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Talking Westerns: Don't Change That Channel!
Cochise County Has a Rich Legacy of Television Shows.
Cochise County, Arizona, has always featured prominently in TV shows and movies about the west. Most of these endeavors featured the Gunfght at the O.K. Corral as their main drawing card. I know of three shows that didn’t mention the Earp brothers or the famous shootout.
Broken Arrow
The frst is Broken Arrow, a half-hour western drama that ran on ABC from 1956 to 1958, with seventy-one episodes. It starred John Lupton as Tom Jefords and Michael Ansara as Chief Cochise. The basis of the show was two men from diverse backgrounds working together to keep the peace between the white man moving into the area and the Indian trying to hang on to his way of life.
The show was based on the 1947 novel Blood Brother by Elliott Arnold. The novel told the story of the friendship between Tom Jefords and Apache chief Cochise. The novel had in turn been adapted into the movie
Broken Arrow, which starred Jimmy Stewart as Tom Jefords and Jef Chandler as Cochise.
During the flming of the TV show, the producers arranged a date between Ansara and Barbara Eden. They later married and had one child, a son, Matthew Michael Ansara.
During its run, several famous people guest starred on the show. Michael Pate played Gokliya in three episodes. Hal Smith, Otis from the Andy Grififth Show, played the bartender in three episodes, and Myron Healey played a nameless lieutenant in three episodes. Leonard Nimoy, Robert Blake, Angie Dickinson, and Harry Carey Jr. also made appearances. It received a nomination from the Writers Guild of America for writer John Dunkel for the 1957 episode, “Ghostface.”
Michael Ansara was born in Syria. His family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, when he was two. After ten years, they moved to California. Michael was bitten by the acting bug during his school years. He made several TV and movie appearances during his career. He won a Bronze Wrangler for the 1964 Rawhide episode “Incident of Iron Bull.” He starred, as Deputy Marshal Sam Buckhart in Laws of the Plainsman for one season. He was also nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for the movie, The Manitou, opposite Tony Curtis. As a footnote, he was one of seven actors who have played the same character in three versions of the TV show, Star Trek. He played Commander Kang in the 1968 “Day of the Dove” of the original series. He repeated the role in 1994’s episode “Bloodoath” on Deep Space Nine. He also played the character for the final time in the 1996 episode, “Flashback” on Voyager.
Michael Ansara died July 31, 2013, at his home in Calabasas, California. He was ninety-one.
John Lupton was born August 23, 1928. After the cancellation of Broken Arrow, he guest-starred in numerous TV shows and had small parts in movies. He died November 3, 1993. He was sixty-five.
Tombstone Territory
Tombstone Territory ran on ABC from ’57 to ’59. It ran in syndication from ’59 to ’60. It was another of the half-hour western dramas. ZIV Television produced the series. The story took place in Tombstone, Arizona, but it didn’t feature the Earps. The sherif of Tombstone was Clay Hollister, played by Pat Conway. Richard Eastham portrayed Harris Claibourne, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph. The tagline for the show was, “Tombstone, Arizona—the town too tough to die.”
Conway was Hollywood royalty. His grandfather was Francis X. Bushman, star of silent films who appeared as Messala in the 1925 version of Ben Hur. His father was Jack Conway, who acted in a hundred flms and directed a hundred more. Pat got his start in movies in 1951 in The Deadly Mantis.
Richard Eastham was a wonderful character who played General Blankenship, the commanding officer of Diana Prince and Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman some twenty years later. He was born Dickinson Swift Eastman June 22, 1916. He served in the Army during World War II. His last role was as
Frank Hillson in two episodes of Dallas in 1991. He suffered with Alzheimer’s Disease and passed away at an assisted living facility in Pacific Palisades July 5, 2005.
While the show didn’t feature any of the Earps. Curly Bill Brocius, played by Robert Foulk, and Doc Holliday, played by Gerald Mohr—who also played the famous dentist on Maverick—each appeared three times in the frst season. John Doucette appeared in three episodes playing diferent characters. Once he played Geronimo. Angie Dickinson also appeared in the episode. Tom Pittman appeared in one episode as
Billy Clanton, and John Beradino appeared once as Buckskin Frank Leslie. Myron Healey appeared as Johnny Ringo.
Season one had thirty-nine episodes but the show wasn’t renewed by the network. It was brought back in the summer of ’58 as a summer replacement show with twelve episodes. The show was cancelled, and the production company made a fnal season of forty episodes and placed it in syndication. Dell comics produced a single-shot comic book in August of 1960. The theme song “Whistle me up a Memory,” was written by William M. Backer and sung by Jimmy Blaine.
Pat Conway’s final acting role was on the TV show, The Streets of San Francisco, in 1975. He was born January 9, 1931, and died April 24, 1981, of renal failure. He was fifty years old.
Sheriff of Cochise
Sheriff of Cochise was a thirty-minute police drama that aired from ’56 to ’58 for seventy-nine black and white episodes. In 1958, the show evolved into U.S. Marshal and ran until 1960. This neo-western starred John Bromfeld as Frank Morgan and Stan Jones as Harry Olsen. Instead of riding the range on horseback, these lawmen drove a Chrysler Coronet station wagon.
Bromfeld was born in South Bend, Indiana. He played football and was a member of the boxing team at Saint Mary’s College of California. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He made his movie debut in Harpoon in 1948. He also appeared in the horror film Revenge of the Creature in 1955. John retired from acting after U.S. Marshal was cancelled. He produced sport stories and became a commercial fsherman. He died September 18, 2005.
Stan Jones was an actor and songwriter. He was born in Douglas, Arizona, part of Cochise County, June 5, 1914. His family moved to California when he was ten. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1934 and held an assortment of jobs after he was discharged. He met John Ford during the flming of The Walking Hills while working as a park ranger. They became lifelong friends, and Jones even wrote some of the theme songs for Ford’s movies. He wrote the theme song for The Searchers and The Horse Soldiers. He co-wrote the theme for the TV show Cheyenne and wrote the classic song, “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” His final flm role was an uncredited appearance in Invitation to a Gunfighter, released in 1964.
Jones died of cancer in 1963. He was interred in Calvary Memorial Park in Douglas, Arizona. He was voted into the Western Music Association Hall of Fame in 1997.
Terry Alexander and his wife, Phyllis, live on a small farm near Porum, Oklahoma. They have three children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. If you see him at a conference, though, don’t let him convince you to take part in one of his trivia games—he’ll stump you every time.
