Lorne Greene’s Ben Cartwright of Bonanza looms large on our list of father figures.
If you and your dad are TV Western fans, there’s a great way to celebrate Father’s Day together: Sit back and enjoy episodes of your favorite shows focused on family ties in the Old West. Here are six standout series from the Golden Age of TV Westerns that are among the best ever to feature fathers — and in one case, a father and a grandfather — doing their best to bond with their offspring.
Bonanza (1959-73)
Believe it or not, Lorne Greene — arguably the best known and most beloved of TV Western dads — originally was offered the choice of playing studly son Adam Cartwright instead of authoritative paterfamilias Ben Cartwright while Bonanza was in the pre-production stages. Greene sought advice from actor Leslie Nielsen, his friend and fellow Canadian, who counseled wisely: “Probably all four of you will achieve equal prominence. But of the four of you, the only one who can achieve the most prominence is yourself because you’re the father and they’re all three tied to you.” Greene took Nielsen’s words to heart — even though it meant Ben had responsibility for raising Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker) and Little Joe (Michael Landon) on his own because, well, their mothers kept dying on him.
The Rifleman (1958-63)
Widowed Civil War veteran Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) wanted little more than to live a quiet life with his young son, Mark (Johnny Crawford), while working his ranch just outside of North Folk in the New Mexico Territory. Unfortunately, bad people just kept making their way to North Fork. And, even more unfortunately, the local marshal (Paul Fix) simply wasn’t up to the task of dealing with the undesirables on his own. So it frequently fell to Lucas to provide back-up as the title character in The Rifleman, an extremely popular half-hour Western that endeavored to extol traditional family values while offering up heaping helpings of Wild West action. (Fun fact: The Rifleman was one of the first prime-time series of any genre to feature a single parent raising a child.)
Fury (1955-60)
Each week, the narrator breathlessly announced by way of introduction, that Fury was “The story of a horse… and a boy who loved him!” But that boy, Joey (Bobby Diamond), also needed a warm relationship with a human as well. That’s how Jim Newton, ingratiatingly played by future Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves, fit into the picture. He adopted Joey after coming to his defense when the lad was falsely charged with juvenile delinquency, and raised him well on his Broken Wheel Ranch in California with a little help from ranch hand Pete Wilkey (William Fawcett). As for Fury, the aforementioned horse, he remained very much a wild stallion throughout the show, rarely allowing anyone but Joey ride him. Indeed, you could make the case that Fury was a show with two father figures — one with two legs, the other with four.
The Guns of Will Sonnett (1967-69)
Walter Brennan got to launch his very own catchphrase — “No brag, just fact!” — and, after a long run in the sitcom The Real McCoys, return to the Old West landscape he traversed in such movies as My Darling Clementine and Red River during the two-season run of this half-hour Western. He played Will Sonnett, a weathered yet formidable cowboy who was quick with a gun and never reluctant to warn people about it. Accompanied by his adult grandson, Jeff (Dack Rambo), with whom he frequently shared words of hard-won wisdom, Will devoted himself to searching for his estranged son, James, who was pretty handy with a shooting iron himself. Unfortunately, although James (played by Jason Evers), did make fleeting appearances now and then, Will and Jeff never caught up with him until the final episode. But they got to share a happy ending: Will was hired as a small-town marshal, with his son and grandson serving as his deputies.
Lancer (1968-70)
Often compared — not always favorably — to Bonanza, Lancer had three things going for it: James Stacy as notorious gunslinger Johnny Lancer, Wayne Maunder as educated dandy Scott Lancer, and, most important, Andrew Duggan as their father, Murdoch Lancer, who invited his estranged sons back home to help run his immense cattle and horse ranch. Despite its relatively short network run, Lancer has maintained a loyal fanbase over the years, with many faithful viewers drawn by the sometimes testy but mostly supportive relationship between Murdoch and his boys — and, not incidentally, his lovely ward Teresa (Elizabeth Bauer). Chief among the show’s admirers: Quentin Tarantino, who had his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood protagonist Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) portray the villain in the pilot episode for Lancer. Never mind that Lancer actually premiered on CBS a year before 1969, the year in which Tarantino’s 2019 movie is set. It’s the thought that counts.
Little House on the Prairie (1974-83)
One year after Bonanza ended its 14-season prime-time run, Michael Landon graduated from dutiful son to doting father in this long-running family-friendly drama inspired by the book series of Laura Ingalls Wilder. As Charles Ingalls, head of a Minnesota farming family that included mother Caroline (Carol Grassle), eldest daughter Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), middle daughter and series narrator Laura (Melissa Gilbert), and youngest daughter Carrie (played by twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush), Landon came across as appreciably warmer and less commanding than Lorne Greene ever did. So it was all the more devastating when Charles had to face tragedies with his kids. Sure, Ben Cartwright kept losing wives. But he never had a daughter go blind, as Charles did in a classic two-part 1978 episode that had him comforting Mary after she lost her sight as a result of scarlet fever. No, that wasn’t us crying. Had to be you crying.
