User Reviews

This Wagon Train episode has an accent on humor here as Ward Bond meets his southern cousin George Gobel. At least that's what Gobel claims and after a lengthy discussion of the family trees that's what they both arrive at.

Gobel arrives in Missouri as Bond is putting together his new Wagon Train for the year and he's among other things deciding salary arrangements for Robert Horton, Frank McGrath, and Terry Wilson. Gobel wants to be a wagon master like cousin Seth Adams. And as he sees Bond try to make arrangements for supplies, wagons, and guns&ammunition for the trip he catches on fast. Before long he's become Horace Best enterprises and he certainly has a flare for advertising.

Of course once the Wagon Train is put together getting it west is an entirely different proposition which Bond really lays out to Gobel in a classic scene. What happens afterward is for you to learn watching the episode.

Some fine character actors, Ken Curtis, Joe Flynn, Allen Jenkins, and Mary Field give this episode something extra special. And fans of Wagon Train will recognize the melody as a song that Ann Blyth sang in the Jenny Tannen Story episode a few years earlier. Only now it is part of the advertising campaign of Horace Best Enterprises as Go West With Horace Best.

This episode will make you a Wagon Train fan.

Hard to say there isn't a spoiler here, since it isn't an episode involving a spoiler. It's a "comic relief" episode.

There is some violence, however, but overall, it's a story about a relative of our wagon master who wants to be a wagon master, too.

This relative is played by mild mannered, soft spoken George Gobel. Those who remember him will probably remember him from game shows. Aside from game shows, his most memorable work was the cult classic semi-farce sci=fi classic "The Day It Came to Earth", famous for the lines "Listen Dick Tracy" and "Ga Ge Goo".

Here, Gobel plays a bit of a roguish sort, but he doesn't think of himself as a rogue when he beats his own relative out of his business. He thinks in terms of being a modern day astute business man.

We get a lot of situational comedy out of this, since you know how Seth (Ward Bond) is going to take this.

You know it won't end with the end of Wagon Train, but you don't know how it will work out.

So will George Gobel be remembered? He probably needed exactly one more big break to do that, but who knows?

The wagon train is being assembled and getting organized in St. Louis in this second episode of season 4. In other episodes, the train always left from St Joseph, Missouri, but for some reason it became St. Louis here. George Gobel plays newly arrived Horace Best, Major Adams' VERY distant cousin. He wants to go west, but without enough money to make the trip , he sets out emulating his hero, Cousin Major. After seeing Cousin Major deal with the merchants and wagon train travelers, Horace decides to organize a train of his own. With Bill, Charlie, and Flint demanding higher wages, Horace swoops in and hires them for "Horace Best Enterprises." He also quietly slickers the merchants and persuades all of Cousin Major's wagon train members to join him. The highlight of the episode is a parade down the Main Street of St Louis with Horace singing "Go West With Horace Best." It's a song that every viewer will long remember. Watch for Ken Curtis as Pappy Lightfoot. He uses the same voice inflection that he had used in the 1956 John Wayne classic movie, "The Searchers." This is an episode played strictly for comedy and it hits the mark. Only George Gobel could have played Horace Best.