Have Gun Will Travel
 1
9 5 7 - 1 9 6 3 (USA)
226 x 30 minute episodes
On September 14th 1957 a new western debuted on CBS. Richard
Boone played Paladin - the man dressed all in black - in Have
Gun Will Travel.
Paladin was a cultured, gun slinging mercenary who worked out
of San Francisco's ritzy Hotel Carlton. He would peruse many
newspapers searching for potential clients in the turbulent
stories of the times. Then he would send his calling card and a
clipping of the story, to the person-in-need. His standard fee was
$1,000.
The suave and educated (he had been a West Point graduate)
Paladin could quote Shakespeare as well as he could use his
perfectly balanced Cavalry model 1873 Colt Single Action Revolver.
 The
half-hour show aired on Saturdays at 9:30 PM, just before another
popular western, Gunsmoke, and ran for six successful
seasons. Richard Boone was brought into the series after cowboy
icon Randolph Scott proved too busy to take it. But the producers
couldn't ask for better he-man pedigree than Boone's.
A several-times-removed nephew of pioneer Daniel, the actor
already knew how to ride a horse (though he didn't much like them)
and had experience as a boxer, an oil-field roughneck, a
fishing-boat crewman, a bartender and a torpedo squadron gunner
before starring for two seasons as Dr. Konrad Styner in NBC's Medic.
Have Gun Will Travel was probably the most adult of the
'adult western' genre - Offbeat, moody and very successful. Among
the small regular cast were Paladin's servants, Hey Boy and Hey
Girl. Boone would later feature in Hec Ramsey in the 1970s
- one of television's most intelligent westerns.
|
