Title: The rifleman: the marshal /
Authors: Connors, Chuck, 1921-1992,; Crawford, Johnny, 1946-2021; Fix, Paul, 1901-1983,; Oates, Warren, 1928-1982,; Peckinpah, Sam, 1925-1984,; Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions.
Publisher: Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions,
Year: 1958
Subjects: Cowboys.; Fathers and sons.; Gunfights.; New Mexico In motion pictures.
Abstract: The Rifleman television series began with a script written by a young Sam Peckinpah and produced by, Arthur Gardner and Jules Levy. The series ran from September 30th, 1958 to July 1st, 1963. Broadcast during the beginning of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, the series spanned 168 episodes. The Rifleman provided family entertainment and reinforced a vision of the American West as a heroic tableau, almost devoid of the Hispanic and Native American communities which once inhabited (New Mexico) where the action supposedly takes place. The producers of the series employed some of the best talent in Hollywood, hiring luminaries such as Sam Peckinpah, Ida Lupino, Budd Boetticher, and James Coburn, to work on many of the series' episodes. In 1963, the year the tv series came to a close, President Kennedy was assassinated and President Johnson began the process of escalating US involvment in South East Asia. Sam Peckinpah and Warren Oates, who both found work in the Rifleman episodes would go on to create a new kind of Western, (The Wild Bunch, Major Dundee), films that examined with a fresh eye the violent and racist underpinnings of America's expansion into the West.