Cimarron Strip (TV Series) The Battleground (1967) User Reviews

A fine reminder of '60s TV westerns at their best............

[wildbillharding · 8/10 · 20 January 2007]

I hadn't seen this segment of Cimarron Strip since its first airing in early '68. There was always a buzz when the credits came up, with Stuart Whitman, the young John Wayne, riding past those moonlike rocks near Lone Pine, California, to the strains of Maurice Jarre's soaring theme music.

The Battleground has a superb cast alongside the four series regulars. There's a brilliant performance from the late, definitely great Warren Oates, with a hint of his part in the groundbreaking The Wild Bunch less than two years later. RG Armstrong plays a part reminiscent of his turn in Peckinpah's masterly Ride The High Country, and Robert Wilke, who took on James Coburn's knifeman in The Magnificent Seven and lost hands down, is a snarling, disgruntled cattleman. Like the rest of the case-hardened cast he makes acting look so damned easy. It ain't. Not at all.

There was action aplenty in those days, long before the PC brigade nibbled away at the raw edges of TV entertainment. Stuart Whitman and his gang went for the action like nobody else on TV except for The Dakotas, and in The Battleground, like the other series segments, it fits perfectly with the story. You couldn't do the Cimarron land-grab and its simple politics any other way. If only TV westerns hadn't died out in the '70s. That's a goldarned shame, pardner.

Bill Harding - January 2007

Introducing the regulars

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 24 March 2020]

This episode introduced he other three regulars in the single season of Cimarron Strip besides Stuart Whitman. Jill Townsend as Dulcey the English lass who came west to find her father recently deceased, {errcy Herbert as a boozy Scotsman and partner in Townsend's father's saloon, and Randy Boone aspiring writer of dime novels.

Whitman has a volatile situation. The federal government in its infinite wisdom has withdrawn grazing permits for the cattle ranchers in the territory. Led by Robert J. Wilkie they're threatening range war. The farmers led by R.G. Armstrong are looking to move in.

It's a volatile situation Whitman has. It's affected a friendship he's had with frontier character Telly Savalas.

Note the climax. It was borrowed from the Joel McCrea western Buffalo Bill.

Nicel staged western episode.

The fourth is actually the first!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 22 March 2022]

Occasionally, networks chose to deliberately show TV episodes out of order. For instance, the first "Star Trek" episode aired was actually the fourth episode...and was shown first because some network execs thought the first show should show some sort of 'bug-eyed alien'...and, as a result, earlier filmed shows (with earlier style uniforms) were shown later! In the case of "The Battleground", someone's decision to air this first episode fourth simply made no sense at all...none. First, the cast regulars are introduced here....even though they'd already been in three previously aired episodes. Second, the first episode sets the stage for the arrival of the Marshall (Stuart Whitman)...and this context is then missing from the first three aired episodes.

The episode begins with Marshall Jim Crown (Whitman) arriving by train to become the new lawman in this part of the Oklahoma Territory. It's about 1888...just before the land was partitioned out for settlers in the famous Oklahoma Land Boom...and there's trouble brewing because cattlemen don't want settlers on the land. And, to discourage the settlers, one land baron has his crew of misfits terrorize folks into leaving. At the same time, some of the settlers are talking about taking the law into their own hands. Inexplicably, the local Cavalry leader has chosen to do nothing...to let everyone just fight it out!! Into this mess arrives Crown...and with a seemingly impossible task of controlling this mess!

This is generally a very good FIRST episode. My only confusion is how some of the misfits commit some pretty lawless acts (such as Warren Oates' character), are arrested and yet Crown soon releases them! Doesn't this seem to be Crown making his own job more difficult?! Also, like other episodes I thought McGregor (Percy Herbert) was a bit broad in his portrayal. But despite these deficiencies, it's a pretty good episode with some impressive supporting players (such as Oates, Telly Savalas, R. G. Armstrong, and Andrew Duggan).

By the way, the shows clearly were NOT filmed around Oklahoma but in the Calfornia desert...which looks nothing like Oklahoma. I used to think Oklahoma was all desert and ugliness because of this common misuse of California locales in films set in Oklahoma. Only later did I travel through Oklahoma and learn that it's a very green place...nothing like you see in this show and other westerns.