When Steve McQueen’s agent contacted Fennelly, the suits at Four Star weren’t sure they had in mind a big, strapping Western “hero” type like Clint Walker or James Garner. Casting was critical, according to Fennelly he needed an actor who could be sympathetic to the audience, since the bounty hunter’s profession-an outsider bringing in wanted criminals not for “justice” but for money, pure and simple-could potentially turn off viewers. Vincent Fennelly, the producer of Trackdown, was looking to do a companion Western series based on the exploits of an underdog bounty hunter. Itself a spin-off from an episode of Trackdown, the less-successful 1957-1959 CBS Western series starring intense Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, Trackdown in turn was launched from an episode of the popular Four Star Productions Western drama anthology, Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater. Premiering in the fall of 1958, during the absolute heyday of the adult Western cycle on the Big Three networks, Wanted: Dead or Alive had a rather interesting gestation. Let’s look briefly at the series’ three seasons. Wanted: Dead or Alive, which ran on CBS from 1958 to 1961, is essential viewing for anyone interested in the progression of the Western genre on television, and of course, for fans of the King of Cool, Steve McQueen. Your purchase helps pay the bills at this website! Today, it’s Steve McQueen’s bounty hunter classic, Wanted: Dead or Alive, which our friends at Mill Creek Entertainment released a few years back in a fun complete series set.Ĭlick to order Wanted: Dead or Alive at Amazon. As a warm-up, you might say, to our commitment here at Drunk TV-and believe me: “commitment” is the correct word- to reviewing every single episode of the massive new 440+ hour Gunsmoke: The Complete Series DVD set, we thought we’d look at some other titles from that golden era of TV Westerns.
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