Wagon Train (TV Series) The Riley Gratton Story (1957) User Reviews

Sheesh, what a grouch

[cpotato1010 · 7/10 · 2 February 2019]

This episode starts out strangely.

Did Major Adams wake up on the wrong side of the wagon? He is growling and snapping at everyone. This is way beyond gruff. Maybe the writers thought it was funny.

The whole conman storyline barely made sense. These would-be settlers give him their life savings for unseen land based on his maybe friendship with the Major?

Then the conman loses ALL of the money on a crooked roulette wheel? If you think the game is rigged, would you keep betting anyway?

The chase scenes make no sense either. The Major and the conman hide out in a school building (with their horses) that has appeared in the middle of nowhere.

What makes this worth watching at all is Karen Steele. I had previously seen her first in ST:TOS Mudd's Women and Get Smart. I am interested in seeing her in previous roles, and she does not disappoint.

Guy Madison also played the charming conman. You almost wish he could have gotten away with his schemes. Also, that he was a little smarter in the use of his ill-gotten gains.

Smooth as cut crystal

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 22 August 2014]

This episode of Wagon Train features guest star Guy Madison who falls into a category of having never worked with Ward Bond on the big screen. Others who guested on Wagon Train like that with Bond are Bette Davis, Lou Costello, and Charles Laughton. Bond who worked with just about every major star in Hollywood was making it up with those he missed on his TV series.

Madison is a fellow Civil War veteran, but he was a conman in the service and continued in that profession once out. In this story Madison sells some worthless land to some of the families on the Wagon Train and promptly loses it at cards and roulette at James Westerfield's saloon.

I won't go into all of it, but Ward Bond gets in quite a jackpot helping Madison get that money back.

I have to say Madison was as smooth as the finest cut crystal in his role. All in all a nice story, but nothing special from the series.

Wagon Train, Season 1 Disc 3

[schappe1 · 19 February 2024]

Wagon Train The Charles Avery Story 11/13/57 The Mary Halstead Story 11/20/57 The Zeke Thomas Story 11/27/57 The Riley Gratton Story 12/4/57

Farley Granger was another actor known more for his appearances in the cinema at that time when he turns up in an episode of Wagon Train. He plays an Army office bringing a Lipan, (a branch of the Apache), princess played by Natalie Wood look-alike Susan Kohner who brings a treaty signed by the president that will insure peace and also make the passage of the wagon train easier to her father. The first problem is that he's accompanied only by two men, played by Kurt Russell's father Bing and by Chuck Conners, (a year before he started playing Lucas McCain on the Rifleman - he dies reaching for his rifle in this one), and they aren't numerically or spiritually strong, (especially when the get a look at Ms. Kohner). The second problem is that Avery's family was wiped out by this same tribe, led by the man who is now the chief, her father. Major Adams suggests that Flint accompany the little group. Problem #3 is that a group of Lipanese who prefer war are dressing up as Comanches and threatening to wipe out the little group.

I once saw a Marlon Brando interview in which he alleged that the attitude of Hollywood toward Native Americans was that "The only good Indian was a dead Indian." I thought about that and realized that that wasn't true at all. That might have been the attitude of the solders, the railway workers, settlers on real wagon trains and the drovers on real trail drives but it wasn't Hollywood's attitude at all and that's not the attitude here, although the situation where the older, now peaceful Indian leaders are in the right and the younger, war-like braves are in the wrong was pretty common.

The Mary Halstead Story is a tear-jerker, probably a little too much of one. Agnes Morehead plays a woman in search of her son, who left her years ago. The train finds a wounded young man, (played by the unfortunate Tom Pittman), who she thinks could be her son. He's been waylaid by bandits but escaped and killed one of them, (played by future Billy Jack Tom Laughlin). It turns out THAT was her son. Oh, and she's dying, by the way. Meanwhile the wagon train ahs to fight off the sizeable outlaw gang that thought they'd killed him. There's plenty of action, anyway.

Tom Pittman disappeared Halloween night of 1958. Nearly three weeks later, his body was found in his smashed-up car at the bottom of Benedict Canyon. He was a friend and admirer of James Dean and died in a the same make of a car: a Porche Spider. He was better off in a wagon.

The wagon train encountered alternating droughts and floods in it's travels. In The Zeke Thomas Story, its' a drought and they finds that someone, (Harold J. Stone), has built an entire town where an open waterhole was and is now charging an exorbitant price, ($1 a wagon!) to use it. That becomes a side story when we find that Stone's girlfriend, (someone named K. T. Stevens) is the long-lost wife of Thomas, (Gary Merrill), who is now remarried, (to Janice Rule) and on the wagon train, (of course!). Their dispute ultimately resolves the water problem.

Riley Gratton is a con man who escapes from jail and joins up with Major Adams' wagon train. They recognize each other from the Civil War, when they both served under General Grant at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Antietam and Cold Harbor. (It's very unlikely that anyone was at all three battles.) The train has to pause because the river they have to cross is flooded because it's rained so gull darn much, (the drought in the previous episode is long over). Gratton manages to convince many of the people to stay here in Nebraska and sells them deeds to properties he doesn't own. He just can't help himself. This one has elements of 'Maverick', which premiered this same season.