Is Have Gun Will Travel still on TV?

This series has really crossed over into true Americana. From the beginning it was kissed by the fates and had a very popular five year run, ending only when the Western genre itself had worn out its welcome with television audiences in the mid sixties.

What made it so immediately popular, and why is its appeal so timeless?

Well, for starters it was based on a genius premise: A sophisticated, cultured mystery man has based himself in the well-appointed Hotel Carlton in San Francisco just after the Civil War. He spends his days smoking fine cigars and reading several out-of-town newspapers in the hotel lobby, and his nights are spent in high-stake poker games (always between gentlemen) or escorting San Francisco's most beautiful women to the San Francisco Opera House (in fact his romantic involvements have forced him on more than one occasion to accept out of town work rather hastily). He can quote Shakespeare or Milton easily and with obvious pleasure, or explain a complex piece of history to demonstrate the sad glory and weakness resident in all men. He is patient and tolerant with all, close to none. He is also more than a little mysterious. It is said he is a war hero and a graduate of West Point, but no one seems to know for sure. He is only known by the name Paladin, and no one ever, during all the years the series ran, called him anything else (Paladin, by the way, is defined in Webster's Ninth as: "1: a champion of a medieval prince 2: an outstanding protagonist of a cause").

Occasionally he will come upon a disturbing bit of news in his newspaper readings. He immediately calls for his Chinese manservant (who is in fact employed by the Carlton but seems nearly always at his beck and call) to post a letter for him immediately, offering his services. The letter will contain only one thing - a business card with a chess piece in the center, the knight, and the words "Have Gun - Will Travel. Wire Paladin - San Francisco." If the party in question can afford his high price, they can hire his gun to solve their problems.

Second in the list of reasons explaining the shows success: it was packed with heavyweights. Gene Roddenbery and Sam Peckenpah were regular writers. Andrew V. McLaglen directed the first season and Bernard Herman wrote the score (in every episode the famous business card is flashed once, always filling the screen, accompanied by a dramatic snatch of Herman score. Every fan of the series could feel the moment coming in their gut). Charles Bronson, Strother Martin, Harry Carry Jr., Warren Oates, and many other future and legendary stars were either cutting their teeth or making honorary appearances throughout the series. Really, they don't call it the Golden Age of Television for nothing.

And finally, the most significant reason for the series' success: Richard Boone. If ever an actor filled a role more perfectly, I haven't seen it. The actor's large boned, creviced face defines the series. He filled the role with the dignity and authority of deposed royalty, whether he was ordering vintage wine in the cosmopolitan Hotel Carlton or dressed in black, walking into an unfriendly frontier saloon. Boone could draw and level his Colt Single Action Army .45 and quote Euripides in a smooth baritone, making the moment look as natural as Sunday morning. He could handle anything, and he was an easy man to believe in completely. What more needs to be said? Few television heroes wore their crowns with such ease.

My favorite moment from season one? Episode 33 "The Silver Queen." Paladin has knocked a man to the ground. The man draws his gun, only to find himself staring up into the barrel of Paladin's Colt. A grin develops on Paladins' face, which turns into a warm, nearly friendly chuckle. "Oh my," says Paladin, faced yet again with man's eternal folly, "you are slow." It is a supreme moment of ease and grace, tinged with pity and affection.

This series is a treasure. -Mykal Banta

The 1950s are generally considered the Golden Age of Classic TV, and the fledgling medium did indeed produce some impressive pieces of drama and sitcoms in that period. But even then there were those making a living in TV who could already sense that its full potential was not being met. One of them was actor Richard Boone, who from 1957 to 1963 captured the imagination of viewers with his portrayal of Paladin in the Western Have Gun, Will Travel.

“There is no question that most television is a waste of time,” Boone opined to The Hanford Sentinel in 1960. “The people connected with it realize how bad programming is and go ahead with their shows as cynically as possible. Producers are turning out programs that literally make me sick. TV seems to re-infect itself each year, using the same approach to shows and making them worse each season. Unless television changes its attitude, people are going to walk away from it just as they did motion pictures.”

And this was from a guy whose show was both a critical and audience favorite (and which he himself was genuinely proud of), yet it perfectly encapsulates a driving force behind Boone, whose push for quality — and frustration over the fact that it was so much harder to achieve than it should have been — was something that motivated him throughout his life.

