court of Last Resort and the judge 33 times on Perry Mason) plays prison Warden Martine.

Season 1, Episode 14, "Quick Shuffle": Gilbert Roland (shown on the right, starred in Men of the North, She Done Him Wrong, The Sea Hawk, The Gay Cavalier, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Around the World in 80 Days) plays card hustler Luke Santos. Patricia Barry (Kate Harris on Harris Against the World, Lydia McGuire on Dr. Kildare, Adelaide Horton Williams on Days of Our Lives, Peg English on All My Children, and Sally Gleason on Guiding Light) plays saloon girl Amy. Carl Benton Reid (starred in The Little Foxes, In a Lonely Place, Lorna Doone, and The Left Hand of God and played The Man on Burke's Law) plays circuit Judge Salem. George Mitchell (Cal Bristol on Stoney Burke) plays a New Mexico sheriff. Myron Healey (Doc Holliday on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp) plays a card player. Richard Reeves (Mr. Murphy on Date With the Angels) plays card player Gruber.

Season 1, Episode 15, "The Courtship": Jo Van Fleet (shown on the left, Oscar winner starred in East of Eden, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Cool Hand Luke, and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas) plays southern belle Amelia Curtis. Jeannette Nolan (starred in Macbeth (1948), The Big Heat, Tribute to a Bad Man, and The Reluctant Astronaut, did voicework for Psycho, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound, and played Annette Devereaux on Hotel de Paree and Holly Grainger on The Virginian) plays her sister Amanda. Henry Jones (Dean Fred Baker on Channing, Owen Metcalf on The Girl With Something Extra, Judge Jonathan Dexter on Phyllis, Josh Alden on Mrs. Columbo, Homer McCoy on Gun Shy, B. Riley Wicker on Falcon Crest, and Hughes Whitney Lennox on I Married Dora) plays New Atlanta Marshal Harry Longstreet. Willard Waterman (see the biography section for the 1961 post on Dennis the Menace) plays New Atlanta leading citizen Parker. Sheila Bromley (Janet Tobin on I Married Joan and Ethel Weiss on Hank) plays his wife. Lloyd Corrigan (starred in A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob, Hitler's Children, Captive Wild Woman, The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, and Son of Paleface and played Papa Dodger on Willy, Wally Dipple on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Ned Buntline on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Uncle Charlie on Happy, and Professor McKillup on Hank) plays New Atlanta citizen Willis.

Season 1, Episode 16, "Stopover in Paradise": Carolyn Jones (shown on the right, appeared in House of Wax, The Big Heat, The Seven Year Itch, The Tender Trap, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and How the West Was Won and played Morticia Addams on The Addams Family, Marsha, Queen of Diamonds on Batman, and Myrna Clegg on Capitol) plays cattle rancher Amy Tyson. 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 her foreman Jess Bailey. Adam Kennedy (Dion Patrick on The Californians and Brock Hayden on The Doctors) plays her ranch hand Sam Hagen. Jackie Russell (Peggy Connolly on The Joey Bishop Show) plays contortionist Janet Olsen. 

Season 1, Episode 17, "Calamity Circus": Mickey Rooney (shown on the left, starred in Captains Courageous, Boys Town, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Words and Music, Babyface Nelson, and Breakfast at Tiffany's as well as numerous Andy Hardy movies and played Mickey Mulligan on The Mickey Rooney Show, Mickey Grady on Mickey, Oliver Nugent on One of the Boys, Henry Dailey on The New Adventures of the Black Stallion, and Talbut on Kleo the Misfit Unicorn) plays circus clown Arthur. Howard McNear (see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Andy Griffith Show) plays small-town Judge Stuart. Parley Baer (see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays the town sheriff. Dennis Rush (Howie Pruitt on The Andy Griffith Show) plays a boy who wants to see the circus. 

Season 1, Episode 18, "The Inheritance": Alan Hale, Jr. (shown on the middle right, played Biff Baker on Biff Baker U.S.A., Casey Jones on Casey Jones, and The Skipper on Gilligan's Island) plays ruffian Lait. Donald "Red" Barry (shown on the near right, played Red Ryder in the movie serial The Adventures of Red Ryder, and played Lt. Snedigar on Surfside 6, The Grand Vizier and Tarantula on Batman, Capt. Red Barnes on Police Woman, and Jud Larabee on Little House on the Prairie) plays his partner Martin. Wally Brown (shown on the far right, appeared in Notorious, The Left Handed Gun, and The Absent-Minded Professor and played Jed Fame on Cimarron City and Chauncey Kowalski on The Roaring '20's) plays Primrose Sheriff Tom Bender. Sid Tomack (Jim Gillis on The Life of Riley) plays saloon owner Toby. Peter Leeds (Tenner Smith on Trackdown and George Colton on Pete and Gladys) plays circus knife-thrower Rolando. 

