Wagon Train: The Conchita Vasquez Story (1959)
Season 2, Episode 24
8/10
Wagon Train Season 2 Disc 6
28 April 2024
Warning: Spoilers
The Annie Griffith Story Feb 25, 1959 The Jasper Cato Story Mar 4, 1959 The Vivian Carter Story Mar 11, 1959 The Conchita Vasquez Story Mar 18, 1959

Annie Griffith is a 'mountain lady' waiting for her husband to come home. She finds Flint, wounded and feverish and brings him to her cabin, not knowing that he was wounded by her husband, whom in killed in self-defense. Jan Sterling, (the victim's cold wife in 1951's 'Ace in the Hole') plays her. John Dehner plays the weekly trouble maker on the train, recruiting wagon train members to follow him back east, including an interesting scene done in silhouette with Dehner and a another guy sitting in a wagon with, presumably, a camp fire somewhere behind them and Major Adams on the camera side of the wagon, listening in.

Jasper Cato is an American Inspector Javert in a story obviously inspired by Les Miserables. He's after Alan Case, (soon to be in 'The Deputy' with Henry Fonda), a reformed criminal now a crusading newspaper editor who has just rid a town of it's 'boss'. The town wants to hang Cato, who has a very uncharacteristic change of heart in the face of this. A good episode with a very unconvincing ending.

Vivian Carter is a dignified but naïve woman, (she's always reading from Robert Browning), who thinks she's out west to marry an old boyfriend she hasn't seen in a decade. This guy, (played by Patric Knowles), is already married to a dance hall girl, (the excellent Mari Aldon), and they have a plan to deprive Vivian of her money with a fake marriage. She gets crushed by this and rebuilds herself as a hard-boiled woman who's never going to fall for anyone again. Lorne Greene, (the year before Bonanza), who really loves her, tries to soften her up again. You wonder if this is a wife Ben never told us about.

The delightful Anna Maria Alberghetti plays Conchita Vasquez in a cliché-ridden story. She's with a band of Comancheros and in love with their second in command until he murders her father to become the first in command. She then falls for Flint, whom she lured into being captured by the group. She helps Flint escape and joins the wagon train but feels alienated by those who see her as 'different' and by Flints unwillingness to marry her. She then rejoins the Comancheros and helps them devise an ambush. But when Flint comes through first, she runs out to want him and is shot by her boyfriend and dies in Flint's arms. Is that a spoiler? You didn't see that coming?
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