User Reviews

Fresh from her matriarchal role in the film version of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", Judith Anderson (just one short year from being made a Dame of the British empire) shows that as a woman in old age make-up that she is made of powerful stuff. This episode of "Wagon Train" focuses on her, playing the title role of the powerful ranch owner who refuses to allow the wagon train to go through. In his confrontation with Judith, Robert Horton learns where is a great deal of how she struggled to get where she has gotten too, surrounded by mostly weak men and no one she feels comfortable to leave her estate to. Impressed by the way he stands up to her and her ranch hands, Judith uses force to keep him in her mansion in the middle of nowhere, promising her granddaughter's hand in marriage to him and all of the land and power that she has to offer. In just under an hour, Judith create a truly magnificent characterization, seen in a flashback at her real age and proving that as a woman, she had what it took to take what she wanted in a mostly male-dominated world.

Upon seeing this, I couldn't help of thinking about her co-starring role opposite Walter Huston and Barbara Stanwyck in the Western film noir "The Furies", and later on, Stanwyck's hit TV series "The Big Valley". Horton and co-star Ward Bond hand the episode over to Judith, giving her a meaty role as memorable as for stage performances in "Medea", "Hamlet" and "Macbeth". Judith, through the help of an excellent teleplay adds much substance to her character, showing the conflicted religious side, seen out of the blue begging for forgiveness in prayer, and later admitting that her hands are covered in blood because of past sins. In a sense, this has both a tragic and atonement filled message, and Judith truly makes every moment that she is on screen commanding and brilliant.

The Elizabeth McQueeny Story Oct 28, 1959 The Martha Barham Story Nov 4, 1959 The Cappy Darrin Story Nov 11, 1959 The Felizia Kingdom Story Nov 18, 1959

Bette Davis returns to Major Adam's train as, supposedly, the proprietor of a finishing school who is actually the proprietor of a proposed dancing emporium. The other women in the train don't think much of her. But when am outbreak of spotted fever occurs, It's Ms. Queeny's girls who volunteer to nurse the victims, at the cost of one of their members. The remaining members of her group wind up putting on a show for the now appreciative wagon train. This was shown 11 days after Bonanza showed "The Julia Bulette Story", based a real woman who ran a brothel in Virginia City, Nevada. She and her girls nursed people there through a epidemic. It's ironic that Wagon Train's rival show used their title template "The.... Story" to tell a similar story. Bette looks like she's having a good time dancing around in the finale.

Next Ann Blyth returns as a former girlfriend of Flint McCullough's with a high degree of prejudice against Native Americans, especially when her military officer father's fort gets over-run and she sees him killed. Her fiancé, played by Mike Road, (why didn't he become a big star - very handsome and a great voice, which he used for cartoon characters), has been captured by the Indians and Flint and an old Indian friend try to find him and free him. Annie hates both of them but softens her attitude when she sees their bravery. It's a solid drama with its heart in the right place.

Staring with the second season, Wagon Train began creating episodes for various comic actors, crafted around their personalities: Lou Costello, Wally Cox, Mickey Rooney and, here, Ed Wynn. They may have bene good episodes for the performers but that doesn't automatically make them good Wagon train episodes, as the regulars become supporting or bit players and the show it turned over to the guest star, (even moreso than normal).

Wynn plays "Cappy Darrin" a supposed former ship's captain, (James Rosin's book on the show says that he's a riverboat captain but in the episode he seems more like a sea captain), escorting his grandchild to a rendezvous with an uncle who is going to care for him. He's enthralled the boy with tails of the sea and he wants to go to sea with his grandfather. Wynn and the buy unwisely try to leave the wagon train to get to San Francisco and avoid the uncle so they can go to sea. Once again, illness is injected into the story for instant drama as the kid becomes ill and Wynn prays for his survival. It turns out Wynn is a fake: he's never more than imagined being a sea captain. The ending is touching and Wynn's acting is very good, without all the silly flourishes he usually uses. But the whole thing really lacked any credibility.

The last of the four more than makes up for it. Dame Judith Anderson, (she was created that the year after this show was broadcast), has a tour de force as a domineering woman rancher whose ranching empire lies on the only place the wagon train can cross the now mountainous area. Flint tries but fails to get permission for the train to cross from the imperious woman, with her henchman laughing at him. He handles them with courage and impresses her so much that she decides he will marry her daughter and leave the ranch in his capable hands when she dies. He refuses the offer - but it wasn't an offer. The key for him is her failing help - to the point where she has to ask for help, something she hasn't done in years.

Before she was a dame of the British Empire, actress Judith Anderson was a movie star who made occasional forays into television. This is one of those TV appearances by her, and as viewers we are truly the richer for it. Anderson gets to play her own age in flashback and then a much more made-up elderly woman in the modern-day sequences with Flint (Robert Horton). I think she and Horton have an intriguing chemistry in this installment of 'Wagon Train.' When her character refuses to let him go, virtually holding him prisoner, one can't help but hate her and pity her at the same time. Only a great actress can make us feel sympathy for such a twisted woman.