Season 1, Episode 19, "Naomi Champagne": Constance Ford (starred in A Summer Place, Home From the Hill, All Fall Down, and The Caretakers and played Ada Lucas Davis Downs McGowan Hobson on Another World) plays saloon performer Naomi Champagne. Richard Conte (shown on the left, appeared in A Walk in the Sun, 13 Rue Madeleine, Call Northside 777, Ocean's 11, and Lady in Cement and played Jeff Ryder on The Four Just Men) plays outlaw Don Diego Montoya. Alex Montoya (Miguel Morales on The High Chaparral) plays his henchman Juan. Roberto Contreras (Pedro on The High Chaparral) plays his henchman Pablo. Robert H. Harris (Jake Goldberg on Molly and Raymond Schindler on The Court of Last Resort) plays stove company owner John Haskill. Marguerite Chapman (starred in Spy Smasher, Parachute Nurse, Pardon My Past, Man Bait, and The Seven Year Itch) plays his wife Theresa. Neil Hamilton (starred in The Great Gatsby (1926), Why Be Good?, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), and Brewster's Millions, was the host of Hollywood Screen Test, and played Commissioner Gordon on Batman) plays their friend Jason Glass.

Season 1, Episode 20, "Mighty Like Rogues": Glenda Farrell (shown on the right, starred in Little Caesar, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, Johnny Eager, The Talk of the Town, and Kissin' Cousins and played Torchy Blane in 7 feature films) plays pickpocket ring leader Ma Jukes. Joby Baker (David Lewis on Good Morning, World and Col. Harvey Mann on The Six O'Clock Follies) plays her elder son George Washington Jukes. Jena Engstrom (daughter of actress Jean Engstrom) plays her daughter Betsy Ross Jukes. Roger Mobley (Homer "Packy" Lambert on Fury) plays her younger son Andrew Jackson Jukes. 

Season 1, Episode 21, "Never Won Fair Lady": Red Buttons (shown on the left, starred in Sayonara, Hatari!, The Longest Day, Stagecoach, and The Posiedon Adventure and played Henry Wadsworth Phyfe on The Double Life of Henry Phyfe, Al Baker on Knots Landing, and Jules Rubadoux on ER) plays Casey's former commanding officer's son Earl Youngblood. Paul Newlan (Police Capt. Grey on M Squad and Lt. Gen. Pritchard on 12 O'Clock High) plays his father Gen. "Iron Pants" Youngblood. Gloria Talbott (starred in The Cyclops, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll,  and I Married a Monster From Outer Space and played Moneta on Zorro) plays lion tamer Pamela. Richard Reeves (see "Quick Shuffle" above) plays a dissatisfied lemonade customer. 

Season 1, Episode 22, "The Good Fight": George Macready (Martin Peyton on Peyton Place) plays pacifist preacher John Duncan. Kenneth MacDonald (played the judge 32 times on Perry Mason, played Col. Parker on Colt .45, and appeared in several Three Stooges shorts) plays one of his followers Canfield. Jason Evers (shown on the right, starred in The Brain That Wouldn't Die, House of Women, The Green Berets, and Escape From the Planet of the Apes and played Pitcairn on Wrangler, Prof. Joseph Howe on Channing, and Jim Sonnett on The Guns of Will Sonnett) plays ranch foreman Judd Halleck. Kenneth Tobey (starred in The Thing From Another World, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and It Came From Beneath the Sea and played Chuck Martin on Whirlybirds and Russ Conway on I Spy) plays Rockville Marshal Sam Walden. William Fawcett (Clayton on Duffy's Tavern, Marshal George Higgins on The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, and Pete Wilkey on Fury) plays the Rockville postmaster. Gordon Jones (appeared in The Green Hornet, Flying Tigers, My Sister Eileen, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and McLintock! and played Mike Kelley on The Abbott and Costello Show, Pete Thompson on The Ray Milland Show, Hubie Dodd on So This Is Hollywood, and Butch Barton on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays circus roustabout Jase.

