Not the Real Wild Bill Hickok, but an Incredible Simulation
This was one of my favorite TV western kids shows when I was a boy growing up in the 1950s, but even then I knew that it had nothing to do with real true history.
Like its contemporary TV series, "Annie Oakley" starring Gail Davis, this show was simply a series of 30-minute morality tales about the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys to help teach the TV audience of 6 to 12 year olds the difference between right and wrong, and the old wisdom saying of "Crime does not pay".
If you want to see the real Wild Bill Hickok (1838-1876) depicted on film, perhaps the finest portrayal of the real man was done by actor Jeff Corey in the movie "LITTLE BIG MAN" (1970). Of course, in that film, we are shown the aged gunslinger past his prime, and gunned down in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota.
And if you want to see the real Annie Oakley (1868-1926) in a Hollywood film, look no further than Barbara Stanwyck in the movie of the same name made in 1935, or more recently, portrayed by Reba McIntyre in the movie "Buffalo Girls" (1995).
But if you were a kid in the 1950s, handsome, clean-shaven Guy Madison was Wild Bill, frontier hero, with his sidekick Jingles, Andy Devine, who was also starring at that time in his own kids show, "Andy's Gang" from 1954 to 1956.
And who can forget the show was sponsored by Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops? Like "The Adventures of Superman", which required George Reeves and the male stars of the show to sell cereal, Kellogg's also required Guy Madison and Andy "Jingles" Devine to do a certain amount of TV commercials for this show.
And along with this show, in the same milieu, was Gail Davis as Annie Oakley, a frontier sharpshooter girl with her nephew Tag who was always righting the wrongs in the phony frontier town of Diablo as the town sheriff's sidekick. We have Gene Autry and his Flying A Productions company to thank for this show.
Not real history, but for kids in the 1950s, an incredible simulation, until they grew up enough to find out the true stories of the real Western heroes and outlaws. These shows were pure fantasy, for the little tykes with their western cowboy hats and cap guns, but they were very entertaining for the parents too.
Dejael