The Rifleman, Sam Peckinpah

Mark becomes emotional in a non-Peckinpah episode.

Sorry. I've been watching old episodes of The Rifleman. I'm not entirely proud of it. It is kind of nice to see a half hour TV drama. Today, dramas are an hour and only sit-coms are half an hour. In the '50s, everything was half an hour and that was long enough. You didn't feel you were missing anything. Another thirty minutes of character development wasn't going to do anything for you.

I saw an episode that was written and directed by Sam Peckinpah. It was no more violent than others, but the Rifleman basically loses. He goes into town to take care of three ruffians who killed the sheriff. It turns out that they were trying to lure the Rifleman into town to murder him. When he shows up, he kills one of them but one of the others shoots him and he collapses writhing in the street. The drunken partially disabled ex-sheriff saves him by killing the other two men with a shotgun.

The Rifleman had been in over his head and didn't have a clue.

The Rifleman shot and killed the one guy, and there's moment when his friend walks into the barn, sees him lying dead with his eyes open. He speaks sadly to his dead friend and goes back out only be killed by the ex-Sheriff.

Mark (Johnny Crawford) was only 12, a little skinny kid, but he was a much stronger character than usual. When the ex-sheriff warns the Rifleman not to go to town, Mark yells at him. In the end, the Rifleman is lying in bed with a bandage around his chest. They tell him he should stay in town for a few days but Mark says, no, he's taking him home. It seems like a terrible idea, but no one argues with him and even his father meekly obeys.

Peckinpah wrote the pilot episode. The Rifleman goes to a shooting competition. They money he wins will save the ranch. But Dennis Hopper's manager kidnaps Mark and threatens to kill him unless the Rifleman loses. In the end, when Mark is freed, his father hugs him in a gush of emotion unseen on '50's TV. Chuck Conners (who had the title role) said that Peckinpah told him to do that. Conners thought it was surprising considering that Peckinpah was later known mainly for slow motion violence. 

I was watching another episode of the show one time. There was a shot filmed through the spokes of a wagon wheel.

I knew that Joseph Lewis directed some episodes. He had been a B movie director best known for Gun Crazy. In the '30's, when he directed B westerns, he was known as "Wagon Wheel Joe". He had a bunch of wagon wheels he would take with him to have sitting in the foreground. He said that the movies were terrible, the scripts were bad, the "actors" were actual cowboys hired because they could ride horses and filming through a wagon wheel was the only thing he could do to make it look the least bit interesting.

The closing credits listed him as director.

It's too bad I was watching the show alone or I could have impressed people that I spotted this.