He was born Richard Allen Boone on June 18, 1917, in Los Angeles. Intent on becoming a painter, he attended Stanford University, the Los Angeles Art Students’ League and the Chouinard Art Institute in California. Part of the reason he left Stanford was chronicled in the Valley Times of North Hollywood in 1951:

“Seems that he and his fraternity brothers, having managed to acquire a dummy, decided on a practical joke. They telephoned a friend in another fraternity house and asked him to drive over right away — something important had come up. Then they took the dummy and hid in the shrubbery bordering the street a block or so away from their house. When they saw a car approaching (the same make as their friend’s), they pushed the dummy into the street, where it was hit and run over. To their consternation, the driver of the car proved to be Mrs. Herbert Hoover, and when she leaped out of the car, horrified by the thought that she had killed a pedestrian, she fell and sprained her ankle. University authorities, after an investigation, decided that the authors of the joke were wasting their flair for showmanship as Stanford students.”

Ouch.

Please scroll down for much more on Richard Boone and Have Gun, Will Travel.

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The Start of His Career

From there, he reportedly moved into an artist’s colony, but things changed with the U.S.’s involvement in World War II, which saw him joining the Navy, where he spent four years as a gunner in the South Pacific. “You can’t carry an easel on a torpedo plane, so I wrote,” he relayed in 1970. “Short stories imitating Hemingway and Dos Passos, but I realized my dialogue was poor. So when the war ended, I joined the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, on the GI bill, to learn to write. I thought I’d get in with actors and see how dialogue was done, then found I had a talent for acting, and away I went.”

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Playbill

Broadway Debut

While at the Neighborhood Playhouse, he studied under Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham, and would actually pay it forward a bit in the 1970s when he returned to serve as a director-teacher. He also became one of the early members of Lee Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio, which provided the opportunity for him to work a great deal with Strasberg and Elia Kazan. As if all of that wasn’t enough, he studied and danced with Graham, Anna Sokolow and Nina Fonaroff. In 1948, he made his Broadway debut in Medea, working with Judith Anderson and John Gielgud, which ran for 214 performances. This was followed by Macbeth the following year.

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Passion for Television

Beginning in 1949 he found himself drawn to television, where he started acting on anthology series like Actors Studio, Suspense, Climax! and General Electric Theater. He also gave the idea of a series a shot with 10 episodes of the CBS show The Front Page —a live 30-minute show based on the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and starring John Daly and Mark Roberts — which ran from 1949 to 1950.  In 1980 he discussed that period with the Times-Advocate, commenting, “In the early years, from 1947 to 1950, actors, directors and cameramen were all learning together, pioneering the new medium. The acting was extraordinary, because of its immediacy. The cameras were choreographed with split-second timing because there were no retakes; we were going out on the air live. It was enormously exciting. I did two live shows in New York right after World War II. I was paid $15 a show and was tickled to get the money.”

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Conquering the Big Screen

Movies were next on his agenda, beginning in 1951 with The Halls of Montezuma, Call Me Mister and The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, which were followed in 1952 with Red Skies of Montana, Return of the Texan, Kangaroo, Way of a Gaucho and Pony Soldier, and then with 1953’s Man on a Tightrope, Vicki, The Robe, City of Bad Men and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. In 1954, he appeared in The Raid and, importantly, the movie version of Dragnet. In 1950, The Los Angeles Times said of Halls of Montezuma, “It contains some spectacular battle scenes and some excellent performances. Richard Widmark, in a sympathetic role, is especially good. And so is Richard Boone, 20th Century-Fox’s new discovery.  A Los Angeles boy, he’s a veteran of Broadway and 150 television shows. Eliza Kazan used Boone to support a girl in a film test. When Darryl Zanuck saw the test, he put Boone under contract.”

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TV Guide

‘Dragnet’ and Beyond

Through Dragnet creator Jack Webb, Richard formed a connection with frequent Dragnet writer James E. Moser, who in turn created a TV show called Medic and wanted Richard to be a part of it — which he was for 59 episodes between 1954 and 1956. In the show he portrays Dr. Konrad Styner, who introduced and narrated the episodes, sometimes appearing in them as well. The show was credited with being the first doctor drama to be focused on medical procedures and went for realism. For Richard, it was eye-opening in the sense of how quickly people began identifying him with the character of Styner and the doors television was opening for him. “All the people are coming up to me and making some joke about my being in Medic,” he related to the Petaluma Argus-Courier in 1956. “They can’t understand why I don’t fall down laughing. But for three years I didn’t play anything but dirty men at 20th Century-Fox. Why? I seldom got to shave. Now, look at me. Medic did this for me. I’m getting my pick of pictures.”

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CBS Television Distribution

Starring in Westerns

Indeed, between 1955 and 1958 he appeared in 11 of them. What’s more impressive about this is that during this time, he signed on for the TV series Have Gun, Will Travel. In it, he plays a hero, usually dressed in black, named Paladin, which is a name taken from one of the primary knights from Charlemagne’s court. Describes Wikipedia, “He is a gentleman investigator/gunfighter who travels around the Old West working as a mercenary for people who hire him to solve their problems … Like many Westerns, the television show is set in a nebulous time period after the Civil War.”

