Saturday Matinee: Have Gun Will Travel: Strange Road to Wickenberg (11-30-1958)

Classic Streams: Old Time Retro Radio

Have Gun – Will Travel is an American Western series that was produced and originally broadcast by CBS on both television and radio from 1957 through 1963. The television version of the series starring Richard Boone was rated number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings every year of its first four seasons, and it is one of the few shows in television history to spawn a successful radio version. That radio series starring John Dehner debuted November 23, 1958, more than a year after the premiere of its televised counterpart.

Production.

Have Gun – Will Travel was created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow and produced by Frank Pierson, Don Ingalls, Robert Sparks, and Julian Claman. Of the 225 episodes of the television series, 24 were written by Gene Roddenberry. Other major contributors included Bruce Geller, Harry Julian Fink, Don Brinkley, and Irving Wallace. Andrew V. McLaglen directed 101 episodes, and 28 were directed by series star Richard Boone.

Premise.

This series follows the adventures of a man calling himself "Paladin" (played by Richard Boone on television and voiced by John Dehner on radio), taking his name from that of the foremost knights in Charlemagne's court. He is a gentleman investigator/gunfighter who travels around the Old West working as a mercenary for people who hire him to solve their problems.

Although Paladin charges steep fees to clients who can afford to hire him, typically $1000 per job, he provides his services for free to poor people who need his help. Like many Westerns, the television show was set in a time vaguely indicated to be some years after the American Civil War. The radio show announced the year of the story that followed in the opening of each episode.

The season 5 television episode, "A Drop of Blood", gives the specific date of July 3, 1879. In the fourteenth and seventeenth ("Lazarus", March 6 and 7, 1875) episodes of season 5, it is 1875.

Title.

The title is a variation on a cliche used in personal advertisements in newspapers like The Times, indicating that the advertiser is ready for anything. It has been used this way from the early twentieth century.

A trope common in theatrical advertising at the time was "Have tux, will travel" (originally from comedian Bob Hope in 1954), and CBS has claimed this was the specific inspiration for the writer Herb Meadow. The television show popularized the phrase in the 1950s and 1960s, and many variations have been used as titles for other works, including the 1958 science fiction novel Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein.

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