Bonanza (TV Series) Sam Hill (1961) User Reviews

Meet the real Claude Atkins!

[mitchrmp · 10/10 · 27 September 2014]

This is probably my favorite Claude Atkins character. He plays Sam Hill (you know, like "What in Sam Hill...?) He's bigger than life, can hit an anvil over and over without tiring (can eve beat the ol' Hoss), and apparently doesn't need sleep.

His main problem is a land owner who wants the land of his parents. His mother died on that land (stay soon to learn what happened), and there is some sort of magical power that makes a tree grow that shouldn't.

Edgar Bucannon does an excellent job playing Sam's wayward father who has returned from the dead.

Joe and Hoss, of course, offer some rather humorous comic relief. Adam...well...Adam is just there.

Definitely a pilot for another series that never came to be

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 27 October 2012]

This was an interesting episode, not the best but kind of weird and was possibly a pilot for another NBC western that did not get off the ground. Father and son Edgar Buchanan and Claude Akins have been estranged for years. Akins is an itinerant blacksmith who travels from ranch to ranch shoeing horses as it's needed. Buchanan is a drunk old sea captain and teller of tall tales. What they have in common is their devotion to the memory of Buchanan's wife and Akins's mother.

Mostly the story is about a plot by one crazy old self-styled colonel played by Ford Rainey to get a plot of land owned by Buchanan which has the grave on it. It's way too weird to describe.

After the conclusion of the story as Akins and Buchanan are preparing to leave the Ponderosa Robert Ridgely rides up strumming a guitar and announces he's joining them and he's another brother or half brother to Akins. The Cartwrights fully understand that concept. And off they go hoping presumably that NBC will want a series. General Sarnoff did not bite.