User Reviews

Chuck Wooster, Wagonmaster May 20, 1959 The Jose Maria Moran Story May 27, 1959 The Andrew Hale Story Jun 3, 1959

As TV series evolve, players of clichéd supporting characters tend to get episodes focusing on them, either by the demands of the actors playing them or the desire of the writers or the producer to flesh out their characters to improve the series and find more story lines. After being a sort of court jester for most of two seasons, Frank McGrath gets to do some serious emoting as the wagon train, once again stuck in the mountains in the winter, mysteriously loses first their scout, Flint McCullough, then their wagon master, Major Adams and then their second in command, Bill Hawks, leaving Charlie Wooster in charge. Charlie has some 'help' from the garrulous Douglas Kennedy and asks for help from the man upstairs, with whom he hasn't had much contact over the years, in a well-played scene. Unfortunately, this one has an unconvincing B-movie ending. Kenedy, a perennial bad guy, is part of a plot to take the entire train prisoner and sell them to some group in Canada as slaves! (I've never heard of this.) Charley doesn't get much help from the man upstairs but manages to free the hostages, resulting in a battle that the good guys, unsurprisingly, win and gruesome end for Kennedy's villain after he takes on Major Adams for the second time in the series, (see season 1's "The Major Adams Story") and loses for the second time. But it was nice to see Charley Wooster prove to be more than a clown.

Jose Maria Moran is played by Robert Loggia and somewhat resembles ElFego Baca, the legendary New Mexico lawman Loggia had been playing for Disney. He's the son of a California rancher who rode with Joachim Murieta after his father's ranch was destroy when the US took over and, to escape the law lived with the Pawnees and now identifies himself as a Pawnee. He's been captured by the Shoshones and tied to two stakes to die of thirst or sunstroke. Major Adams and the train discovers him and rescues him, which he doesn't approve of because he considered it to be an honorable death. Adams convinces him not to die but, naturally, there are people on the train who don't loke him because of his multiple ethnicities, (his father was Irish). When the Shoshones want him turned over to them and threaten to attack the train if they don't get him, those people, (including Dabbs Greer), want Adams to give him to the Shoshones but the Major, with a fiery speech, convinces them he's worth fighting for. Moran decides he doesn't want to endanger people who would fight for him and rides off with the Shoshones after him. Adams tells Hawks he believes Moran will get away with the sort of wry smile that suggests this might have been a pilot for a series.

The Major says that they are in Shoshone territory but if they can get to the hill country beyond, they will be in Pawnee territory. Per Wikipedia, the Pawnees "historically lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas" while the Shoshones were in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Idaho, so the Major's geography seems to be off, unless they are moving east for some reason. Also, how did they get from the mountains back onto the plains? These people are moving west and the continuity of the episodes should reflect that.

The Mary Ellen Thomas Story earlier this season was a great episode made even more poignant to current viewers with the knowledge that the young actress playing the dying girl later died of a drug overdose. The Andrew Hale Story is another episode with a deeper meaning to us now that it would have had when it was first broadcast. Andrew Hale is a preacher who has lost his faith in God because he led a train of his followers into an Indian Ambush and then had to kill one of his flock when threatened him with a gun. He stumbled into the desert in a daze, to be found by Major Adams' train. The Major nurses him back to health and some of the train members, including the soulful Jane Darwell, draw him back towards his faith. Some others, including Clu Gulager as a blackmailing photographer and James Best who doesn't like Indians and resents it when Hale uses an Indian cure for a fever Adams gets, (How does he know what the Indians use to cure fevers?), are unhelpful. Best, (whose wife is played by none other than Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched from 1975's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'), comes around when his baby becomes feverish. Adams asks Hale to take over the train, which restores some of Hale's confidence. It ends with Hale making a speech confessing his failures and reading from the bible, declaring that when he looks at the earth, the sun and the stars, he can't possibly be looking at a 'scientific accident'.

It's a strong episode, (and I'm not very religious) but what makes it memorable is that Hale is played by John McIntyre, who would be taking over as the wagon master, (the unrelated Chris Hale), when Ward Bond died of a heart attack during the 4th season. Bond and McIntyre are two of the greatest character actors of all time, both with a great presence and gravitas. Seeing Major Adams ministering to Andrew Hale at the beginning of the episode and then Hale administering to Adams when he was ill and watching Adams express confidence in Hale's ability to take over the train drips with a powerful meaning now, even beyond what could have been experienced in 1959. For any Wagon Train fan, this is a must see episode.