| The Loner | |
|---|---|
Comedian Allen Sherman in "The Sheriff of Fetterman's Crossing", 1965. |
|
| Genre | Western |
| Created by | Rod Serling |
| Written by | Ed Adamson Les Crutchfield Milton S. Gelman Norman Katkov Robert Lewin Gerald Sanford Rod Serling Andy White |
| Directed by | Leon Benson James B. Clark Tay Garnet Norman Foster Paul Henreid Alex March Allen H. Miner Larry Peerce Joseph Pevney Allen Reisner Don Taylor |
| Starring | Lloyd Bridges |
| Theme music composer | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Composer(s) | Alexander Courage Jerry Goldsmith Nelson Riddle Fred Steiner |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | William Dozier |
| Producer(s) | Bruce Lansbury Andy White |
| Running time | 30 mins. |
| Production company(s) | Greenway Productions, in association with Interlaken Productions and 20th Century Fox Television |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Original run | September 18, 1965 – April 30, 1966 |
The Loner is an American western series that ran for less than one season on CBS from 1965 to 1966, under the alternate sponsorship of Philip Morris and Procter & Gamble.
Contents |
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." Serling had expressed an open distaste for television Westerns in an editorial that set up the premise for "Showdown with Rance McGrew," an episode of The Twilight Zone, in which he as quoted as saying: "it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven and any of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are being bandied about, they're very likely turning over in their graves - or worse, getting out of them."
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 March 12, 1966; selected repeats continued through April 30th.
| Episode # | Episode title | Original airdate |
|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | "An Echo of Bugles" (pilot) | September 18, 1965 |
| 1-2 | "The Vespers" | September 25, 1965 |
| 1-3 | "The Lonely Calico Queen" | October 2, 1965 |
| 1-4 | "The Kingdom of McComb" | October 9, 1965 |
| 1-5 | "One of the Wounded" | October 16, 1965 |
| 1-6 | "The Flight of the Arctic Tern" | October 23, 1965 |
| 1-7 | "Widow on the Evening Stage" | October 30, 1965 |
| 1-8 | "The House Rules at Mrs. Wayne's" | November 6, 1965 |
| 1-9 | "The Sheriff of Fetterman's Crossing" | November 13, 1965 |
| 1-10 | "The Homecoming of Lemuel Stove" | November 20, 1965 |
| 1-11 | "Westward, the Shoemaker" | November 27, 1965 |
| 1-12 | "The Oath" | December 4, 1965 |
| 1-13 | "Hunt the Man Down" | December 11, 1965 |
| 1-14 | "Escort for a Dead Man" | December 18, 1965 |
| 1-15 | "The Ordeal of Bud Windom" | December 25, 1965 |
| 1-16 | "To the West of Eden" | January 1, 1966 |
| 1-17 | "Mantrap" | January 8, 1966 |
| 1-18 | "A Little Stroll to the End of the Line" | January 15, 1966 |
| 1-19 | "The Trial in Paradise" | January 22, 1966 |
| 1-20 | "A Question of Guilt" | January 29, 1966 |
| 1-21 | "The Mourners for Johnny Sharp" (part one) | February 5, 1966 |
| 1-22 | "The Mourners for Johnny Sharp" (part two) | February 12, 1966 |
| 1-23 | "Incident in the Middle of Nowhere" | February 19, 1966 |
| 1-24 | "Pick Me Another Time to Die" | February 26, 1966 |
| 1-25 | "The Burden of the Badge" | March 5, 1966 |
| 1-26 | "To Hang A Dead Man" | March 12, 1966 |