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 Tales
of the Texas Rangers
by Bill O’Neal
“Tales
of the Texas Rangers, starring Joel McCrea as Ranger Pearson!”
For
more than two years, announcer Hal Gibney introduced this weekly radio
show about contemporary Rangers.
“Texas!
More than 260,000 square miles!” he would continue. “And fifty
men who make up the most famous and oldest law enforcement body in North
America!”
In
1950, television antennas were beginning to go up across the country,
but radio networks still offered a full schedule of soap operas, game
shows, mysteries, melodramas, comedies—and Westerns, such as The
Lone Ranger and weekly series starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
Western movies and novels enjoyed great popularity, so a radio series
about the famed Texas Rangers was a logical concept.
Producer-director
Stacy Keach (father of actor Stacy Keach, Jr.) traveled to Texas with
a write to do research. Keach met one of the most famous of all Texas
Rangers, Captain Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas. Keach enlisted Captain
Gonzaullas as the show’s technical advisor and then traveled 1,500 miles
across the Lone Star State observing the Rangers in field operations.
Keach
lined up an established Western star for the role of Ranger Jace Pearson.
By 1950, Joel McCrea (see photo above) had been a Hollywood leading
man for two decades. He was born in Los Angeles in 1905, and he went
on to attend Hollywood High. In the summers, he worked at California
ranches and became a superb horseman.
When
he was fourteen, McCrea began appearing as an extra in silent films,
including a few Westerns. McCrea was tall and ruggedly handsome, with
a sense of integrity that came through on the big screen. By the 1930s,
he was a leading man in comedies and dramas. In 1937, he had his first
starring role in a Western, Wells Fargo, and two years later
Cecil B. DeMille cast him in Union Pacific. McCrea played the
title roles in Buffalo Bill in 1944 and in the fourth remake
of The Virginian in 1946. At this point, he began working almost
exclusively in Westerns, starring in five in 1949.
With
Joel McCrea lending star power, Tales of the Texas Rangers debuted
over the NBC radio network on July 8, 1950. The thirty-minute show,
sponsored by Wheaties, ran on Saturday nights at 9:30 for three months.
In October, the show switched to Sunday evenings, eventually settling
into the six o’clock time slot.
Whe
weekly adventures were set during the past two decades in order that
the show have a modern slant. Ranger Jace Pearson drove an automobile,
but he had a horse trailer and sometimes galloped astride his horse
Charcoal into the backcountry in pursuit of lawbreakers.
Tales
of the Texas Rangers concluded its radio run on September 14, 1952.
But within a few years, as Western series began to proliferate on television,
Tales of the Texas Rangers was dusted off for TV. At first intended
for juvenile audiences, a Tales of the Texas Rangers theme song
was recorded by Shorty Long for RCA’s Children’s Bluebird Records. This
theme song proclaimed the Rangers to be “a band of sturdy men.”Tales
of the Texas Rangers comic book was also published.
Joel McCrea,
still a popular movie star, was not available for a juvenile TV series.
Tall Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson, while co-star
Harry Lauter played Ranger Clay Morgan.
From 1955
through 1958,Tales of the Texas Rangers was aired in the afternoons
over CBS-TV. In the fall of 1958, ABC-TV picked up the half-hour show,
running it at five o’clock on Thursday afternoons. But by this time,
Westerns had reached a peak of popularity on primetime television. So
on December 22, 1958, ABC moved Tales of the Texas Rangersto
7:30 on Monday evenings.
Unlike
the radio version, television episodes alternated between the 1950s
and frontier Texas. But Parker and Lauter could not carry the show in
primetime. Tales of the Texas Rangerswas cancelled after the
May 25, 1959, episode.
This
writer, however, still harbors fond memories of listening to the warm,
reassuring voice of Joel McCrea as he drove across the Texas of my boyhood,
often stopping his car to saddle up Charcoal.
Note: For trivia
fans, Charcoal was also the name of Lone Wolf Gonzaullas’ horse.
§
Bill
O'Neal first researched Jack Hays for his 1991 book, Fighting
Men of the Indian Wars. Bill is the author of more than twenty books
and three hundred articles and book reviews. He has appeared in televised
documentaries about the West on The Learning Channel, TNN, and TBS.
Bill teaches history at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, and recently
he was awarded a Piper Professorship.
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