Season 1, Episode 23, "The Clan MacDuff": James Barton (shown on the left, appeared in The Shepherd of the Hills, Here Comes the Groom, Golden Girl, and The Misfits) plays Scottish patriarch Angus MacDuff. Jackie Russell (see "Stopover in Paradise" above) plays his daughter Patricia. John Considine (brother of Tim Considine, played Grant Capwell on Santa Barbara) plays member of feuding clan Robin MacNeil. 

Season 1, Episode 24, "The Race": Edward Andrews (shown on the right, appeared in The Harder They Fall, Elmer Gantry, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Advise and Consent, and The Glass Bottom Boat and played Cmdr. Rogers Adrian on Broadside and Col. Fairburn on The Doris Day Show) plays collector of men Duke Felix Otway. Skip Homeier (appeared in Arthur Takes Over, The Gunfighter, Sailor Beware, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and played Lt. Dan Raven on Dan Raven and Dr. Hugh Jacoby on The Interns) plays his Prussian "pawn" Col. Rastatt. Harry Carey, Jr. (starred in Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Mister Roberts, and The Searchers and played Bill Burnett on The Adventures of Spin and Marty) plays horse race competitor Anderson. Jim McMullan (Officer Don Burdick on Chopper One, John Moore on Beyond Westworld, and Sen. Andrew Dowling on Dallas) plays horse race competitor Charlie. Don Haggerty (Jeffrey Jones on The Files of Jeffrey Jones, Eddie Drake on The Cases of Eddie Drake, Sheriff Dan Elder on State Trooper, and Marsh Murdock on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp) plays Broken Bowl Marshal Walworth. 

Season 1, Episode 25, "The Daring Durandos": Nehemiah Persoff (starred in The Wrong Man, Al Capone and Some Like It Hot) plays trapeze aerialist Paco Durango. Margarita Cordova (shown on the left, played Rosa Andrade on Santa Barbara and Carmen Torres on Sunset Beach) plays his wife Maria. Anita Sands (later became astrologer to the stars and a self-help guru) plays her younger sister Tina. David White (Larry Tate on Bewitched) plays legendary circus owner F.X. Farnum. Jackie Searl (began as a child actor, appearing in Tom Sawyer (1930), Huckleberry Finn (1931), Alice in Wonderland (1933), Great Expectations(1934), and Little Lord Fauntleroy) plays revenge-minded cowboy Cal Soper. 

Season 1, Episode 26, "Incident at Pawnee Gun": Joe Maross (Fred Russell on Peyton Place, Capt. Mike Benton on Code Red, and Dr. Blakely on Dallas) plays saloon owner Al Buchanan. Kathie Browne (shown on the right, played Angie Dow on Hondo and was Darren McGavin's second wife) plays his employee Mauvereen. Paul Carr (Bill Horton on Days of Our Lives, Casey Clark on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Dr. Paul Summers on The Doctors, Ted Prince on Dallas, and Martin Gentry on The Young and the Restless) plays an aspiring hit man. Kenneth Tobey (see "The Good Fight" above) plays rival saloon owner Frank Mitchell. Walter Sande (appeared in To Have and Have Not, A Place in the Sun, and Bad Day at Black Rock and played Capt. Horatio Bullwinkle on The Adventures of Tugboat Annie and Papa Holstrum on The Farmer's Daughter) plays rancher Shanghai. Robert Foulk (Ed Davis on Father Knows Best, Sheriff Miller on Lassie, Joe Kingston on Wichita Town, Mr. Wheeler on Green Acres, and Phillip Toomey on The Rifleman) plays blacksmith Logan. Robert Lowery (starred in Criminal Investigator, Revenge of the Zombies, The Navy Way, The Mummy's Ghost, and They Made Me a Killer and played Big Tim Champion on Circus Boy and Buss Courtney on Pistols 'n' Petticoats) plays New Orleans Marshal Taggart. John Pickard (Capt. Shank Adams on Boots and Saddles and Sgt. Maj. Murdock on Gunslinger) plays his deputy Murdoch. John Hart (appeared in The Buccaneer, Jack Armstrong, and The Ten Commandments and played Nat "Hawkeye" Cutler on Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans,  was Clayton Moore's replacement on The Lone Ranger from 1950-53 when Moore was in the midst of a contract dispute, and played Narbo on Rawhide) plays his deputy Fred. William Phipps (see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp) plays a cowboy manning a line shack.

