The Loner
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The Loner was an innovative half-hour western series that ran for less than one season on CBS.
The series was set in the years immediately following the American Civil War. Lloyd Bridges played the title character, William Colton, a former Union cavalry officer who headed to the American west in search of a new life. Each episode dealt with Colton's encounters with various individuals on his trek west.
Rod Serling was the series' creator. Longtime TV Guide critic Cleveland Amory wrote that Serling "obviously intended [The Loner] to be a realistic, adult Western," but the show's ratings indicated it was "either too real for a public grown used to the unreal Western or too adult for juvenile Easterners."
In one episode titled "The Oath," Barry Sullivan played a surgeon who'd lost the use of his right hand and had to give Colton verbal directions on how to remove a gunfighter's ruptured appendix.
In "The Homecoming of Lemuel Stove," Brock Peters played a black Union soldier returning home to see his father. The soldier made it back to his hometown only to learn his father had been lynched the previous evening by members of a Klan-like group.
The Loner aired Saturday nights at 9:30 Eastern. It debuted on September 18, 1965; the final episode aired April 30, 1966.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Amory, C. (1966, January 15-21). Review: The Loner. TV Guide, p. 2
- Brooks, T. & Marsh, E. (1979). The Complete Directory To Primetime Network TV Shows. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 357
