I was only a one year old kid when Rawhide premiered, and I only had fragmentary memories of the show, but judging from what i now know, it was very interesting indeed. Ihave recently caught two very good episodes of Rawhide on Encore Westerns. The first, Incident at Alabastar Plain, featured, among others, Martin Balsam and Troy Donahue. This episode was even better. Gil Favor, Rowdy Yates, and the boys encounter a stagecoach that has just had an accident. They learn that the coach is fleeing a mysterious figure. They soon learn that the mysterious stalker is in fact an enigmatic hired assassin, and that almost all the people on the stage have guilty secrets. In an apparent indirect Homage to John Ford's Stage coach , they include a cowardly 'drummer", ( The indestructible William Schallert), a cocky young gunslinger ( James Drury),and a pompous crooked banker , ( (Stafford Repp)as well as several ladies with 'colorful' pasts. The only person on the stagecoach who seems to have nothing to hide is a young blacksmith, ( Martin Milner) who has just inherited a farm. Who is the executioners intended victim? Then it transpires that the executioner (very well played by Dan Duryea) may have certain secrets of his own. Just what is in that doctor's satchel he always carries? In short, a very fine episode of this classic series.
Review of Incident with an Executioner
