By John Persico (with a lot of help from Metis)
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American television was overrun with cowboys. Westerns galloped across nearly every network, each one promising a different angle on courage, justice, and the messy human struggle to build a society out of dust and gun smoke. We tend to remember the big ones—Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman—but tucked in that crowded landscape were several thoughtful, sometimes surprisingly philosophical shows that tried to answer deeper questions about right and wrong.
I have always loved cowboy shows. My favorite cowboys when I was growing up were Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers. Most of these men got their start in the 30’s but their shows migrated to the TV medium when it was first started. Many episodes of Hopalong were taken from his early movies. Later, TV started to develop its own cowboy series with weekly episodes of tall, dark and handsome heroes. By this time in the late 50’s and early 60’s I was not watching TV anymore. I was in my early teens and had better things to do than watch TV. Thus, I never watched the five shows that I am going to talk about in this blog when I was young.
I only started to watch these old TV shows a few years ago. I was rather amazed at the quality of the stories that they told. They were nothing like many of the TV series that came around later characterized by many more shootouts and gun fights. These early TV shows tried to convey a strong sense of morality and featured a more discreet and thoughtful use of gunplay. Many of the heroes in these shows eschewed violence and attempted to use reason to end a fight rather than gunning down a villain.
Five of these Westerns—The Tall Man, Wyatt Earp, The Restless Gun, Tombstone Territory, and The Texan—offer a fascinating window into how Americans of that era imagined moral life on the frontier. Each operated in a different moral universe. Together, they reveal a whole spectrum of values still relevant in 2025: authority vs. independence, violence vs. restraint, institutions vs. personal codes, loyalty vs. law.
Here’s what these shows have to teach us when we dust them off and look again.
The Tall Man: Tragedy, Friendship, and the Gray Zone of Morality
Among these Westerns, The Tall Man stands out for its dramatic complexity. Rather than presenting the frontier as a struggle between clear-cut good and evil, the series explored the psychological and moral tensions between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—historical figures already steeped in myth. The show emphasized the tragic inevitability of their relationship: Garrett, the reluctant lawman; Billy, the charming outlaw whose charisma repeatedly outpaced his judgment. These were not cardboard heroes and villains; they were complicated men bound together by loyalty and destiny.
The morality here is not a simple endorsement of law or rebellion. Instead, it suggests that human loyalties are fragile, destiny is unforgiving, and justice often emerges from personal conflict rather than abstract principles. It is a Western operating in shades of gray, reflecting an America grappling with Cold War dilemmas where allies and enemies were not always easy to distinguish. Viewers recognized themselves in the struggle between duty and friendship, a theme uncommon among early Westerns.
The underlying message was that life often puts us in situations where justice isn’t neat. Friendship can clash with duty. Good intentions can slide into the wrong choices. And sometimes the person you care about most becomes the person you eventually have to confront.
In that sense, The Tall Man feels strikingly modern. It understands that real life doesn’t divide neatly into good guys and bad guys—something America in the Cold War era was just beginning to wrestle with.
Wyatt Earp: The Comfort of the Uncomplicated Hero
If The Tall Man reveled in moral ambiguity, Wyatt Earp offered the opposite: a mythologized portrait of the West’s greatest lawman, played with crisp, upright dignity by Hugh O’Brian. This series promoted a worldview in which society advances only when firm, principled authority imposes order on chaos. Earp serves as the archetype of the responsible American leader—a man who does not relish violence but accepts it as a necessary instrument of civilization.
Earp represented the belief that civilization requires firmness. Order doesn’t grow on its own—it has to be imposed by strong, decent people who are willing to shoulder responsibility. For postwar America, still anxious about the atomic age and the looming tensions with the Soviet Union, this moral clarity was reassuring.
The show’s moral message resonated with 1950s ideals of stability: strong institutions, disciplined citizenship, and faith in the ability of virtuous leaders to “keep the peace.” It aligned neatly with postwar values, especially the belief that social progress requires firmness rather than moral compromise. Earp rarely doubted himself, and the series rarely doubted him either. Its clarity, even rigidity, provided reassurance during an era troubled by atomic anxieties and Cold War uncertainty.
Earp didn’t struggle with his conscience—he was the conscience.
The Restless Gun: Pacifism in a Violent Landscape
In sharp contrast to both Garrett and Earp stands Vint Bonner of The Restless Gun, one of the few early Western heroes who actively sought alternatives to violence. Bonner modeled the idea that courage is not measured by willingness to kill but by the ability to resolve conflict through empathy, reason, and patience. Yes, this was a Western. Yes, he still ended up in gunfights. But the moral direction of the show pointed firmly away from killing and toward understanding.