Rocky and His Friends (1960)

Like The Flintstones, Rocky and His Friends (later called The Bullwinkle Show) was a cartoon series aimed to entertain adults as well as children, so much so that it was often criticized as being too sophisticated for children. While Hanna & Barbera's Flintstones riffed on The Honeymooners in a mild parody of the situation comedy, Jay Ward's Rocky and His Friends satirized all authority figures (particularly those in the government) as well as the American public in a way that made everyone appear ridiculous except for the talking dog Peabody. Additionally, much of the show seemed to be little more than a set-up for agonizing puns, from the double titles for each Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, to Peabody's closing line in his Improbable History shorts, to Aesop Junior's alternative aphorisms at the end of his father's fables, bad puns that only a grown-up would "appreciate" were sprinkled throughout each show. But the show was nonetheless popular with children, providing Ward and the show's sponsor General Mills with a gold mine of merchandising tie-ins. However, its adult appeal eventually prompted NBC to move the show into evening prime time, like The Flintstones, by its third season.

But the beginnings of the show were chaotic, to say the least, as chronicled exhaustively in Keith Scott's The Moose That Roared. Ward, who was neither an animator nor a voice actor himself, had decided to get into animation more than a decade earlier with his boyhood friend Alex Anderson with a series they named Crusader Rabbit, which like Rocky and His Friends, featured a small, plucky adventurer teamed up with a larger, more slow-witted sidekick, in this case a tiger named Rags. Anderson was the animation side of the team: his uncle Paul Terry ran Terrytoons. Ward was the businessman, holding a Master's degree from Harvard in business administration and working as a realtor off and on while launching his show business career. Ward also had a keen eye for talent and a diabolical sense of humor. He and Anderson at first came up with an idea for a 30-minute show of what would essentially be animated comic strips, but when they pitched their idea to NBC the network said they wanted only a 5-minute show airing four days a week. Crusader Rabbit ran a total of 195 episodes over a year and a half before being canceled by NBC. Due to financial difficulties by their promoter Jerry Fairbanks, Ward and Anderson eventually lost creative rights to the series, which was later resurrected by the man who bought those rights, Shull Bonsall. But while they were still working on Crusader Rabbit Ward and Anderson came up with an idea for another show called The Frostbite Falls Review about a staff of animals producing television from a small, remote north mid-western town. Amongst the animals on the staff were a small flying squirrel wearing an aviator helmet and a large moose. Though the show idea never got picked up for production, Rocky and Bullwinkle would find a new home nearly a decade later. In the meantime, with Crusader Rabbit canceled and in legal limbo Ward returned to realty and Anderson took a job with an advertising firm.

But by 1957 Ward got the animation bug again and went to work for Shamus Culhane on a series called Phineas T. Phox, Adventurer. There he met Bill Scott, a talented writer and voice actor who had bounced around a number of animation houses, including Warner Brothers, Paramount, and United Productions of America. Ward proposed a new series starring the moose and squirrel from The Frostbite Falls Review and the two of them wrote a 5-minute pilot episode and were able to recruit established voice actors June Foray, Paul Frees, and Daws Butler to do the voices, along with Bill Scott, for the pilot. The pilot garnered interest from several parties, as chronicled extensively in Keith Scott's book, and eventually wound up being picked up by NBC with General Mills as the sponsor. However, during final negotiations Ward was suffering from the after-effects of a nervous breakdown and did not attend some of the final meetings in which General Mills had said they wanted a 30-minute program and the advertising agency committed to an extremely low budget that forced the bulk of the animation to be done by a start-up animation firm in Mexico that had not produced anything to date. Added to the mix was the fact that the network and sponsor wanted the show to debut in late September 1959, which proved an impossibility. American producers, animators, and supervisors had to be sent to Mexico to work with the local talent and get them up to speed, which was fraught with all manner of problems, so that the show did not actually appear until two months later, on November 19, 1959. Also, because the show had been expanded from the original concept of just the adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle to a 30-minute program, Ward and his team had to come up with several other segments. In its initial episodes, each show consisted of two Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes at the beginning and end, with one segment each of Fractured Fairy Tales, Bullwinkle's Corner, and Peabody's Improbable History in between. 

The first season, which ran until early May 1960, consisted of 26 episodes and traced two Rocky and Bullwinkle story arcs. The first, "Jet Rocket Fuel," which ran for 40 installments (or the first 20 episodes of the show), lampoons the Cold War and the Space Race as Bullwinkle accidentally discovers a powerful rocket fuel while baking a fudge cake using his grandmother's recipe, thereby drawing the interest of both Washington and the mythical Soviet-like country Pottsylvania, whose operatives Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale attempt to steal the formula's secret ingredient. The second story arc, "Box Top Robbery" (12 installments), pokes fun at the box-top redemption craze by claiming that the entire world economy is driven by box tops, which prompts Boris to counterfeit them and threaten global stability. This second story arc caused considerable discomfort for advertising agency D-F-S since the show's sponsor, General Mills, was heavily involved in box top redemption programs, but it also is typical of Ward's and the show's irreverence, almost literally biting the hand that fed them.

