User Reviews

Traveling across the Nebraska plains has its downsides, including a little girl who has consumption(tuberculosis), and her days are numbered. Enter Mary Ellen Thomas(Patty McCormick)who befriends the dying Sallie Mae and helps the child with her last requests.

A little jokester Mary Ellen like to pull pranks on the adults, like giving ol' Charlie a hot foot, or putting frogs in the drinking water. Also starring are Barbara Pepper of Green Acres fame. She was the original Mrs. Ziffel. Robert Horton sings "Silent Night."

Major Seth Adams(Ward Bond) decides to have a Christmas party for Sallie Mae, knowing that she does not have much longer to live. Originally shown on Dec. 24th 1958. This will break your heart.

Wagon Train's Christmas episode in its second season was this one that seems to me to be borrowed from part of Jane Eyre, the part with Jane as a child and her friendship for another little girl in bad health. Never mind a Bronte didn't get credit, this is a fine episode that will leave you with honest to God tears.

Patty McCormack has the title role and she's a hellion of a child traveling with reluctantly with the partner of her late father who has no real use for her, but made a promise to deliver her to some relatives in California.

Meantime she's raising all kinds of problems and as we open the story we see her giving Frank McGrath a hot foot. McCormack has one friend on the Wagon Train, Jenny Hecht whose parents are taking her west for her health. Hecht has tuberculosis or as they called it back then, consumption.

Taking a leaf from Auntie Mame, Ward Bond decides we need a little Christmas right this very minute for a kid who might not see the next scheduled one. He has to send Robert Horton looking for McCormack who has run away.

The ending is a classic one with Horton leading the Wagon Train members in Silent Night as Jenny Hecht slips off to sleep in heavenly peace.

The scenes between McCormack and Hecht are full of great acting and much pathos. I guarantee your eyes will not be dry as this beautifully written and directed and acted episode concludes.

Must admit there was something on this story that made me think of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry's friendship in "Anne of Green Gables". Anne and Diana found bosom friends in each other and feel like that's what happened between Mary Ellen and Sally.

Mary Ellen's pulling pranks on the wagon train and has a bit of a gruff attitude with a lot of people on the wagon train but she truly has a soft side for what she does for her dying friend and also taking care of a mouse that had a hurt leg.

The ending isn't a happy one but one could probably see that at the beginning of the storyline that Sally isn't long for this world. But it's still a beautiful ending when you see that Mary Ellen was able to make her friend happy before she passed away. Sally wanted to see snow and Mary Ellen got it for her.

The Sakae Ito Story Dec 3, 1958 The Tent City Story Dec 10, 1958 The Beauty Jamison Story Dec 17, 1958 The Mary Ellen Thomas Story Dec 24, 1958

Major Adams has plenty of diversity on his wagon train: Scots in 'The Annie MacGregor Story' (Feb 5, 1958); Irish in 'The Liam Fitzmorgan Story' (Oct 28, 1958) and now the Japanese in 'The Sakae Ito Story'. This is the best of those three. The great Sessue Hayakawa, which had just been nominated for an Oscar the previous year for 'Bridge on the River Kwai' plays a Japanese Samurai who accompanied his master to America on a diplomatic mission, only to have him die. He is now carrying the ashes back to the Emperor in Japan, for some reason in a single wagon rather than a stagecoach or the new railroads or with a military escort. Adams invites them to join the train as they are going through Commanche territory. They become friendly and compare notes on American and Japan, about which the Major doesn't know much.

Along on the train are James Griffith as a sailor who's been to Japan, (no explanation as to why he's on a wagon train) and some buddies, including the flint-eyed Jack Lambert. Griffith thinks that the golden box Ito obviously treasures so much must be full of gold or jewels and they plot to get a hold of it. They convince him that they know a quicker route to California than the Major does and they should split off from the train to use it. They kill Ito's assistant and take the box. Ito goes after them in full samurai gear. The thieves find the contents of the box worthless, cracking open the pot to find what is, (to them), worthless dust. It's his katana vs. Their guns until the Commanche show up. Their chief orders the bad guys to drop their guns and hands them tomahawks. You can picture the result.

Major Adams arrives to find a living Ito and the dead bodies of the thieves. But Ito has failed to bring the ashes back and, to his and the Commanche's amazement, Ito commits harakiri. Before this, he has had a brief conversation with the Commanche chief and earned his respect, which is interesting since the native Americans originally came to this hemisphere from Asia. They may have seen something in common between them. The chief resolves to honor Ito's body in the Commanche way after he dies. A very strong episode.