This places The Restless Gun closer to a moral philosophy of restorative justice than frontier retribution. In many episodes, Bonner functioned as a mediator, teacher, or counselor. The villains were not always evil; they were often misguided, desperate, misinformed, or trapped in circumstances they could not manage. The show’s worldview subtly challenged the Western convention that justice flows from the barrel of a gun. Instead, it argued that America’s future might depend more on understanding than dominance.
This made the series unusually modern, anticipating later Westerns such as Have Gun, Will Travel, which incorporated moral complexity into the traveling-gunman archetype. Though the show ended early, its worldview remains distinctive in the genre.
In a genre built on bullets, The Restless Gun dared to say: there is another way.
Tombstone Territory: Justice as a Public Responsibility
Tombstone Territory offered a more institutional perspective on frontier justice. Structured around the fictional Tombstone Epitaph newspaper, the show dramatized the challenges faced by Sheriff Clay Hollister in maintaining order within a volatile, fast-growing community. Unlike Wyatt Earp, where the marshal’s authority was never questioned, Hollister constantly wrestled with public scrutiny, political pressure, and misinformation—issues that eerily foreshadow the modern news cycle.
The moral heart of the series lies in its quasi-documentary tone. Hollister must uphold the law not simply by enforcing it, but by navigating competing interests, calming mobs, and maintaining legitimacy. Truth, evidence, and due process—rare elements in early Westerns—become central themes. The show’s structure echoes the belief that justice is not merely an individual virtue but a collective responsibility. It encourages viewers to appreciate the difficulty of governing rather than merely celebrating the lone hero.
In many ways, Tombstone Territory anticipated the later rise of procedural dramas where law enforcement is portrayed as an institution rather than a personal crusade.
The show’s moral center was institutional: justice requires process, evidence, and the difficult work of maintaining legitimacy. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was honest. In many ways, Tombstone Territory speaks more directly to our modern world than some of the bigger Westerns of its time.
The Texan: The Noble Drifter and the American Myth of Honor
Rory Calhoun’s The Texan returned to the classic Western figure of the noble wanderer—a man whose moral code is internal rather than institutional. Bill Longley, a Confederate veteran, embodies the Western ethos of individual honor: help the vulnerable, confront injustice, and ride away when the dust settles. The show foregrounds personal integrity over law, suggesting that character—not institutions—ultimately preserves the frontier’s fragile social fabric.
This worldview reflects an enduring American belief in self-reliance and moral autonomy. Longley’s wanderings represent not rootlessness but a spiritual quest to repair the world one town at a time. His code is chivalric, almost knightly, and he stands as a corrective to the bureaucratic tensions seen in Tombstone Territory. While he respects the law, he serves a higher standard—his own conscience.
Longley wasn’t defined by the law, nor by institutions. His moral compass was internal. He showed that a single person—armed only with decency and grit—could make things a little better wherever he went.
It is the Western as America likes to imagine itself: independent, honorable, and self-reliant. Even if it rarely works that way in real life, the aspiration is part of our national DNA.
Five Shows, Five Moral Visions
When you line up these Westerns side by side, the moral variety is remarkable:
- The Tall Man explores the tragedy of conflicting loyalties.
- Wyatt Earp celebrates firm authority and disciplined leadership.
- The Restless Gun champions compassion and restraint.
- Tombstone Territory elevates due process and public trust.
- The Texan extols personal conscience as the highest law.
Together, they show how deeply Americans were thinking—even through half-hour cowboy shows—about law, justice, violence, and the kind of people we wanted to be.
And perhaps that is the most interesting lesson of all: Westerns weren’t just entertainment. They were moral storytelling, played out on horseback.
In dusting off these forgotten classics, we rediscover a whole range of ethical possibilities—some stern, some gentle, some tragic, some idealistic. The frontier wasn’t just a place; it was a metaphor for the ongoing journey America has always been on: trying to figure out how to live decently in a world that is not always decent.
What Happened to These Shows and the Morality that They Tried to Convey?
- The Tall Man (1960–1962)
Why it was cancelled:
- Ratings sagged as audiences drifted toward lighter, family-friendly Westerns and bigger stars.
- NBC also faced increasing difficulty with script standards: portraying Billy the Kid sympathetically clashed with emerging TV violence guidelines.
- Production costs were rising, and no strong sponsor stepped in to keep it going.
