Robert Blake appears in several of these Have Gun Will Travels. And in each he shows he's an actor with range. In this one we Lee anger, fear and arrogance. A great natural born actor mostly unrecognized, especially at his age here in 1959.
2 Reviews
Better Than Average
dougdoepke27 September 2013
Superior episode. Paladin decides to respond to newspaper article rather than follow Hey Girl's advice to get married—a funny little prologue. Seems a young guy Jessie (Blake) is wreaking revenge on the men who brutally killed his father. Moreover, he's devised an automatic shotgun that shoots like a machine gun. Arriving in Jessie's camp after several more men have been killed, Paladin gets tangled up emotionally with Jessie and his two partners (Talman & Rhodes), who are not what he expected.
The entry's memorable not only for its good storyline, but for the unusually good casting—a young and poignant Robert Blake, William Talman sans toupee, and Hari Rhodes at a time when black people were first appearing on TV in non-buffoonish roles. Blake has about a two-minute solo that foreshadows his moving portrayal of Perry Smith of In Cold Blood (1967). Talman's a surprise since he was identified at the time with the DA's role in Perry Mason (from which he was temporarily suspended, IMDb). All in all, it's an unusually well acted 30-minutes. And except for the ending whose motivation was murky for me, this remains an outstanding episode.
The entry's memorable not only for its good storyline, but for the unusually good casting—a young and poignant Robert Blake, William Talman sans toupee, and Hari Rhodes at a time when black people were first appearing on TV in non-buffoonish roles. Blake has about a two-minute solo that foreshadows his moving portrayal of Perry Smith of In Cold Blood (1967). Talman's a surprise since he was identified at the time with the DA's role in Perry Mason (from which he was temporarily suspended, IMDb). All in all, it's an unusually well acted 30-minutes. And except for the ending whose motivation was murky for me, this remains an outstanding episode.
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