Wanted Dead or Alive -Sponsors pilot
Steve Mcqueen ( Josh Randall ) is a Civil War veteran with a sawed-off rifle as a holstered weapon makes a living as a bounty hunter in the Wild West of the 1870s.
TV western series that launched Steve McQueen's movie stardom holds up well even after 50 years. Guest stars among the best on TV at the time and the story lines are varied enough to keep your interest and different enough from competing series to stand out.
McQueen's character of Josh Randall is a Confederate veteran and bounty hunter with a soft heart. He often donates his earnings to the needy and helps his prisoners if they have been wrongly accused. Randall carries a shortened Winchester Model 1892 carbine, called the "Mare's Leg," in a holster patterned after "gunslinger" rigs then popular in movies and television. Randall had the ability to draw and fire this gun with blazing speed, as fast as, or in many cases much faster than, his adversaries with handguns that were much smaller. Two Mare's Legs were used in the series, differing in the shape of the lever, round versus oval.
For several episodes in 1960 Randall had a sidekick named Jason Nichols (Wright King) a former deputy sheriff turned bounty hunter. They worked very well together onscreen, sharing a brotherly chemistry audiences enjoyed. By the start of the third season, Nichols was no longer anywhere to be seen. The episode called, "The Partners", where Nichols killed three men, much to the chagrin of Randall who felt the men could have been taken alive, has been speculated to be the episode that broke up the partnership, but was actually only the second episode where Wright King was shown and far from the last episode in which he appeared.
Wanted Dead or Alive -Sponsors pilot
Watch Steve McQueen try to sell you on the series at the end.