Tales of Wells Fargo - 50th Anniversary

Fans of Dale Robertson, will this year be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the start of his most well-known TV series, "Tales of Wells Fargo". In this series, which was shown on NBC at primetime (generally 8.30 in the evening), Robertson played Jim Hardie who was a free-range trouble shooter.

Born on 14th July 1923, Dale Robertson fought in the US army in the 777th tank battalion and served in both Europe and Africa and was twice wounded. He started acting while still in the army and very soon became typecast for westerns. Other famous series in which he appeared were "The Iron Horse" and the 1955 series "Death Valley days" where he worked with Ronald Reagan. Much later he showed his versatility appearing in "Dynasty" in the inaugural series of that show in 1981. He married four times and his second marriage was to the actress Mary Murphy which occurred in 1956 but later in the same year they were divorced. He was, unusually for him, not married when the "Tales of Wells Fargo" series started in 1957 but he married his third wife, Lou Harding, in 1959.

The "Tales of Wells Fargo" series extended to over 200 episodes of which the last 44 were full hour-long movies whereas the earlier programmes had been 30 minutes. The other feature of the later hour-long episodes - which seems quaint to us today - is that they were promoted as special because they were in full colour. The very first episode shown on 18th March 1957 was entitled "The Thin Rope". You can see the title video clip for the show at:

http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/tv/children/westerns/wellsfargo.htm