- The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955–1961)
Why it was cancelled:
- After six seasons, the formula grew repetitive, and the mythologized Earp no longer impressed audiences seeking the grittier realism of later Westerns.
- Hugh O’Brian wanted to move on, and ABC saw declining ratings.
- The Western market was oversaturated by 1961.
- The Restless Gun (1957–1959)
Why it was cancelled:
- Despite solid ratings, Payne’s contract and salary demands increased, and NBC hesitated to renew at higher costs.
- The show’s gentler tone was overshadowed by edgier Westerns.
- Payne himself said he felt the stories were becoming repetitive.
- Tombstone Territory (1957–1960)
Why it was cancelled:
- Transition from ABC to syndication hurt the budget.
- Stiff competition from higher-budget Westerns.
- The semi-documentary framing was admired but not loved; viewers were shifting toward character-driven stories.
- The Texan (1958–1960)
Why it was cancelled:
- It had strong early ratings but lost its time slot advantage to more modern “adult” Westerns.
- Calhoun’s outside film commitments strained scheduling.
- CBS was phasing out lower-budget half-hour Westerns in favor of hour-long dramas.
Each show ended for slightly different reasons, but the common story is: the genre evolved faster than these earlier, simpler morality tales could adapt. Americans wanted more “grit” more “violence” and yes even less morality. The change from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood capped the change that we would see in Westerns from morality tales to tales of vengeance and retribution. America was becoming more jaded. We did not want heroes any more who were goody two-shoes. We wanted anti-heroes and the studios offered them up in droves.
Looking at American politics today, I often wonder where, when and how the decline in values, integrity and morality started. Some would say it started with the decline in religion. I don’t think religion has in the last 200 years in the USA been that big of an influence in terms of morality and integrity. Karl Marx always believed that economics was the major driver of most social trends. Many people who disagree with him nevertheless admit that the primary influence on voting behavior is the state of the economy. In my opinion, this influence goes much deeper than voting behavior. Capitalism thrives on avarice and stupidity. It needs a large mass of people who want more and more stuff and too brainwashed to realize that the stuff they are buying is not going to bring them happiness.
Madison Avenue became a major influencer with the advent of TV. Go back and look at some of these early Westerns. Smoking was de rigor. Many of the heroes of these early Westerns died of lung cancer. Legendary figures like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Chuck Connors, with numerous other actors, musicians, and public figures from that era also falling to the disease, highlighting smoking’s heavy toll in Hollywood. But while these heroes were dying, Madison Avenue was perfecting the use of TV to sell all kinds of products.
I always laugh at the fact that so many men have been conned into buying what I call “piss beer” from Budweiser, Miller and Coors. Large macho football players posing in a bar with these watered down beers spent years on TV regaling their followers with the virtues of light beer. Would be macho males stormed the liquor stores to buy their six pack of piss beer that they could swill down while watching their favorite football teams playing. The average person is brainwashed by Madison Avenue on a daily basis. Watch some of the old TV shows and see how much more sophisticated the ads are today.
I once asked all my MBA students if they thought that TV ads had much influence on their buying patterns. The typical answer I received was “No, I make up my own mind when I go shopping.” Most people do not even know that they are brainwashed. The cigarette industry spent years lying to people about the medical effects of cigarettes. Today, it is the liquor companies that are lying to consumers. But all of Capitalism and advertising has one major motive when it comes to making a sales pitch. That motive is too make you feel inferior. To make you feel needy. To make you feel inadequate. Once you feel like you are somehow lacking something, they can pitch you their product. Their pitch will always be that you will be better, smarter, faster or happier with their product or at least you will be better, smarter, faster and happier than your next-door neighbor who did not buy their product.
I believe the decline in morality and integrity in the USA can be directly linked to Madison Avenue and the brainwashing they conduct on consumers. If you are on the producers side of the economic equation, you cannot have any qualms about what you are selling or the side effects or the unintended consequences of the use of your products or services. If you are on the consumer side of the economic equation, your whole reason for being is to buy more and more stuff regardless of its impact on your health and sanity or the environment. This callousness on both sides has resulted in a society that is unparalleled in terms of greed and avarice.
The old Westerns were like some of the early fairy tales. They had a motive beyond entertainment. They existed to convey a morality that eventually seemed too simplistic and certainly too limiting. Morality is a unique virtue in the sense that it not only asks you what you are doing for yourself, but it also asks what are you doing for others. Morality cannot coexist with Capitalism any more than Capitalism can coexist with Communism. We need a new economic system based on principles of love, trust and compassion for ALL the people in world and not just our friends or relatives or the people in our own country.
Aging Capriciously 