With
home-grown dramas in short supply, cheap films dominated the early evening BBC
schedules. Back then, the likes of Alan Ladd, Richard Widmark and Randolph
Scott were as
ubiquitous
on our screens as Bob Monkhouse, Hughie Green or Dick Emery. However, the show
which seemed to herald the start of our weekend was The Virginian.
Before
homework began to infiltrate my leisure time on Friday evenings, the family would sit
down after our fish and chips, and
watch this saga of Shiloh ranch hands and Medicine Bow folk. The stirring Percy
Faith theme tune accompanied sequences of cowboys on galloping horses. What’s
not to like? James Drury played the eponymous hero but for me the most
memorable character was Trampas,
played by Doug McClure.
Blonde-haired
and square-jawed, it was a surprise the Californian wasn’t a bigger star by the
time The Virginian began in 1962.
Apparently he had served his apprenticeship in other westerns so knew how to
ride. He wasn’t all about shooting scalp-hungry, tomahawk-waving native
Americans either, which I particularly appreciated. As I grew older, my
allegiance transferred away from the cowboys. Indeed I often stood out from my
crowd by supporting the underdog in all manner of circumstances, from Tom in Tom and Jerry to Somerset CCC and Queens
Park Rangers. The Virginian may have
been set in the late nineteenth century but, like Star Trek, it was quite progressive compared with Sixties USA for
whom the Wild West had been transplanted into the Far East and the Vietnam War.
The series featured plenty of gunfights but not with the ‘Indians’ with whom
Shiloh seemed to operate a policy of respect laced with an inevitable degree of
mutual suspicion.
I
doubt the political and social nuances registered with this young boy but the
adventures of Trampas and his colleagues made for a healthy dose of escapism on
a Friday night. McClure stayed with the programme right to the end, surviving
even a radical change of format, pace and look for the final series. I could
forgive Trampas his new moustache but the pedant in my eleven year-old self
took great offence at the absence of capital letters in the titles and cast
list. That was – and remains – beyond the pale!
Doug
McClure appeared in plenty more American dramas and mini-series, most of them
crap, but few made it to our screens. An exception was the engrossing 1977 saga
Roots, based on the Alex Haley
bestseller, in which Trampas morphed into a nasty piece of work called Jemmy.
Consequently I prefer to remember McClure as the more enlightened Virginian
character.
It
wasn’t the only Western series I watched. BBC2 broadcast The High Chaparral repeats for years, although it wasn’t one of our
regulars. Alias Smith and Jones, on
the other hand, was essential viewing. Not so much with all the family but
amongst my friends. Indeed it boasted some of the highest audience figures the
channel had ever known. The tales of likeable outlaws Hannibal Heyes and ‘Kid’
Curry were more light-hearted than The
Virginian and were great fun for a twelve- or thirteen year-old. I
think that by the late ‘70s, Westerns had been supplanted by cop shows, so
probably the last TV series I watched was The
Quest, broadcast in the UK in ‘77.
As
for Doug McClure, his tendency to appear in dodgy series and straight-to-video
movies has been lampooned in comedies ever since, from Red Dwarf to The Simpsons.
As one of the models for the TV character Troy McClure,
he lives on in a twilight world of public information films and a sense of
perpetual bewilderment. It’s said that the real Doug’s family assured him that
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…..
He
may not have been the greatest actor, nor someone who has frequently punctuated
my life of viewing. However, McClure represents a part of my childhood when a
bike was my prized possession and the fictional cowboy was king.
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