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''The Rifleman'' is an American Western television program starring Chuck Connors as rancher Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1870s and 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in black-and-white, half-hour episodes. ''The Rifleman'' aired on ABC from September 30, 1958, to April 8, 1963, as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first prime time series on American television to show a widowed parent raising a child. ==Overview== (詳細はLucas McCain, a widowed Union Civil War veteran. McCain had been a lieutenant in the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and he had received a battlefield commission at the Battle of Five Forks just before the end of the war.〔Hume, Cyril. The Rifleman, Episode 1/16, first aired January 13, 1959〕 Having previously been a homesteader, McCain buys a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory, in the pilot episode. He and his son Mark had come from Enid, Oklahoma, after his wife died, when Mark was 6 years old. The pilot episode, "The Sharpshooter", was originally telecast on CBS as part of ''Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre'' on March 7, 1958; it was repeated (in edited form) as the first episode of the series on ABC. Regulars on the program included Marshal Micah Torrance (R. G. Armstrong was the original marshal for two episodes, the first and the fourth), Sweeney the bartender (Bill Quinn), and a half-dozen other residents of North Fork (played by Hope Summers, Joan Taylor, Patricia Blair, John Harmon, and Harlan Warde). Fifty-one episodes of the series were directed by Joseph H. Lewis (director of 1950s ''Gun Crazy'' and known for his ''film noir'' style). Ida Lupino directed one episode, "The Assault". Connors wrote several episodes. Robert Culp (of CBS's ''Trackdown'') wrote one two-part episode, and Frank Gilroy wrote "End of a Young Gun". The February 17, 1959 episode of ''The Rifleman'' was a spin-off for an NBC series, ''Law of the Plainsman'', starring Michael Ansara as Marshal Sam Buckhart. In the episode "The Indian", Buckhart comes to North Fork to look for Indians suspected of murdering a Texas Ranger and his family.〔(The Rifleman Episode Guide List )〕 The series was set during the 1880s; a wooden plaque next to the McCain home states that the home was rebuilt by Lucas McCain and his son Mark in August 1881. A common thread in the series is that people deserve a second chance; Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and McCain gives a convict a job on his ranch in "The Marshal". Royal Dano appeared as a former Confederate States of America soldier in "The Sheridan Story" who is given a job on the McCain ranch and encounters General Philip Sheridan, the man who cost him his arm in battle. Learning why the man wants him dead, Sheridan arranges for medical care for his wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln's last orders to "...bind up the nation's wounds".〔 Sheridan is quoting Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, specifically the final paragraph: ''"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."''〕 McCain has human foibles. In "Death Trap", an episode with Phil Carey as former gunman (and old adversary) Simon Battles, he is unwilling to believe the man has changed and become a doctor. It takes a gunfight (with Battles fighting alongside him) to make him admit he is wrong. In "Two Ounces Of Tin" with Sammy Davis, Jr. as Tip Corey (a former circus trick-shot artist turned gunman), McCain angrily orders him off the ranch when he finds him demonstrating his skills to Mark. McCain has a reputation in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, where he first acquired the nickname "the Rifleman", and where his wife had died in a smallpox epidemic. The series was created by Arnold Laven and developed by Sam Peckinpah, who would become a director of Westerns. Peckinpah, who wrote and directed many episodes, based many characters and plots on his childhood on a ranch. His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations, as well as his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt the Rifleman's son needed to learn about life, put him at odds with the show's producers at Four Star. Peckinpah left the show and created a short-lived series, ''The Westerner'', with Brian Keith. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Rifleman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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