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CBS Television Distribution and MeTV

Dynamic Acting Skills

In an exclusive excerpt from the book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek, writer/producer Christopher Knopf says, “In the series, Boone plays Paladin, an erudite bon vivant in San Francisco who supports himself from bounty-hunter work, usually by Paladin discovering their plight through the daily newspaper with the help of his valet, Hey Boy, and sending them his iconic business card by mail or telegraph. Once on his way, the man in black is as skilled with a gun or in a brawl as he is at quoting Shakespeare or Dickens. More important, Have Gun was a morality play in which nothing was usually as it appears (a rare Western that depicted Native Americans sympathetically and not as outright villains), and Paladin often took the side of the underdog, even if it turned out they were not the ones paying his rather exorbitant fee.”

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NBCUniversal

New Role

Amusingly, when Richard started playing Paladin, the Ventura County Star Free Press received a letter from an irate viewer asking why the actor would leave a show like Medic for a Western series. That actor’s answer? “I prefer doing a show that’s on the air. I changed characters for the simple economic fact that actors have to eat, too. Selfishly, I can’t say I’m sorry the show ended, because this new Western series is a much better opportunity for me. But I’m grateful to Medic for making me known and I believe it contributed something to the statue of TV.”

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CBS Television Distribution

Quite a Character

Reflecting on Have Gun, Will Travel’s early days, Richard wrote a 1958 piece for the Wellsville Daily Reporter in which he reflected, “A little more than a year ago, an observation was made in a screening room on Madison Avenue. CBS and advertising executives were viewing the pilot episode. In the darkness someone said, ‘Say, that damn doctor can really ride a horse.’ That Madison Avenue observer was seeing me for the first time as Paladin. Until then he knew me from TV for the most part as Dr. Styner on Medic. Well, an actor is always looking for a change of pace. The meatier the role, the better the actor’s feast. Having been with Paladin for over a year, I feel right at home with him and the show. I’ve never had so much fun.”

Speaking to the Petaluma Argus-Courier in 1957, Richard added, “When I put on this outfit, I feel sensational. Such class they had in those days; such elegance. They really knew how to live. He’s also a great character. He has a great sense of humor and is always quoting things. But he’s a real pro. He doesn’t empty his gun trying to hit someone; one bullet does the job. We deliberately set out to create an elegantly deadly character as different as possible from any other Western series. He’s quite a character.”

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Critical Acclaim

Have Gun, Will Travel ran from 1957 to 1963, and was acclaimed for its more literary scripts than a lot of other shows. It was created by Sam Rolfe, who would go on to create The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well; and had teleplays written by, among others, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who provided 24 scripts over the course of the series. Doug Drexler, a television scenic artist, happens to be a fan of both Have Gun and Star Trek and offers, in another exclusive excerpt from The Fifty-Year Mission, that two of his favorite scripts of the former were written by Roddenberry, which serve as perfect examples of the kind of thing that separated Have Gun, Will Travel from most other Westerns.

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CBS Television Distribution

Portraying Paladin

“One was called ‘The Great Mojave Chase,’” Doug explains. “Paladin is at the hotel and he’s sitting reading the newspaper with a friend of his who’s a cavalry colonel, and this guy is stinking drunk. He’s going on and on about how he just got off this awful assignment and he’s glad it’s over with. The army decided to try out camels instead of horses. Now, this is true. Roddenberry, I’m sure, looked at the books and said, ‘Ah, how can I get Paladin on a camel?’ And while he’s going on and on about how bad they smell and they have a bad attitude and stuff, Paladin’s reading the newspaper and there’s the voice-over of him reading about the great Mojave chase. And he gets the idea right then and there to get into the race, but with a camel. He knows he can kick everybody’s butt. And just as he is making this realization, the cavalry colonel says, ‘Who the hell would want one of those stinking things anyway?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know. Could be your best friend.’ And he goes out and gets the camel. It is so unique and unusual. It has that gimmick that makes it so special.”

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CBS Television Distribution

Famous Episodes

The other episode he points to is called “Maggie O’Bannion,” in which Paladin is robbed, his clothes and horse taken. In desperation, he comes across a house and farm where a woman lives. She’s willing to help him, but he has to do chores around the house such as cook and clean. Notes Doug, “She falls in love with him, because he knows how to make amazing dishes and stuff like that. She is very smart, though. She takes his gun hand and goes, ‘How did you get a callus like this on your thumb?’ There’s this wonderful scene where he brings her food and she wants to have nothing to do with him. And he gets into a conversation about Shelley and Shakespeare and he picks up a book and quotes from it. It’s so wonderful.”

