Back in the day I remember the Gallegher series as one of the best of the Walt Disney TV productions. No doubt helped by the great cast that the Magic Kingdom people assembled for it.
Gallegher is a character created by turn of the last century newspaper reporter and sometime novelist Richard Harding Davis. Gallegher is a teenage boy, winningly played by Roger Mobley who's working at a newspaper edited by Edmond O'Brien with one of the other reporters being a pre-Carol Burnett Harvey Korman.
It wasn't uncommon in the 1890s to have kids not finish high school,let alone go to college, and to be joining the work force at a tender age. Hey, Gallegher could be working in a factory at this time, not uncommon then. Instead he's got a great instinct for newspaper reporting as he proved time and again.
I particularly liked the fact that Disney occasionally had references in the script to indicate what was happening in the real world that would have been of interest to young Gallegher. I recall references to star baseball catcher Buck Ewing of the New York Giants and to the James J. Corbett-Joe Choynski heavyweight championship fight.
Roger Mobley turned out to have had as interesting a life as Gallegher. At certain points in time he was a Green Beret, a police officer, and a minister. Hollywood and acting was not the be-all, end-all for him.
The Disney channel stopped running Gallegher and all the other Disney productions from when Walt was still with us. That's a pity, I hope they change their minds or get some of it out on video.