"Cimarron Strip" The Battleground (1967)

Director:

Don Medford

Writers:

Christopher Knopf (developer)
Christopher Knopf (written by)

TV Series:

"Cimarron Strip" (1967)

Original Air Date:

28 September 1967 (Season 1, Episode 4)

Genre:

Western

Plot:

When Congress cancels government leases on range land used by the cattlemen, a range war breaks out between the ranchers and would-be settlers. |

Plot Keywords:

Settler | Range War | Explosion | TV Series Pilot | Marshal

Cast

Stuart Whitman	...	Marshal Jim Crown
Percy Herbert	...	Angus MacGregor
Randy Boone	...	Francis Wilde
Jill Townsend	...	Dulcey Coopersmith
Telly Savalas	...	Bear
Warren Oates	...	Mobeetie
R.G. Armstrong	...	William Payne
Robert J. Wilke	...	Hardy Miller (as Robert Wilke)
Hal Needham	...	Yewcie
Richard Farnsworth	...	Benefiel (as Dick Farnsworth)
John Hudkins	...	Chalk
Buff Brady	...	Wallant
Jerry Brown	...	Lillard
Seymour Cassel	...	Spock
Natividad Vacío	...	Ciego

Runtime:

75 min

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

CBS Studio Center - 4024 Radford Avenue, Studio City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Stuart Whitman Enterprises

Quotes:

Marshal Jim Crown: And what about them farmers? What have they got to go back to? Nothin! They're hungry, broke, angry. What do you think they're gonna do when they sit around here, maybe for years? I'm gonna have every bad guy in the nation pourin' in here like leeches. Con men; jayhawkers; tinhorns; washed-up, red-eyed losers. I gotta jungle here and every son of a jackal's goin' to be callin', lookin' for the spoils!

A fine reminder of '60s TV westerns at their best............

I hadn't seen this segment of Cimarron Strip since its first airing in early '68. There was always a buzz when the credits came up, with Stuart Whitman, the young John Wayne, riding past those moonlike rocks near Lone Pine, California, to the strains of Maurice Jarre's soaring theme music.

The Battleground has a superb cast alongside the four series regulars. There's a brilliant performance from the late, definitely great Warren Oates, with a hint of his part in the groundbreaking The Wild Bunch less than two years later. RG Armstrong plays a part reminiscent of his turn in Peckinpah's masterly Ride The High Country, and Robert Wilke, who took on James Coburn's knifeman in The Magnificent Seven and lost hands down, is a snarling, disgruntled cattleman. Like the rest of the case-hardened cast he makes acting look so damned easy. It ain't. Not at all.

There was action aplenty in those days, long before the PC brigade nibbled away at the raw edges of TV entertainment. Stuart Whitman and his gang went for the action like nobody else on TV except for The Dakotas, and in The Battleground, like the other series segments, it fits perfectly with the story. You couldn't do the Cimarron land-grab and its simple politics any other way. If only TV westerns hadn't died out in the '70s. That's a goldarned shame, pardner.

Bill Harding - January 2007