But the box top plot was not the only segment to meet with sponsor disapproval. In The Moose That Roared, author Keith Scott mentions that Fractured Fairy Tales was not popular with General Mills and that after 52 scripts of the fairy tales had been completed and Ward was in discussions about renewing the show for a second season, his team came up with the Aesop & Son idea and got approval for the new segments from the sponsor based on storyboards for the pilot of the series, "The Lion and the Mouse." But this pilot actually aired during the 9th show of Season 1, broadcast on January 14, 1960, and both Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop & Son continued airing throughout the remainder of Season 1 and on into Season 2. It seems unlikely that Ward and his crew would have completed all 52 fairy tale scripts only 9 episodes into their first season (or actually earlier), and if General Mills was really unhappy with the fairy tales, why would so many more have been produced (there were 91 in all during the 5-year run of the series)? This incongruity is but one example of the many inaccuracies surrounding the show's chronology, despite its place as one of the most ground-breaking and influential animated series in television history. The episode index currently published on imdb.com (admittedly not a scholarly source) drops off in the middle of Season 2, and while the episode index published on thetvdb.com is complete, the air dates are incorrect for the Season 2 episodes that aired on Thursdays, when the show was being shown twice a week. 

Fractured Fairy Tales was not the only segment to alternate with another, nor was it the only one to suffer from sponsor and advertising criticism. When the show debuted, Fractured Fairy Tales was followed by a segment called Bullwinkle's Corner in which the moose read part of a famous poem, which was also illustrated with humorous results that usually ended badly for Bullwinkle. Keith Scott notes that there were 39 segments in this series and that later it was "reformatted" as Mr. Know-It-All. The Mr. Know-It-All segments featured Bullwinkle giving advice on how to accomplish something, like "How to Train Your Doggy for Fun and Profit," again with disastrous results. But Keith Scott's chronology is off: The first Mr. Know-It-All appeared in the 12th episode of Season 1 on February 4, 1960 and thereafter alternated with Bullwinkle's Corner, though there were more of the former segments than the latter from that point on.

The show's crown jewel, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, began alternating with Peabody's Improbable History in the 11th episode of Season 1, which aired on January 28, 1960. The segment features the always pure and gullible title character, his commander Inspector Fenwick, Fenwick's daughter Nell, with whom Dudley is in love but who loves Dudley's horse instead, and arch-villain Snidely Whiplash. The stories are set in Canada in the late 1800s with music and settings meant to recall silent-movie melodramas in which Snidely often tries to do away with Dudley, who inadvertently foils the plot but lets Snidely escape through sheer stupidity. The Peabody segments came in for their own round of criticism from sponsor and advertising agency because they depicted famous historical figures as being inept and only able to carry out their exploits with the brilliant assistance of a dog. At one point, according to Keith Scott, Ward was asked not to do any more segments featuring American historical figures, though the show continued airing segments on characters like Sitting Bull and Alexander Graham Bell at least through the middle of Season 2. The segment on Pancho Villa (December 1, 1960) stirred such displeasure in Mexico, where the animation for Peabody was being done, that Ward had to move production for that episode back to the States.

But despite the various criticisms, the show was a hit, and General Mills overall was pleased with the results. Soon Rocky and Bullwinkle began appearing in commercials for Cheerios as well as occasional spots for other cereals like Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and Jets. Peabody and Sherman appeared in a commercial for Wheathearts, Boris and Natasha plugged Lucky Charms, and Dudley and Nell shilled for Frosty O's. This commercial success would later lead to a long and lucrative deal for Ward Productions creating and producing all the commercials for Quaker Oats' Cap'n Crunch from its introduction in 1963 well into the 1980's.

