Sun 22 May 2016
A TV Series Pilot Review: THE DAKOTAS “A Man Called Ragan” (1962).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Westerns[12] Comments
THE DAKOTAS “A Man Called Ragan.” ABC-TV, Pilot Episode, 23 April 1962. Larry Ward, Chad Everett, Jack Elam, Mike Green. Guest Cast: Arch Johnson, Jeanne Cooper, Lee Van Cleef. Based on a novel by Harry Whittington. Director: Richard C. Sarafian.
Although The Dakotas is sometimes said to be a spinoff of ABC’s western series Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Although (as I understand it) this pilot episode ran in Cheyenne’s time slot, so did another ABC western, Bronco, in a “wheel” format, nor did Clint Walker appear in this first Dakotas episode.
The confusion seems to have been compounded when The Dakotas again took over the same time slot as Cheyenne when the latter was cancelled halfway through the 1962 season. The first episode of The Dakotas’ first season was aired on January 7, 1963. (I was not watching. I was out celebrating my birthday.)
The leading character of both the pilot is Frank Ragan, an ex-marshal in the Dakotas territory played by little known Frank Ward, although he was on dozens of TV shows over his career as an actor. With a patch over one eye, when he rides into the small town of Stark City, he has already had enough of his former job and has resigned. One last thing he must do, however, is to learn what happened to a good friend who lived there before his death, his homestead burned to the ground.
We the viewer are way ahead of him as soon as Ben Stark (Arch Johnson) the area’s most powerful rancher — and the man who owns the town — and his men make an appearance. A showdown is inevitable, and Frank Ragan is just the man for the job.
But the showdown must come at the end of this episode, and along the way the men who will become Ragan’s deputies in the rest of the series must be introduced:
Jack Elam plays J. D. Smith, a gunman for hire who changes sides when he sees how the cards are being played; Chad Everett is Ben Stark’s adopted son Del, who is beginning to learn that his father has serious feet of clay; while Mike Green is the town’s sheriff, Vance Porter, a cowardly man totally under Ben Stark’s thumb.
It isn’t a gang of men totally dedicated to law and order, in other words, but the series lasted for nineteen episodes before being cancelled with the reputation of being the most violent TV series on the air. I’d go along with that. When Ragan and his men ride out of town at the show’s conclusion, the only person left behind in the town is saloon owner Marti Stevens (Jeanne Cooper). Everyone else is dead. (It was a very small town, but it has been made even smaller.)
Critically, I think the dialogue was a little too stagey, as if this were a tryout for Playhouse 90, say, and of the regular cast, the only one worth watching is Jack Elam. He steals every scene he’s in.
May 23rd, 2016 at 12:30 pm
I don’t remember this one at all, but I do remember Cheyenne. In April 1962 I was ending my position with the St. Paul Public Library and planning to move to Northfield, MN, where I was to become a reference librarian at St. Olaf College. I was a big fan of all sorts of westerns in the 1950s and 1960s.
May 23rd, 2016 at 1:11 pm
I don’t remember this one either, but I didn’t have access to a station that carried ABC programming until I moved to Ann Arbor in the mid-60s. I *knew* about MAVERICK, and wished I could see it, but all of the other Warner Brothers westerns were only the merest of rumors.
May 23rd, 2016 at 1:28 pm
ABC still didn’t have affiliates everywhere when many of its biggest hits were airing. It took a while for it to get established.
I was a huge fan of CHEYENNE, but somehow missed this one, though it sounds as if I shouldn’t have. Might have been too adult for me at 12 though.
I noted the episode was based on a Harry Whittington novel, and it wasn’t that unusual then for novels to be adapted as episodes of series. Hopefully someday someone will identify how many were.
Larry Ward was a fairly busy character actor, but one of those faces you could never put a name to.
Nineteen episodes then was something over half a season, so I’m guessing it ran out CHEYENNE’s year.
I notice no eye patch in at least two pictures, did that get dropped, explained, or did it simply disappear between one episode and the next?
This almost sounds as if they were going for a MAGNIFICENT 7 vibe.
May 23rd, 2016 at 4:33 pm
I had no problem finding an ABC affiliate. In the 1950s the nearest one was 20 miles away. I recall that at one time the NBC affiliate and the ABC affiliate swapped channels.
