Branded

Branded is a Western series which aired on NBC from 1965 through 1966 and starred Chuck Connors as Jason McCord, a United States Army Cavalry captain who had been drummed out of the service following an unjust accusation of cowardice.

Production

Created by Larry Cohen, the show was co-produced for most of its run by Goodson-Todman Productions, which company eventually became primarily known, not for Westerns or dramatic shows, but for almost exclusively producing game shows such as The Price is Right. Present-day US rights to Branded came into the ownership of King World before it became CBS Television Distribution, making Branded one of very few Goodson-Todman properties that FremantleMedia neither owns nor distributes. Many stations that carry Branded today usually schedule the program alongside another King World-distributed program about drifters in the Old West, The Guns of Will Sonnett, which starred Walter Brennan alongside Norman "Dack" Rambo.

The show proper

The opening scene of the series was memorable, depicting McCord's cashiering: his hat is pulled off, his epaulets are torn from his uniform, whose buttons are pulled off, and his saber is broken, while a drum played over the opening theme song ("All but one man died there at Bitter Creek ... and they said he ran away...not a word of it was true"). He was then sent out of the gates of the fort where this occurred, which were then closed behind him. This scene was repeated each week as the theme song by Dominic Frontiere, which told the background story, and the opening credits, were played. New viewers could easily be brought in on what had been going on, a very common device at the time used in many other programs as well.

In the series, McCord traveled throughout the Old West, continually confronted with people who knew of his notorious reputation for cowardice but refused to believe that it was undeserved, requiring him to (according to the theme song) repeatedly "prove he was a man."

Notable guest stars included Chris Alcaide, Russ Conway, Burt Reynolds, Don Collier, Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, Pat Conway, Janet De Gore, Chad Everett, June Lockhart, Gregg Palmer, and Dolores del Río. John M. Pickard, formerly of the related series, Boots and Saddles, appeared in six episodes as General Phil Sheridan.

Production run

The series followed Connors's highly popular series The Rifleman, but it did not have that show's longevity, lasting only 48 episodes divided between only two seasons. The first 13 episodes were filmed in black & white, while the remaining 35 episodes were filmed in color. Several episodes were edited together and presented as a movie, which was released under the title Broken Saber in 1966.

Branded in popular culture

In the 1998 Coen brothers's film The Big Lebowski, Branded is mentioned several times in connection with the (fictitious) former writer of the show, Arthur Digby Sellers. According to the character Walter Sobchak, Mr. Sellers wrote 156 episodes, "the bulk of the series." (In reality, the run of Branded did not consist of even a third that many episodes.) Later in the film, the main character "The Dude," as played by Jeff Bridges, sings the theme song to Branded while intoxicated in the back of a Malibu, CA police car.

In a common parody of the theme song, one child would sing to another "Stranded, Stranded on a toilet bowl, What do you do when you're stranded, And you don't have a roll," that is, of toilet paper.

External links

• Branded at the Internet Movie Database
• Branded at TV.com
• Broken Sabre at the Internet Movie Database