But some considered the show a bit too clever. Bill Scott recalled that one advertising executive once told him that the show was too funny. And its satire of everything from government incompetence to television viewers themselves was seen as subversive. However, the show was hardly ahead of its time in its treatment of ethnic stereotypes. Native Americans said, "Ugh" and "how," Italians had exaggerated accents and an obsessive love of spaghetti, and Asians mixed their "l's" and "r's" and spoke in the chopped manner often seen in movies and other TV shows of the era. Yet the show was advanced in breaking down the "fourth wall" of theatre--having characters speak directly to the viewer and refer to the fact that they are part of a television show, not something real in its own right. In the episode airing April 15, 1960, the second Rocky and Bullwinkle installment begins with the narrator having lost track of where they were in the story, so Rocky provides the usual recap by reading from a script. During the Upsidaisium story arc, Captain Peachfuzz gets up to speed on what has happened with Rocky and Bullwinkle by watching their show on TV, which provides a deja vu moment by repeating the recap that played at the beginning of the installment. And the Metal Munching Mice story arc begins in Frostbite Falls where Rocky and Bullwinkle are celebrities because of the success of their TV show. This story arc is also the most critical of television viewers, most of whom stare dumbly at their sets once their antennas have been devoured by the mice or plan to travel to another country where television transmission has not been interrupted. But despite the pokes at sponsors and viewers, the show was such a success that General Mills ordered twice the number of episodes for Season 2 as they had for Season 1, going from 26 to 52 and airing the show twice a week, on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and on Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. Because not all markets carried the Thursday broadcasts, Ward and company had to keep two story arcs airing concurrently--one that ran only on Sundays and the other that ran only on Thursdays.

The theme and incidental music for Rocky and Friends was composed by Frank Comstock, a largely self-taught arranger who got his start when high school friend and trumpeter Uan Rasey recommended him to band leader Sonny Dunham. Dunham, in turn, recommended him to Benny Carter, and from there he moved on to arranging for Les Brown, whose girl singer at the time was Doris Day. When Day left Brown's band in 1946, she continued to work with Comstock, whose arranging on her screen test for Warner Brothers landed him a spot composing and arranging for their movie studio, though quite a bit of his work went uncredited. Among his credited movie works were Calamity Jane, April in Paris, Lucky Me, The Music Man, and Hello, Dolly! Besides Rocky and His Friends, his television work included Adam-12, Dragnet, Happy Days, and Laverne and Shirley. He also worked with a number of vocalists, in particular for Doris Day and eight albums with The Hi-Lo's, as well as Rosemary Clooney, June Hutton, Andy Williams, Frankie Laine, Margaret Whiting, and Bob Hope. Additionally he worked freelance for the Disney theme parks, arranging and orchestrating music for several attractions still used to this day. He died May 21, 2013 in Huntington Beach, CA at the age of 90.

All five seasons of Rocky and Bullwinkle have been released on DVD by Sony.

The Actors

Bill Scott

Born in Pennsylvania (Keith Scott says he was born in Philadelphia; the Wikipedia author says Pittsburgh), Scott's family moved to Trenton, NJ then to Denver when he developed tuberculosis as a child. After high school, he did voice acting on a number of radio shows in Denver until World War II broke out, at which time he joined the military and eventually wound up working for the First Motion Picture Unit, initially for Lt. Ronald Reagan. There Scott got to meet and work with many of his animation idols, including Disney veteran Frank Thomas. After the war his connections from the FMPU landed him a job with Warner Brothers, and, as mentioned above, later Paramount and UPA. At Paramount he worked with noted comedian Stan Freberg on the live-action puppet show Time for Beany. At UPA he moved up to assistant producer on the award-winning The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show. As also mentioned above, Scott met and worked with Jay Ward on the Phineas T. Phox show, and when Ward later asked him if he was interested in working on an animated series about a moose and squirrel, Scott replied, "Sure," though he had no idea if he could do such a thing but was never one to turn down a job offer. The rest, they say, is history. Scott not only co-wrote the pilot for Rocky and His Friends with Ward, he was also co-producer for the series and provided the voices for Bullwinkle, Peabody, Dudley Do-Right, Fearless Leader, Mr. Big, and others. He wrote many of the Cap'n Crunch commercials and did voice work and writing for Ward Productions cartoons that followed Bullwinkle--George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, Tom Slick, and Fractured Flickers. When Ward Productions finally closed its doors, Scott was immediately hired by Disney to voice the characters of Moosel on The Wuzzles and Gruffi Gummi, Sir Tuxford, and Toady on The Adventures of the Gummi Bears. He died of a heart attack at age 65 on November 29, 1985.