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TV Guide

Paladin’s Evolution

The evolution of Paladin was important to Richard, who explained to the New York Daily News in 1959, “Herb Meadows and Sam Rolfe wrote the original script, but the character I play now is different, and I think changes have been, in some part, my contribution. I’ve had something to do with adding a sense of humor, lessening his concern with money, changing and deepening his outlook on life and even incorporating tender scenes without lessening the concept of a courageous and adventurous man.

“On problem scripts,” he added, “I asked them to let me see what I could do. With my knowledge of the show and the character of Paladin, I thought I could find a way to make another element work. I once thought of writing, but actually have no talent or ability for it. I can hear a line and say whether or not it’s good, but I haven’t the patience for writing; there’s too much fun and gratification in acting. In terms of the camera, directing is far more creative than acting, and I’ve directed three episodes of the show. The director tells the story or it isn’t told, and that explains my leaning towards directing.”

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Broadway Return

In 1959 he shot Ocean’s 11 and The Alamo, both of which would be released the following year. He also returned to Broadway in The Rivals, the latter for which he offered, “It was nine years since I’d been on stage in New York and I’d never had a big part before. We accelerate the TV schedule so I could finish in time to do it. I had to accept it on the basis of a limited run of four months.”

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New Horizons

As is pretty normal in the media, even while riding high on the saddle with Have Gun, Will Travel, Richard was frequently being asked whether he would be interested in another Western series after this one had run its course. “Why should I repeat myself?” he rhetorically asked the Democrat and Chronicle in 1959. “There are new horizons in literature and the other creative fields, and I don’t want to be president of CBS. I don’t care what they offer me to play another Western, I don’t want to be rich. I say with absolutely no modesty that they did not find me in a service station. I’m an actor and there are a variety of things I’d like to do. I certainly want to carry on with my directing. There’s a terrible danger from the sweet anesthesia of success. You can forget what you came to the store for; why you became an actor. My wife and my son are very important to me and I want my son to be proud of what I have done some day. I’m trying to maintain some integrity. That’s why, on this show, we’ve never subscribed to the cliché excuses for bad programs. You know some of them: ‘This ain’t gonna win no Academy Award, but we’re eating’ and ‘You can’t win ‘em all’ and ‘This one’s for the bank.’ We try to put out a top show every time we go to the post.”

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Becoming a Star

In 1961, Richard scored his first starring role, taking center stage in the Western A Thunder of Drums. “It’s as far away from Paladin as we could get,” he stated to the Redland Daily Facts, “because there’s nothing automatic about going from TV to movies. TV stars have flopped in films and movie stars have flopped on TV. That’s why there’s no relation to Paladin. But it’s the best character I’ve ever had outside of Paladin. He’s an embittered man and this is the first movie I can remember which logically explains such a character.”

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TV Guide

Big Contract

By this time, he was also ready for Have Gun, Will Travel to end at the end of his five-year contract (“We want to avoid running into the law of diminishing returns”), but was given too good a deal to refuse to come back for a sixth season. By selling his financial interest in reruns of the show, he was paid $1.3 million by CBS. “It’s true,” he said, “and I’m still in shock about becoming totally independent after only seven more months’ work. I gave up $400,000 in residuals, but the $1.3 million will be paid over a period of 20 years. It’s the same kind of deal Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason have, but they’re still exclusive and firmly under contract to CBS and NBC. I’ll be totally independent after the 38 shows and I keep telling myself, ‘It’s the year of miracles.’

He added to San Mateo, California’s The Times, “Any man in any business would be delighted to find himself in my position. The payments will be made to me over a long period of time, so most of the money won’t be taken away by taxes.”

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Next Big Project

By 1962, Richard’s next project was already known: Once Have Gun concluded its run, he signed a deal with NBC for an anthology series titled The Richard Boone Show. What separated this from other anthologies is that he gathered together a repertory company of 15 actors, members of which would assume different roles in different episodes. Serving as producer of the show, he also appeared in all 25 episodes, sometimes in a major role, others in a small one.

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His Vision

Speaking to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in April 1963, he said of the anthology, “Some people think of it as a laboratory, but that’s not accurate. It’s more a workshop. In a laboratory, you experiment with unknowns. Our company will be stockpiled with known quantities in every field of the dramatic arts. As in a workshop, our greatest problem will be the correct coupling of people in our different arenas to assure the best possible end result. There will be no pap-and-pablum productions coming out of this group, the way most television series dispense them. Usually, a TV show is put together in script form and everybody on the set, from director to actor, conforms to the script. That process is a strangulation of creativity. What we propose to do is work over the story in our workshop the same way actors work to perfect their characterizations in acting classes. The same will be done by our writers and directors. The finished production will be a television play in which ‘the plays the thing.’”

