With our second official Western now released, I thought we might talk a bit about 1950’s Westerns. When a lot of people think of old Westerns, they are remembering shows like The Lone Ranger or other programming geared towards children. The good guy wore white, the bad guy wore black, and the racist portrayals of “Injuns” and “Mexicans” are jaw dropping to say the least. But there were Westerns made with adults in mind. Gunsmoke had adult themes. The reluctant hero of Marshal Matt Dillon was often up against complicated and layered issues. There was action, he was fast with a gun, but it always came after extremely hard effort on the marshal’s part to solve the problem diplomatically. Tales of the Texas Rangers is a bit different being set in “modern day” (cases range from the 1920s-1950s) but the show was also lead by a fair lawman, Ranger Jace Pearson.
But why were Westerns so popular in the 1950s? Certainly on film, they were easy to shoot with the nearby desert landscape surrounding Hollywood. But one thing Westerns have always had is the uniqueness of being American. No other country went through such a painful and bloody expansion through rough and unforgiving deserts as the United States did following the Civil War in the 1860s-1880s. America has always claimed to be a melting pot, but in the West, the land and the sun spared no man by color or creed. And those who made it home, remain as legends.
And while not up to 2020s standards for racial equality or women’s rights, you may be surprised how fair and even the portrayals were back in the 1950s on these adult shows. Matt Dillon, for example, had many tribes he was friends with, and would fight the U.S. Army to protect them and their way of life. And the women in these shows were praised for carving out lives in the harsh West just as much as any man. (Even if they still couldn’t be law officers, which will be discussed in the Tales of the Texas Rangers Madison’s Mad Facts episode August 10th.)
I guess this is me wanting to highlight, once again, that what we know here in modern day about the radio dramas of the last mid-Century are not as dark and outdated as we might think. Madison will always call attention to the poor attitudes, but there definitely were people in Hollywood, even back then, working to change the portrayals of marginalized groups. So give these old timey Westerns a try. There’s a reason they’ve stayed popular as long as Hollywood has been creating entertainment.