June Foray

Born in Springfield, MA in 1917, Foray began her career as a voice actor on radio at the age of 12. After high school her family moved to Los Angeles, where she continued working in radio on WBZA and then on nationally syndicated programs such as Lux Theatre and The Jimmy Durante Show. Her work in animation began in the 1940s, most notably voicing Lucifer the Cat in Disney's Cinderella, Witch Hazel both for Disney and Warner Brothers, and taking over the role of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons from Bea Benaderet. She auditioned for but lost out to Benaderet for the role of Betty Rubble on The Flintstones but wound up being hired by Jay Ward to voice Rocket J. Squirrel, as well as Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, and most of the other female parts on Rocky and His Friends. She continued working for Ward after Rocky and Bullwinkle, voicing Ursula on George of the Jungle. She also worked extensively with Stan Freberg on his albums, commercials, and radio programs. She played Cindy Lou Who on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jokey Smurf and Mother Nature on The Smurfs, the Talky Tina doll on an episode of The Twilight Zone, and was the original voice of the Chatty Cathy doll. She reunited with Bill Scott to play Grammi Gummi on The Adventures of the Gummy Bears and more recently appeared in episodes of The Powerpuff Girls, has done cameos on The Simpsons and Family Guy, and received her first Emmy nomination for playing Mrs. Cauldron on The Garfield Show in 2012. At age 95, she is still an active performer.

Paul Frees

Born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago, Frees, like Mel Blanc, was a man of a thousand voices, thanks to a four-octave range. Like Blanc, he was also extremely prolific, doing everything from radio dramas to cartoon voices to narrators to overdubs for actors, such as the falsetto faux female voices of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. His radio work included alternating with William Conrad (who would later become the narrator on Rocky and His Friends) as the announcer on the series Suspense and filling in for Howard McNear as Doc Adams in an episode of the radio version of Gunsmoke. For Disney he provided the voice for Ludwig von Drake as well as the ghost host for the Haunted Mansion and various pirates and an auctioneer in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at their amusement parks. For Rankin/Bass he voiced Santa Claus for the stop-motion animated special Frosty the Snowman. He did the voices of John Lennon and George Harrison for the cartoon show The Beatles and provided the Peter Lorre impersonation for Spike Jones' recording of "My Old Flame." On Rocky and His Friends Frees voiced Boris Badenov, Inspector Fenwick, and a host of other characters on Fractured Fairy Tales. After Rocky and Bullwinkle, Frees worked again with Ward Productions on Hoppity Hooper. He also appeared in many TV commercials, playing the Pillsbury Doughboy, Little Green Sprout in the Jolly Green Giant commercials, Boo-Berry, and taking over for Blanc as the voice of Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials. He died at age 66 on November 2, 1986.

Daws Butler

Charles Dawson Butler from Toledo, OH got his start as an impressionist, winning many amateur contests before moving into animation work after World War II for Screen Gems and then MGM in 1948. The next year he began working on the Warner Brothers puppet show Time for Beany, which paired him with Stan Freberg and would eventually introduce him to future Ward Productions stalwarts like Bill Scott and writer Lloyd Turner. In UPA's Mister Magoo theatrical shorts, he provided the voice of Magoo's nephew Waldo. He provided the voice of Fred Flintstone in the show's unaired pilot The Flagstones and filled in as Barney Rubble on five episodes after Mel Blanc was injured in an auto accident. But Butler is best known for his work at Hanna-Barbera, where he voiced such icons as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Wally Gator, Elroy Jetson, and Snagglepuss. Because he was under contract to Hanna-Barbera at the time Rocky and His Friends debuted, Butler is not included in any of the show's credits, but he provided the voices of Aesop's son and a variety of characters for the Fractured Fairy Tales segments. He also worked with Ward Productions on their Quaker Oats TV commercials, providing the voices for Cap'n Crunch and Quisp. By the 1970s Butler scaled back his prolific workload but started a voice actor workshop that included Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, among its students. Butler died of a heart attack on May 18, 1988 at the age of 71.

Walter Tetley

Walter Campbell Tetzlaff was born in New York City and began performing on stage at age 7. Due to what has been described as a hormonal condition, Tetley retained the voice of a prepubescent boy for his entire life, making him perfect for a variety of childhood voice roles, though Bill Scott reportedly once said that Tetley's mother had him castrated to prolong his successful radio career. He began working in radio in the 1930s, appearing with such notables as Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and W.C. Fields before moving to Hollywood in 1938 where he was cast as Leroy on The Great Gildersleeve radio program for 17 years. He also played the part of sarcastic delivery boy Julius Abruzzio on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. Tetley met Bill Scott while working on The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show, and Scott picked him to provide the voice of Peabody's boy Sherman in the Peabody's Improbable History segments. In 1971 he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident that confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He died at age 60 September 4, 1975.