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CBS Television Distribution

Ratings Dive

Sadly, flash forward a year later and The Richard Boone Show, unable to withstand the ratings pressure of CBS’ sitcom Petticoat Junction, found itself canceled by NBC. Of the course of events, the Pasadena Independent observed, “It doesn’t seem right that Boone and his talented company of performers are going off the air at the end of the current season. The group of players has been presenting interesting, provocative and humorous hour-long shows each week on NBC. Although Boone was the star and the show’s major selling point to sponsors, the talented actor occasionally cast himself in minor roles. He did not take the cancelation lightly.”

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Show Cancelation

And for good reason. The network didn’t have the courtesy to let them know his decision, instead, he found out about the cancelation by reading the news in the Hollywood trades. “I think the way they did it represents what they are,” he proclaimed. “They did it in the most chicken, gutless way possible. They leaked it to the trade papers. As long as the business remains in the hands of the graduates of the advertising business, creative people don’t have much of a chance. I’d hate to be the next man who comes up with a creative idea.”

Three years later, his sentiments hadn’t changed much, telling the Los Angeles Times, “It’s harder and harder to do your best work in TV. There seems to be no reversing the trend of commercial control over the creative side, which is becoming weaker and weaker.”

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Moving Away

The cancelation of The Richard Boone Show seemed to have permanently turned Richard against the Hollywood system. Although he would return to the mainland for film and TV projects, following the end of the series he relocated with his family to Hawaii. He fell in love with the state, and was instrumental in convincing producer Leonard Freeman to shoot the series Hawaii Five-0 there, and, in fact, was offered the lead role of Steve McGarrett, but he turned it down, with Jack Lord ultimately taking it.

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Later Roles

Richard never really stopped acting, appearing in films like The Big Sleep (1978) and reteaming with his The Alamo co-star John Wayne in Big Jake (1971) and the Duke’s final film, The Shootist (1976). There were TV movies, including the voicing of the dragon Smaug in the animated TV adaptation of The Hobbit (1977). His last regular role was the title character of Hec Ramsey, which, between 1972 and 1974, alternated with Columbo, McCloud and McMillan and Wife as part of NBC’s Mystery Movie. A Western set in the early 20th Century, Richard is Hector “Hec” Ramsey, a former gunfighter turned lawman who is fascinated with the new science of forensics, which he pursues as the deputy police chief in the fictional town of New Prospect, Oklahoma.

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TV Guide

Hollywood Icon

“A lot happened between the turn of the century and World War I,” Richard noted to the Independent Press-Telegram in 1974. “So many things were laid on us and changed our lives. There’s a great freedom in this area. So much was happening. Freud was a strong word and there was so much going on in human rights, social rights and women’s liberation was just starting. In the past, it’s always been photographed like Meet Me in St. Louis, and it wasn’t. It was a tough period.”

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Moment of Reflection

And Richard never lost his own toughness, unwilling to conceal his feelings when he felt a show wasn’t meeting its potential: “A series should get better every year,” he said. “I resent it when it stands still or goes back. We’re doing five shows this year and we’ve got two good shows and three that I would call silly. But this is some of the toughest acting I’ve ever done in my life. There’s a scene where I told off a punk who had killed a friend of mine. That was hard, but the silly stories will kill you.”

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Marriage History

In his personal life, Richard, who was actually a distant relative of Daniel Boone, was married three times. First to Jane H. Hopper from 1937 to 1940, Mimi Kelley from 1949 to 1950 and Claire McAloon in 1951, who he spent the rest of his life with. Together they had one son, Peter. In the latter part of his life, the family relocated from Hawaii to St. Augustine, Florida, where he would die on January 10, 1981, due to complications from throat cancer.

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Way of Life

Richard Boone acted throughout the late 1970s, while also teaching aspiring actors. As he made obvious in a 1963 interview with The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, when it came to acting, it seems like he had no choice. “People think of acting as a profession,” he explained. “It’s not. It’s a way of life. Talent is not a golden rarity among humans. There is more talent walking the streets of the world than there are pretty girls and bald men. Unfortunately, most talent lives and dies unrecognized. People who become good actors really don’t have any other choice. They have to do it. They have to act. It’s more important than security, more awesome than fear of failure, and has a more voracious appetite than any other passion.”

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