Have Gun - Will Travel (TV Series) The Ballad of Oscar Wilde (1958) User Reviews

historically accurate!

[grobworthy · 8/10 · 14 October 2020]

The interesting episode led us to do some fact checking. And yes, as stated in the show, Oscar Wilde's first stop on his American tour in 1882 was in San Francisco and he was paid $5000 for it. Apparently the ladies all carried sunflowers, which was wasn't shown in the episode, but would have been a nice touch. It was Wilde fever back then. He wore all those fancy silk clothes that no frontiersman would consider men's clothing. In real life, a bunch of cowboys tried to get him drunk and make fun of him, but the 200 pound Irishman could handle his liquor, which gained him respect in the far west. At the end of the show Paladin, always the cultured gentleman, and this time a time traveller, quotes from something Wilde historically hasn't written yet. "Sounds like something I'd write." Oh, you will," says Paladin. Very cool ending as Paladin chooses an evening with a lady over front row tickets.

We agree with Richard Shannon (Joe, the Adjutant Captain of General Waverly in Bing Crosby's White Christmas) that Paladin was showboating to get the job in the first place.

The Wilde, Wilde West (possible spoilers)

[cougarannie · 10/10 · 6 January 2016]

Oscar Wilde was in some ways the English equivalent of Mark Twain. Famous as a playwright, poet and essayist, he also gave immensely popular lectures peppered with one-liners meant to discomfort an audience as much as they amused it.(He coined the phrase "Work is the curse of the drinking class.") Among his poems is one called "The Ballad of Reading Gaol ('Redding Jail')" from which excerpts ares are still quoted.

Learning that the celebrated Mr. Wilde is travelling via stagecoach from San Diego to San Francisco, Paladin offers his services as an armed escort. Some laconic western gentlemen have already been assigned that position, and Paladin's attempt to prove he easily best the lot of them nearly costs him his life.

Hot on the trail of his assailants, Paladin finds the Stagecoach has been ambushed, Mr Wilde has been kidnapped, and a ransom note has been left with the puzzled stagecoach driver. Paladin tracks the kidnappers to their hide-out and comes face to face with Mr Wilde himself, brilliantly cast and portrayed by John O'Malley as a foppish, affected young Dandy who finds the whole thing a marvellous adventure and is sorely affronted by the "paltry" sum demanded for his release.

Once again Paladin proves himself up to a seemingly impossible challenge, and declining a grateful Mr Wilde's gift of lecture tickets, finds a far more interesting way to spend an evening in San Francisco.