"The first TV cowboy was Hopalong Cassidy played by William Boyd, who went on the air in 1949. The shows were actually cut-down versions of some of the sixty-six movies he had made beginning in 1935. The other movie cowboys watched with great interest to see if cowboys could ride the TV range. They figured it was working when Hoppy showed up at a New Orleans department store to promote some of the forty Hopalong Cassidy products ---and fifty (255) thousand people showed up to meet him. Fifty thousand! In the first forty-five days the merchandise was on sale, it grossed more than one million dollars. Hoppy sold everything from roller skates to dinner plates, and in 1950 he became the first person to have his image on a lunch box. And six hundred thousand of them were sold! It didn't take much to realize that cowboys could be popular on TV.

And so, pardner, along came Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger, and about 117 other cowboys over the next decade. The Lone Ranger went on the air the same year as Hopalong Cassidy, after having been a popular radio program and comic book."

(p. 255-256)


"The plots on these cowboy shows were almost always the same-do whatever is necessary to sell branded merchandise. By the early 1950s stores were selling about 40 million pieces a year, from toys to clothes, including more than five million repeating cap pistols." (p. 257)

"Wyatt Earp, for example, became (257)the third most popular show on television, behind only Ed Sullivan and I Love Lucy. Among the many westerns aimed at least generally at kids were Death Valley Days, Judge Roy Bean, and Tombstone Territory. The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock was on the air for seven years and much longer in reruns." (257-258)

"Westerns became the most popular genre on TV. Most of them tried to attract an adult audience also, with the heavyweight among such shows being Gunsmoke, with James Arness, which went on the air in 1955 and lasted twenty years; in fact, it was on the air longer than it took to settle the real Old West." (258)

all above from:
When Television Was Young: Live, Spontaneous, and In Living Black and White, Ed McMahon and David Fisher, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2007

my thoughts:

Children growing up with the loyal, trustworthy, courageous example of Tonto, with the sometimes realistic examples of Indians being mistreated, with the positive albeit often paternalistic portrayals where men like Matt Dillon respected the abilities and character of the Indian would grow to adulthood with a different, more positive view than those who feared attack from the Indians.

The Western idealized the fight against long odds, the hero of the underdog, the downtrodden, the beaten down...and as the plight of the Indians was publicized, that hero became the Indian. Thus we see movies like Broken Arrow and Little Big Man produced by the people who grew up listening to and watching these Westerns.