Hans Conried

Hans George Conried, Jr. was born in Baltimore, MD, studied acting at Columbia University, and became a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Company. He began working in radio in the 1940s and, besides working in Welles productions, played a psychiatrist on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. He appeared in both live-action and animated films, playing the title role in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan. On television, he played Uncle Tonoose on Make Room for Daddy, was a regular on Jack Paar's Tonight Show, and had guest appearances on many shows, including The Donna Reed Show, The RealMcCoys, Mister Ed, Have Gun -- Will Travel, and Lost in Space. On Rocky and His Friends Conried provided the voice for Dudley Do-Right's nemesis Snidely Whiplash. He later worked for Ward Productions on Hoppity Hooper and Fractured Flickers. He died from cardiovascular disease on January 5, 1982 at the age of 64.

William Conrad

Born John William Cann, Jr., Conrad became a household name as an actor in the 1970s playing the title role in the crime drama Cannon and continued that success into the next decade, starring in the series Nero Wolfe and Jake and the Fatman. But before his late-found TV fame Conrad was a film actor in such noir classics as The Killers (1946), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Tension (1949), and The Naked Jungle (1954). He also appeared in numerous westerns during the 1940s and '50s, but like many other voice actors, his career began in radio. He was the voice of Marshal Matt Dillon in the radio version of Gunsmoke, narrated the adventure series Escape, and was a cast member in Jack Webb's Pete Kelley's Blues, to name but a few of his estimated 7500 roles. He also narrated the TV version of Escape a decade before landing the narrator role on Rocky and His Friends. As Keith Scott tells it, Conrad begged Jay Ward to let him do other voices on the show as well, but it always came off sounding like himself. He didn't have the flexibility to take on a variety of personas the way Frees, Foray, and Butler could. In later seasons he would occasionally receive a bit role, as Sam the cannibal in one episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but largely his role was describing the action as one would expect to hear in a movie serial from the 1940s. He would work again for Ward Productions as the narrator on Hoppity Hooper but he had a bigger narrator role before that on the David Janssen crime drama The Fugitive. He also directed and produced for many TV shows in the 1950s and '60s, including multiple episodes of Bat Masterson, Have Gun --Will Travel, and Naked City. He died of congestive heart failure at the age of 73 on February 11, 1994.

Edward Everett Horton

Horton was in the last decade of a prolific acting career when he was tabbed by Bill Scott to be the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and His Friends. Like many of the Ward Productions team, Horton had worked on The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show narrating a segment titled "The Unenchanted Princess," which convinced Scott he would be perfect as the fairy tale narrator on Rocky and His Friends. Horton began his performing career in vaudeville, then moved to Los Angeles in 1919. His film career dated back to the early 1920s, appearing in the comedy Too Much Business in 1922 and playing the title character in one of several film versions of Ruggles of Red Gap the following year. He appeared in several Fred Astaire - Ginger Rogers pictures, including The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat and also appeared in such classics as The Front Page, Lost Horizon, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and Arsenic and Old Lace. He continued appearing in films into the 1960s, including It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Sex and the Single Girl, and The Perils of Pauline. Besides his narrator role on Rocky and Friends he appeared on several TV shows in the 1950s and '60's including three episodes of Dennis the Menace as Ned Matthews and six episodes of F Troop as Chief Roaring Chicken. He passed away at the age of 84 on September 29, 1970.

Charlie Ruggles

When Ward and his team developed the Aesop & Son segments as an alternative to Fractured Fairy Tales, they brought in another veteran movie actor to play the part of Aesop, though Ruggles was never listed in the credits. Los Angeles native Charles Sherman Ruggles appeared in over 100 films from the silent era up to the mid-1960s, his first being Peer Gynt in 1915. His first talking picture was Gentleman of the Press in 1929, and he appeared with W.C. Fields, George Burns, and Gracie Allen in Six of a Kind, with Charles Laughton and Zasu Pitts in the 1935 production of Ruggles of Red Gap, with Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman in Anything Goes, and with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby. In 1949 he moved over to television, playing the lead role of a character named Charlie Ruggles in The Ruggles and later starring in The World of Mr. Sweeney. He guest starred on a number of series, including multiple appearances on The Red Skelton Show, Burke's Law, and as the character Lowell Redlings Farquhar on The Beverly Hillbillies. He died of cancer at age 84 on December 23, 1970.