User Reviews

Incident of the Music Maker May 20, 1960 Incident of the Silent Web Jun 3, 1960 Incident of the Last Chance Jun 10, 1960 Incident in the Garden of Eden Jun 17, 1960

Peter Whitney was one of the best character actors on television during my youth. He could play domineering villains or big dumb guys or anything in between. The Music Maker is one of his best roles. He plays a Swiss patriarch who has brought his extended family to run a farm out west. It has failed and they are starving, (but don't look it). By trade, he's a (very) handyman who can make or fix anything. He inculcates himself into the drive as a gunsmith but makes the guns unworkable and his family comes to steal 50 head of cattle. Gil is injured and feverish and Whitney orders him taken to their farm, where he can take care of him, (he also knows medicine). But his family wants to steal the whole herd and that's a line he won't cross. One of his sons is played by Werner Klemperer, later the Colonel on 'Hogan's Heroes'.

A young girl, (Reba Waters), witnesses the murder of her father and is shocked into psychosomatic silence. Don Haggerty is an escaped convict who borrows her father's clothes and pretends o be her father as a cover. Later Haggerty and Favor confront the guy who is actually the killer, (Charles Maxwell) and the convict becomes a hero. Not a complicated plot but some good characterizations.

A young, naive couple drive their wagon across the herd and, after rescue, join the drive: they are from the east and headed for his uncle's ranch, (or was it hers?). They are played by John Kerr, (lately of South Pacific - Lt. Cable) and the Audrey Hepburn of television, Roxanne Berard, (love Audrey but I like Roxanne, too: She gets a chance to play a wider selection of characters in TV than Audrey did in the movies, as here). Roxanne doesn't show much faith in her inexperienced and unlucky husband and concludes that he is a coward - until, of course he comes through to save her from some drunken Indians. It's kind of a trifle for this series, with the drovers in the background. Also, it's not very politically correct, showing an image of alcoholic Native Americans and women who need 'taming'. Very 1950's.

The Garden of Eden features one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood history, Debra Pagett, (aided by false eyelashes and eye shadow). She's living in a mansion her father built on a ranch that has a small herd of cattle Rowdy wants to buy to replenish the herd, (he's in charge while Mr. Favor is away). The father is played by Robert Coote, (Colonel Pickering in Broadway' My Fair Lady). Debbie's sick of the west and wants to sell the herd to get enough money to go back east, (Daddy's fortune is running out). Debbie has two shocks coming: they don't even own the herd. Daddy ran out of money a long time ago and she's not the daughter of his long dead wife: her mother is the Indian servant who has been taking care of her: she's a half breed. It winds up with her standing at the edge of a cliff, contemplating ending it all while Rowdy and Daddy race to save her. At the end, she probably belongs in mental asylum, so many bad things have happened. But she merely seems tired. Still, a strong dramatic episode.

As a child/teenager I found the hour-long Rawhide a bit slow and talky, but as an adult I find that many episodes have a lot going for them. The good ones have interesting plots, realistic, *human* recurring characters (most are semi-literate), gray areas, moral dilemmas, as well as solid "Western action."

Not so with this episode, which features more cliches than I can count on two hands. Among them: a beautiful, cultured English woman instantly warms up to sweaty, horse-stinky, rough-around-the-edges Rowdy; an inscrutable Indian who doesn't talk much; Rowdy changes into formal British clothes (a fish out of water); he has a hairless chest (as always in Hollywood); English woman's rich father turns out to be penniless; middle-aged Indian servant-woman warns Rowdy about impending arrival of dangerous boss of herd; typical Hollywood "no real damage" fistfight between boss and Rowdy; Indian woman stalks Rowdy and English woman during the duo's make-out session in garden (with attendant foreboding background music); rich dad comes out as a disgraced crook back in England; English woman turns out to be half Indian (although she has clear blue eyes and her face and features are as white as porcelain); her real mother turns out (of course) to be the stalking, female Indian; this news causes English woman to threaten a dive off a cliff; dad arrives and in the process of saving her manages to fall off himself; Rowdy reassures the distressed English woman she's not "a squaw," just a beautiful woman; herd-boss professes love for her; Indian servant-woman (real mom) now invited into the palatial home by English woman.

Need I write more?