May 23rd, 2016 at 6:09 pm
I remember Jack Elam as Toothy Thompson, a sort of comic relief sidekick to Will Hutchins, in two episodes of “Sugarfoot” around that same time. He was just as good at comedy as he was at villainy.
May 23rd, 2016 at 8:25 pm
I don’t know which Harry Whittington novel this pilot episode was based on. There doesn’t seem to be anything online that mentions it. There is another episode, “Red Sky Over Bismarck,” that IMDb states as being based on another Whittington novel, but of course there isn’t any information about that one either.
As for the eye patch, it disappeared at some point in time between the pilot and the actual first episode. I say all to the good. I found it rather off-putting.
May 23rd, 2016 at 8:54 pm
From what I could quickly find this was a backdoor pilot. Remember CHARLIE PARADISE on BRENNER?
THE DAKOTAS was picked up for the fall season 1962-63 season but held back as a replacement series. Early ABC had “indicated THE DAKOTAS would substitute for CHEYENNE” according to Broadcasting magazine (12/3/62).
THE DAKOTAS was a WB western when the genre was fading from TV. In its list of coming TV pilots, Broadcasting (2/19/62)commented, “…Warner Brothers contribution to the cause of keeping the Western on TV.”
Adding to its troubles was CBS had the LUCY SHOW on opposite and it destroyed everything opposite it. NBC surrendered and replaced its shows with a Movie night.
Jack Elam is on my short list of favorite actors ever since I watched the James Garner/ Burt Kennedy SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL (GUNFIGHTER/SHERIFF) films. He starred in some really forgotten TV series from the great TEXAS WHEELERS to the terrible STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Near the top of my wish list is DETECTIVE IN THE HOUSE where he plays a retired PI.
May 23rd, 2016 at 10:01 pm
THE DAKOTAS INTRO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU2VrqFDQ9Y
It is common to find on YouTube using clips from TV shows over the sound of a famous (but not used by series) song. Like this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt75vF8YbOQ
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:04 pm
We’ve been watching this series on DVD, have seen five or six episodes so far, and I really like it. I remember watching it as a kid but didn’t really recall much about it. Jack Elam is great in it and does indeed steal every scene he’s in. I don’t know which Whittington novel served as the basis for the pilot. It’s a pretty hardboiled story and would have been right at home in any of the Gold Medal Westerns from the Fifties, though.
May 24th, 2016 at 12:24 am
Could it be “A Trap for Sam Dodge” (1962)?
“…a tightly-plotted page-turner in which former lawman Sam Dodge returns to the his home-town in order to attend the funeral of his one-time boss, Miles Ringo … and also to find out who shot Ringo in the back. Vivid imagery and a brooding sense of menace permeate the book, and the denouement, when it finally comes, is totally unforeseen.”
Now the only problem I have with this is the book came out SOMETIME is 1962 and THE DAKOTAS appeared in ’62. That would mean, even if the book appeared very early in the year, a LOT of work would have had to have been done quickly just to get it on the air mid-season.
Network approval/time-slot, casting (of everybody (including stuntmen), scripts, director(s), building the sets, costuming/props, horses, and… well, you get the point.
Still the story sounds close enough to the ‘pilot’.
ENJOY PULPS – David Lee Smith
May 24th, 2016 at 12:45 am
David,
There is a basic similarity in the story line, but it’s hard to tell where Whittington’s book goes from there. Here’s another short synopsis of the book I found online: “Sam Dodge had no particular use for Miles Ringo. True, they had been buddies in their younger, hell-raising days. But then Ringo got the job Sam wanted, and Sam’s girl too. Now Sam was back in town to catch a murderer, the murderer of Miles Ringo.”
That sounds less like the DAKOTAS story, but again, it’s hard to tell. The date I found for the Sam Dodge book, though, was 1961. That’s a good sign.
May 24th, 2016 at 3:21 pm
Re the Sam Dodge connection, agents and publishers frequently send producers books before they are printed looking to get them optioned. Whittington’s book might well have been acquired well before it hit the newsstands, and if a producer or director is a fan (say they had adapted a Whittington book before for something else) they sometimes have arranged to see manuscripts of new work by authors before publication.
Almost any successful writer would have had his work seen that way.
Randy,
Way back in the first comment I missed you mentioned you were moving to Northfield, MN back then — no wonder you like Westerns, no telling how many were made about that bank robbery.