Wagon Train (TV Series) The Dick Jarvis Story (1960) User Reviews

The Mama's Boy and the Orphan

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 29 January 2018]

This Wagon Train story is the story of a friendship between two youths who became TV stars at this time with two series of their own, Bobby Diamond in Fury and Tommy Nolan in Buckskin.

Nolan is a crippled kid who is being smothered by the mother Vivi Janiss. Diamond is an abused kid who was 'bought' from an orphanage for work by bully Dick Reeves. Maybe something else too, but that kind of stuff was not mentioned on a family show like Wagon Train.

Ward Bond takes a fatherly in both lads and resolves a few issues along the way before this episode is concluded.

It's a good story and holds up well after almost 60 years.

Inspired by Dickens

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 29 September 2015]

This is just as much a story about both boys, not only Dick Jarvis but Joey Henshaw too. They each get fairly equal screen time and share an important role in the life of Major Adams (Ward Bond). It is obvious that the literary source for this installment of Wagon Train is material by Charles Dickens. In fact, the stories of both boys come from two different Dickens tales: the crippled boy Dick Jarvis is obviously drawn from Tiny Tim in 'A Christmas Carol' with Adams as the Scrooge-like leader of the train; and Joey's situation, in which he is an orphan kid abused by a new foster father, seems to be taken from Oliver Twist. It doesn't matter if the show's writers are recycling story lines and characters from classic novels, it works. Mainly, it works because of Ward Bond's easy-going charm and his genuinely warm relationship with the boys in this episode. We also get a fair amount of comic relief involving Charlie Wooster who seems jealous by the amount of time and attention that Adams is devoting to the lads.