Have Gun Will Travel – western TV show – page three

Have Gun Will Travel – western TV show – page three.

Richard Boone stars in this interesting western television show that was very popular in it’s time and still is!

Have Gun – Will Travel is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1963. It was rated number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings every year of its first four seasons. It was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version. The radio series debuted November 23 of 1958. Have Gun – Will Travel was created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow and produced by Frank Pierson, Don Ingalls, Robert Sparks, and Julian Claman. There were 225 episodes of the TV series, 24 written by Gene Roddenberry. Other contributors included Bruce Geller, Harry Julian Fink, Don Brinkley and Irving Wallace. Andrew McLaglen directed 101 episodes and 19 were directed by series star Richard Boone. The title was a catchphrase used in personal advertisements in newspapers like The Times, indicating that the advertiser was ready for anything. It was used this way from the early 20th century. A form common in theatrical advertising was “Have tux, will travel,” and CBS claimed this was the inspiration for the writer Herb Meadow. The one other major semi-regular character in the show was the Chinese bellhop at the Carlton Hotel, known as Hey Boy, played by Kam Tong. According to author and historian Martin Grams, Jr., Hey Boy was featured in all but the fourth of the show’s six seasons, with the character of Hey Girl, played by Lisa Lu, replacing Hey Boy for season four while Kam Tong worked with another television series. Lu appears in the 1958 episode “Hey Boy’s Revenge,” playing Hey Boy’s sister, Kim Li. In that episode, the audience learns that Hey Boy’s name is Kim Chan and that his murdered brother was Kim Song. We also learn that Paladin can read and speak Chinese in a rudimentary way. The racial prejudice of the era is accurately portrayed, as is Paladin’s insistence that American justice will work for the Chinese immigrants hired (and cheated) while working for the railroad. It is a telling feature of Paladin’s character that, to hostile whites, he repeatedly refers to Kim Chan as his friend. In an episode from the first season, “The Singer,” Hey Boy is annoyed when a stranger addresses him as “Hey you!” He responds that he is called “Hey Boy” not “Hey you.”