In "The Deserters," a Season 9 episode of "Death Valley Days," Kenneth Tobey plays a Union Army Colonel who undertakes to capture five army deserters during the Civil War and bring them back to base in Arizona. After he gets the drop on them and ties them up, they are faced with a threat from a superior Confederate force as they occupy a small cul-de-sac and he has to trust them to help him fight them off. It's a low-budget production filmed almost entirely on a small interior set, but it's extremely well-acted with Tobey showing the kind of leadership skills he displayed nine years earlier in the classic sci-fi monster film, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), and the others playing varied character types. Dennis Patrick, later the beleaguered father of Susan Sarandon in JOE (1970), plays the embittered leader of the deserters. Dick Wilson, the future Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet paper fame, is the most timid and hesitant of the deserters. Veteran character actor Frank Richards plays an ex-stevedore from San Francisco who makes the mistake of challenging Tobey to a fight before he'll even think about cooperating. Barney Biro, one of the other deserters, later played a judge in several episodes of "Perry Mason." I watched this episode on the Encore Western Channel as part of the station's afternoon lineup of classic TV westerns.
