Wagon Train (TV Series) The Tom Tuckett Story (1960) User Reviews

Expect Great Things from an unknown actress

[repete_recording · 10/10 · 22 March 2019]

Since no one has mentioned Louise Fletcher in this classic "Wagon Train" episode,I will. Seeing her performance here,some 15 years before her Oscar winning performance in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", I could see a little of her cold,callous acting ability. It may be even more shocking coming from her younger and in my opinion,very beautiful self. The other reviews covered how this is an homage to Dickens's "Great Expectations" so I won't retell that...but to do in about 55 minutes is a credit to the great writers and performers in this series. A favorite.

Don't Expect

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 11 June 2014]

One of the only times I ever saw a credit on a television show saying they were acknowledging a classic was on this Wagon Train episode where the story of Great Expectations is folded into the western trek across the plains. As Ward Bond narrates at the beginning of the show, the story begins on the banks of the Kaw River where a young boy who grows up to be Ben Cooper helps a prisoner escape.

Ben arrives finding a wagon and driver already purchased for him on a trip to San Francisco where he has a job at a law firm awaiting. Cooper is under the impression that his good fortune, in fact all his good fortune is due to Josephine Hutchinson and her niece Louis Fletcher who are also traveling west. Cooper has had a fine education, good upbringing, a lot like young Charles Foster Kane on a more limited scale.

I won't go any farther except to say that Robert Middleton is Cooper's convict/benefactor and that the ending is a more happy one than Dickens wrote for Great Expectations. Middleton in fact turns out to be a man of conscience and principle who paid dearly in his life for acting on same, but also won the admiration of many. Ward Bond in fact counts himself proud to be an admirer.

Watered down Great Expectations, but still a good episode.

Great Expectations

[sdquinn2-1 · 7/10 · 18 May 2011]

This episode is very close to the Charles Dickens classic "Great Expectations". Orphan boy helps a runaway convict. Someone helps orphan boy to become a rich gentleman. Orphan boy loves an unattainable beauty from afar. Unattainable beauty works for bitter old woman who was jilted by a former lover. Bitter old woman teaches unattainable beauty to hurt men who love her. Etc. You get the idea. Other than that the story is a pretty standard Wagon Train story. All of the regulars appear and give a good account of themselves. One of my favorite character actors, Ralph Moody is severely miscast as an Ottowa Indian Chief.