In the Tent City Story, we see the relationship between Major Adams and Flint McCullough gets (temporarily) severed. They are going through Indian territory, (aren't they always?) but the Major has an agreement with the local chief that they can go through it safely so long as they don't shoot any of the game, which the tribe needs to survive. One guy shoots a buffalo, (although the animal in the clip is an African water buffalo). Adams orders it buried, even though the train is running out of food, and puts the guy in chains, with considerable anger. McCullough confronts him on this and they both lose their tempers and Flint decides to leave the train.

Now he needs another job. He arrives at a tent city set up by Wayne Morris to get the local miner's gold from them through gambling. Flint saves him from an attack from Slim Pickens, who has lost all his money at the gaming tables. Morris offers him a job as a peace officer. He takes it, providing that he can check all the games for honesty. They pass the test and Flint takes the job. But Pickens shoots a deer to feed his family and the Indians see him. He gets back to the Tent City where Flint puts him in their makeshift jail. Adams and the train show up to find that Flint has Pickens in jail and refuses to give him up to the chief. Flint realizes he's put himself in the same situation as the Major. Really that's the proper climax but they had to add on an improbable challenge wrestling match between Flint and the chief to see who wins the situation.

The Beauty Jamison story is a product of the 50's. Virginia Mayo plays the daughter of a powerful rancher who has dominated everyone else in the territory to build an empire. He's dead and she's trying to fill his shoes but they aren't very comfortable. She overdoes it at times and yet doubts herself and seems bitter that she's in this situation, especially when a range war starts. Men keep vying for the job of foreman and maybe husband but she doesn't trust any of them, except small rancher Russell Johnson, (the Professor on Gilligan's Island), who really loves her. Flint finds the body of her former foreman and bring him in. Virginia thinks he might be foreman material but he, (an old friend of Johnson's), sides with the small ranchers. Victoria Barkley of 'The Big Valley' would have knowm how to handle the situation.

The Mary Ellen Thomas Story is the best episode to date of this series, probably the best of the entire run, (I'm going through it chronologically, so that judgement will have to wait), and a contender for the best episode of any series, (my choice to date: Route 66: 'The Mud Nest'). Patty McCormick, who had become a star in 1956's "The Bad Seed", playing a murderous child, which she had also played on Broadway. She was also the first actress to play Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker", on Playhouse 90 in 1957, before it became a Broadway play and then the 1962 movie, (both of which were done by Patty Duke). She was nominated for an Academy Award for The Bad Seed and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at age 15 in 1960. She also got typecast, for at time, anyway as a naughty girl and Mary Ellen Thomas is one, always getting into pranks and fights and rebelling against authority, trusting no one. She has one friend, an angelic but sickly girl of the same age, Sally Mayhew, played by Jenny Hecht, (the daughter of Ben Hecht, author of many plays and screen plays, including 'The Front Page' and 'Stagecoach'). They don't see each other as good or evil, just friends and Mary Ellen does things like stealing sugar to make a cough syrup for Sally. Meanwhile Sally proves she can be naughty, too, putting a mouse in a silly woman's soup, for which Mary Ellen, naturally gets blamed. Nobody is perfectly good or perfectly bad.

Unless it's Mary Ellen's father who just regards her as a burden. They could have used some more backstory on this but there's no mother present. When the major complains about his daughter one too many times, the father hog ties her. When the major finds out about it, he orders her freed. Mary Ellen runs away and the father, sick of the Major's lectures says "You can take care of her" and leaves the train.

Sally's health begins to fail and the Major decides to have an early Christmas celebration. Mary Ellen saves the son of local Indian chief, who has a broken leg. As a reward, she asks for some snow from the nearby mountains to take back and show to Sally, who has never seen it. The episode ends with Flint McCullough singing 'Silent Night', (Robert Horton was an excellent singer whose real dream was to sing in stage musicals). As he does so, poor Sally breathes her last, leaving not a dry eye in the house - or the living room. In the last scene we see Sally's parents riding forward in their wagon - with Mary Ellen sitting between them.

And the tears flow again when you read this in the Trivia section: "A sad sub note to this episode, the young actress who played the part of the dying Sally Mayhew (Jenny Hecht), passed away in 1971 from a drug overdose." She was 27 years old. Her gravestone is inscribed: "Where was she stolen from the world, and all the world left without an elfin bugle blowing, without a breath of Eden stirring except on my daughter's face-newly born?" BH (Ben Hecht, father).