The Rifleman

Continuing with my TV Western splurge, let’s learn about The Rifleman.  The series centers on Lucas McCain, played by Chuck Connors (who, besides being a TV and movie star, played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers and basketball for the Boston Celtics).  Connors plays a Union veteran of the American Civil War and a widower.  McCain had been a lieutenant in the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and had received a battlefield commission at the Battle of Five Forks just before the end of the war.

Having previously been a homesteader, Lucas buys a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork in New Mexico Territory.  His son Mark and he had come from Enid, Oklahoma, following the death of his wife when Mark was six years old.  The citizens of North Fork are sometimes willing to subject themselves to tyranny, showing themselves to be cowards in several episodes.

Lucas is always seen carrying his special repeating rifle, which he fires seven or eight times in the opening scene of each episode.  The McCains raised cattle and lived a hand-to-mouth life on their ranch, until they are wiped out and then became “sodbusters.”  Whether in town or at the ranch, Lucas seems to get into a lot of fights and solves them with his rifle. 

One commentator said:

“If my math is right, there were 245 killings in the 168 episodes - an average of 1.46 per episode.  It looks like Lucas was responsible for only about 1/2 of the mayhem.  The most blood drenched episode was The Raid with The Retired Gun, and A Time for Singing both scoring 6.  The Safe Guard and The Mescalero Curse each came limping in with a piddling 5.”

 To those who tok exception to my previous posts on this subject would you let your child or grandchild visit Lucas McCain for a couple of weeks?

The Rifleman was the first TV series to be centered on a single parent!After it, most single-parent series involved single female parents.