Robert Horton, left, with Ward Bond in “Wagon Train” in 1958.
Posted on 03/18/2016 7:44:00 AM PDT by oh8eleven
Robert Horton, a ruggedly handsome actor who found television stardom in 1957 as the scout Flint McCullough on “Wagon Train” but who resisted being typecast in westerns as he pursued a parallel career as a singer, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
RIP
‘Wagon Train’ was one of my Dad’s favorite shows.
How times have changed.
I’m continually amazed at just how many westerns there were back then.
My current favorite is Have Gun, Will Travel.
Remember the show growing up and catch it on ME TV sometimes on the weekends.
We’ve recently gotten a couple of those “retro” channels on the tube here, and they’re showing western series I didn’t even know existed.
I wanted to be Flint McCollough so bad when I was a kid ...
Westerns fell to the need for edginess that Hollywood was feeling in the late 60s and 70s. And they were violent. And Indians.
I’m a big westerns fan too. I absolutely loved “Deadwood”.
I loved Wagon Train when I was a kid...but then I loved all the old westerns. Still do.
Wagon Train was a regular show in my young life. Ranked right up there with Huckleberry Hound and Woody Woodpecker.
I watched Wagon Train with my family growing up. They had some big stars on every week like Bette Davis.
I wanted to be the Rifleman...or at least Mark.
I wanted to marry Flint McCollough when I was a kid. :)
I have about 120 hours of old westerns on DVD, movies, TV series, everything I could find. There’s not much I enjoy more that a good cigar, glass of bourbon, and a bunch of cowboys on the big screen. Can’t say my wife shares my views, though.
Horton played Ronald Reagan’s role in the television version of Kings Row (1955), which also featured Jack Kelly, and ran for seven episodes as part of the Warner Bros. Presents series........
I also favored Little Joe Cartwright and Jared Barkley.
91
Hadn’t seen a recent photo of him.
RIP
Just a bit from something I wrote Called The Cowboy Code and Bible ethics:
Looking back I can now easily see how pop culture and the media have labored away day after day, week after week, year after year to weakening and ‘gray’ our ethical and moral codes. One place I notice this is from Movies and TV. As a kid I watch a lot of TV (as much as one could considering at the time we had only three channels) and for a good potion of my life I lived in walking distance of a small neighborhood theater where many a hot and humid summer afternoon was spent in the only air conditioning I regular experience until I was 16 and my dad finally brought a whole house air conditioner. During this time in my life the ‘Western’ was ‘King’ both of the big screen and the small and that was fine with me. John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Clint Walker, Glenn Ford where just some of my heroes, all men who’s western characters weren’t that much different from the life they lived.
American Western movies have often been called ‘Morality Tales’, and rightly so in my opinion as all the really good westerns at their core have a lesson to teach. Westerns at one time all had at their heart a lesson to be learn, a wrong to be righted and men who choose to take a stand against those who would profit from doing wrong. This was the formula for Westerns for many years and then in the late 60’s Westerns begun to change and the tales begun to glorify the violence and the lawlessness, movies like ‘The God, The Bad and The Ugly’ and ‘Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid’ became popular, movies clearly with no moral lesson to learn, movies which taught that violence leads to riches, that lawbreakers and killers are merely cool misunderstood ‘scallywags’ who mean no one no harm. In many of the ‘Spaghetti’ Westerns so popular at the time the so call ‘Good’ Guy looked and acted so cool, but his methods and motives were in reality little different even from the worse of the ‘Bad’ guys and usually his only advantage is that in the end using what ever mans, fair or foul (and mostly foul) he is the one that comes out ahead. One popular claim at the time was that such movies portrayed the actual history and behaviors of the Old West more than the Traditional Westerns made up to that time did. Well that certainly doesn’t hold up. For instance the Movie ‘Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid’ makes Butch and Sundance look like a couple good natured, lovable ‘scamps’ who were just out for a good time, when in reality both were cold blooded murders and thieves, who even when offered a chance at pardon couldn’t keep from returning to their evil ways.
We live today in the time of the ‘Anti-hero’, someone who’s methods and actions are not all that different from those of the villain, he just doesn’t use his ingenuity and resiliency for true evil and malevolence, but uses his skills to triumph over a situation or an enemy in a clever, stylish, and/or ‘macho’ way.
His actions make him look to be a ‘man among men’ and if he actually helps someone or incidentally rights a wrong or stops something truly evil from occurring so much the better, but the actually thought of doing the ‘right thing’ never truly enters into the Anti-Heroes actions his whole motivation is to do what’s right for him or do what will earn him the most gain. Even when some good results from his actions the Anti-Hero will most often simply shrug it off, down plays it or even ridicule what ever good he accomplished.
To a Christian man doing good should never be an after thought for the Bible tell us that:
“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” Matthew 7:20
“In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 5:16
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