User Reviews

I would agree with the other reviewer here. Ann Blyth had a fairly long Hollywood career that was in several different stages: B musicals in the early part, dramatic roles that sometimes included such roles as Veda the evil daughter in Mildred Pierce, and then the later musicals and comedies she did starting in the late forties. This episode of Wagon Train, and she did 5 of these, was a very good one. It kind of combined all her talents to play the good, sweet daughter and her not so great mother, a tough saloon type lady. And as the other reviewer said, she got to sing in this. So she did her good girl role, her bad girl role and sang. All in one shot! Blyth's movie roles ended in 1957 and it is too bad she did not go on and do more movies as she was a very good actress. She did do some interesting TV work in this time period and this is one of the best. An excellent episode of the excellent Wagon Train series, which combined the regular characters of a Western with really great guest stars and always gave them a chance to shine as Blyth does in this one.

The Rodney Lawrence Story Jun 10, 1959 The Steele Family Story Jun 17, 1959 The Jenny Tannen Story Jun 24, 1959

Dean Stockwell returns: he was in "The Juan Ortega Story" in the second episode of this season. There he was a young Mexican seeking revenge for the death of his father. Here we see him as a child, (the outstanding child actor Roger Mobley - 'Mob' is pronounced like 'Bob' - who later became a Green Beret) surviving an attack by horse thieves who have killed his parents. He never catches up to them but is taken in by a philosophical old Indian, (Frank DeKova), who teaches him all about life. When he reaches adulthood, DeKova says he much return to his own people - and here comes Major Adam's wagon train. There he meets and falls for the beauteous Cindy Robbins. Also there are a couple of crooks, (Theo Marcuse and John Milford), who want to steal people's money and blame it on somebody else, using a pair of moccasins.

The Steele Family is a total departure for the series. Lee Patrick plays a sort of Aunt Pitty Pat character, (she's from Gone With the Wind), with four beautiful and unmarried daughters. She wants Major Adams to help her find husbands for them. He bothers him so much that he takes them to a party at a mansion on Lake Tahoe, (no, it's not the Ponderosa, where the Cartwrights would have been just the thing), to meet a millionaire bachelor who has a nephew and a couple of other male relatives. Eventually they all get hooked up, although the major turns down Lee's advances. (Eighteen years before, they were both in the Maltese Falcon - Ward Bond was the policeman who likes Sam Spade and Lee was Sam's loyal secretary, a very different performance by a fine actress.) his one isn't really for Wagon Train fans but Bond seems to enjoy playing comedy for a change.

The season ends with the Jenny Tannen Story, a soapy melodrama with an O Henry twist to it. The remarkable Ann Blyth plays a dual role, a popular San Francisco songstress and her abandoned daughter, now grown, who has come to see her and has romantic notions that her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and really loves her very much. Both have been the victims of accidents. The mother fell down a staircase with a champagne glass in her hand and sustained a cut to her face which makes her now supposedly ugly to look at. (Ann looks just fine as she always turns away from people to hide the scar.) Her daughter, (also Ann), has had an accident on the train and bumped her head. She is now going blind, meaning that when she sees her mother, she will not know that she has lost her beauty to the scar. But the mother has become an embittered recluse and doesn't want to see anyone, least of all the daughter she abandoned. Major Adams tries to act as a go-between.

The Rodney Lawrence Story Jun 10, 1959 The Steele Family Story Jun 17, 1959 The Jenny Tannen Story Jun 24, 1959

Dean Stockwell returns: he was in "The Juan Ortega Story" in the second episode of this season. There he was a young Mexican seeking revenge for the death of his father. Here we see him as a child, (the outstanding child actor Roger Mobley - 'Mob' is pronounced like 'Bob' - who later became a Green Beret) surviving an attack by horse thieves who have killed his parents. He never catches up to them but is taken in by a philosophical old Indian, (Frank DeKova), who teaches him all about life. When he reaches adulthood, DeKova says he much return to his own people - and here comes Major Adam's wagon train. There he meets and falls for the beauteous Cindy Robbins. Also there are a couple of crooks, (Theo Marcuse and John Milford), who want to steal people's money and blame it on somebody else, using a pair of moccasins.

The Steele Family is a total departure for the series. Lee Patrick plays a sort of Aunt Pitty Pat character, (she's from Gone With the Wind), with four beautiful and unmarried daughters. She wants Major Adams to help her find husbands for them. He bothers him so much that he takes them to a party at a mansion on Lake Tahoe, (no, it's not the Ponderosa, where the Cartwrights would have been just the thing), to meet a millionaire bachelor who has a nephew and a couple of other male relatives. Eventually they all get hooked up, although the major turns down Lee's advances. (Eighteen years before, they were both in the Maltese Falcon - Ward Bond was the policeman who likes Sam Spade and Lee was Sam's loyal secretary, a very different performance by a fine actress.) his one isn't really for Wagon Train fans but Bond seems to enjoy playing comedy for a change.

The season ends with the Jenny Tannen Story, a soapy melodrama with an O Henry twist to it. The remarkable Ann Blyth plays a dual role, a popular San Francisco songstress and her abandoned daughter, now grown, who has come to see her and has romantic notions that her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and really loves her very much. Both have been the victims of accidents. The mother fell down a staircase with a champagne glass in her hand and sustained a cut to her face which makes her now supposedly ugly to look at. (Ann looks just fine as she always turns away from people to hide the scar.) Her daughter, (also Ann), has had an accident on the train and bumped her head. She is now going blind, meaning that when she sees her mother, she will not know that she has lost her beauty to the scar. But the mother has become an embittered recluse and doesn't want to see anyone, least of all the daughter she abandoned. Major Adams tries to act as a go-between.