Laramie (TV Series) Glory Road (1959) User Reviews

Not usually a subject for westerns

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 28 November 2017]

Mental illness is not usually a subject for family westerns like Laramie. But it is here and guest star Eddie Albert who is never bad in anything gives a great performance as a man with some real psychological issues. He also is a person who once saved Robert Fuller's life.

Which is why Fuller leaves the Sherman station to keep an eye on Albert who has taken up with traveling Aimee Semple McPherson type evangelist Nanette Fabray and her traveling revival crusade.

This episode also offers a chance to see Hoagy Carmichael play the piano and sing. Carmichael left Laramie under some acrimonious circumstances. Had there been more episodes like this utilizing his talents maybe that might not have happened.

For some reason after a color opener the series switched to black and white and was that for the first two seasons. Then it went back to color.

In monotone still a good story.

Excellent and unusual

[ShadowJack · 9/10 · 8 October 2019]

This is a very different type of story for the period. The guest stars are especially well highlighted and though you lean very little about Eddie Alberts character in general, his performance is well worth watching. He brings a great depth to his troubled character's troubled mind. Also, you get a look at Hoagy Carmichael's plying and singing. It was a very touching episode that has truly frightening emotional moments.

An unusual plot

[kitteninbritches · 8/10 · 21 September 2023]

Not immediately appealing, perhaps, with its plot about a mentally ill (and pretty dangerous character) but when I watched it for a second time, small but interesting details caught my eye. Jess is still the bad boy, smoking as he has his umpteenth coffee. Slim comments that if he charged Jess for all his coffee, he'd have no wages to pick up! And also their burgeoning friendship takes a little knock when Slim tries to make Jess confide his history with this strange character and the reason he's leaving with him. Jess promptly tells him to mind his own business. It's clear Jess isn't prepared to be open with Slim yet, who's demanding confidences a little early, probably because he still has (and will continue to have) a fear Jess will return to his wandering ways. They do exchange a slight meaningful look though as Jess leaves, which can be interpreted as a silent promise he'll come back. This whole series is built round their strong and complementary relationship, which makes the many episodes where only one is featured feel like they're slightly lacking. Good early start though. I was a fan from the outset.

Hoagy Carmichael sings and plays

[BrianDanaCamp · 3 June 2017]

"Glory Road" was the second episode of "Laramie" and is notable chiefly for the opportunities it gives series co-star Hoagy Carmichael to sing and play the piano. The series didn't often enable the renowned singer-songwriter-pianist to display his musical talents. In the episode, a lady preacher, Essie Bright (Nanette Fabray) and her assistant, Roany Bishop (Eddie Albert), stop at the Sherman relay station and when Jonesy (Carmichael) sees the piano on the back of their wagon and asks to sample it, Miss Bright is so impressed by his playing that she asks Jonesy to join them in Laramie when she hosts a revival meeting in the town saloon. Roany was supposed to play the piano for her but for unexplained reasons he secretly doesn't want to so he bangs his left hand with a pair of brass knuckles and tells Miss Bright that one of the horses stomped his hand. So Jonesy gets to play. One of the songs he performs outside of the revival meeting sounds like something written for the show (probably by Carmichael, although no credit was included for the song) that includes the lyric, "Marry me, marry me way out in Laramie." Such moments brighten an otherwise dour episode.

The plot is rather an odd one and focuses on Roany's increasingly psychotic behavior which, in any real western town, would have gotten him arrested or killed long before the events depicted in this episode. Instead, everyone in Laramie is so scared of him that they do what he wants until he finally goes too far. The first hint of this behavior comes when a stagecoach passes the Bright wagon on the road to Laramie and someone on the stage shouts a word of encouragement to Bright, a remark that Roany interprets as mockery, so he whips the horses and furiously races the wagon to catch up to the stage and try to run it off the road in a sequence that clearly references the chariot race in BEN-HUR (1959), which opened in theaters two months after this episode aired.

Not believable

[gary-64659 · 5/10 · 7 September 2021]

As "Laramie" joins a couple of dozen other westerns on tv in the autumn of 1959 it continues its very shaky start begun by the opening episode, which looked irredeemably artificial throughout. While the regular cast are settling into their characters the guest stars Eddie Albert and Nanette Fabray way overplay their roles. Fabray's evangelist is so innocent to the very end she treats her most devoted convert (Albert), who early on reveals himself as homicidally inclined, like a wayward lamb led astray who will come right with gentling. Her performance as a goody-goody totally oblivious to everyday realities recalls a hilarious parody I remember by Fabray from a later seventies comedy show on tv. It was a script which requires careful control by the director, not forthcoming. Fortunately, it is onward and upward beginning with the third episode, which raises the standard of the series out of sight.