Virginian: Season 5

SEASON FIVE HAS BIG CHANGES
Watching the 5th season takes some getting used to. Major cast changes alter the comfort zone that wore like a nice warm coat in previous years. The biggest change ( and not a good one ) is the departure of Lee J Cobb as Shiloh Ranch owner Judge Henry Garth. Cobb (who hated the gig) didn't even make it all the way through Season 4 having bailed out about two thirds of the way thru the season. His immediate replacement "Morgan Starr" played by John Dehner was a disaster. His over-the-top gruffness and lack of chemistry with fellow cast led to his abrupt departure at the end of Season 4. (no loss, he) Also gone are Randy Boone's "Randy" (right when we were beginning to know and like him) and Garth's niece "Jennifer" played by Diane Roker. Another big change: the sudden and unexplained departure of Sheriff Ryker (Clu Gulager) and the strange reappearance of Ross Elliot's Sheriff Abbott to the big chair. (Gulager would return to the show a year later)

As Season 5 gets...

James Drury. The best Virginian
This is my all-time favourite show and my favourite Western.I have quite a few favourite westerns but if I could only have one series to keep this would be it.I don't really know why.Certainly nostalgia plays a part.I was just a child when this was on TV.But even then it seemed to me that this show was something special.It seemed to be more like a movie than a series.It did run for 74 minutes without commercials and it had a stirring musical score by Percy Faith.Maybe it was the actor's.I have seen both movie versions of "The Virginian" with Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea,both great actors.But it will always be James Drury who was,is and will always be the Virginian.Just as Doug McClure will always be Trampas.As a kid,Trampas was my favourite character on the show.The first four seasons Lee J Cobb played the owner of the Shiloh Ranch with his adopted daughter Betsy played by Roberta Shore.Mr Cobb was an actor's actor.Highly respected and watchable in everything he did.It's a shame that...

Virginian episodes
Here are capsule impressions of selected episodes from season five of "The Virginian."

RIDE TO DELPHI -- Guest stars, Angie Dickenson, Warren Oates, Harold J. Stone, Ron Russell.
While tracking stolen cattle, The Virginian encounters an old friend desperate to conceal her saloon girl past. Middling yarn doesn't inspire Drury or rest of stellar cast except for pioneering black actor Bernie Hamilton, who's rock-solid as a proudly self-sufficient homesteader. Hamilton's presence signified the belated beginning of some racial diversity in the series' casting.

THE CAPTIVE -- Guest star, Susan Strasberg.
John Grainger shelters a white girl raised by Indians while her birth parents are sought. Director Don Weis taps the magical sensitivity of former Broadway Anne Frank Strasberg in absorbing drama. Her defiance at being forced to live under a white man's roof sparks a stormy confrontation with Charles Bickford over dining rooom etiquette. In his early episodes...

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