Western Bound : Video Companies Release Episodes of Classic Series

Putting old TV series on home video has become a big business. Fans are buying their favorite episodes of “I Love Lucy,” “Bonanza,” “Dark Shadows,” “The Honeymooners,” “Rawhide,” “The Fugitive,” “Mork & Mindy,” “The Addams Family,” “The Mod Squad” and “MASH.”

On Wednesday, Warner Home Video is releasing two episodes apiece of three Western series from the 1950s and early ‘60s: Maverick, Cheyenne and Bronco. Each video is priced at $14.95.

The good-natured, genial “Maverick,” which premiered Sept. 22, 1957, on ABC, made the young James Garner a TV superstar. Garner played the wisecracking, charming ladies’ man Bret Maverick, who was anything but a hero. He preferred playing poker and romancing the ladies over participating in a gunfight. Two months after “Maverick” premiered, the series added Bart, Bret’s straight-arrow brother, played by Jack Kelly (who served as mayor of Huntington Beach for two terms in the 1980s).

“Maverick” loved to spoof popular series of its day. During its four-year run it poked fun at “Dragnet,” “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.”

In 1960, Garner walked off the show demanding a better contract. He never came back. Enter Roger Moore as Cousin Beau. In 1961, Robert Colbert joined the cast as yet another brother, Brent. But the series never recovered from the loss of Garner. The last episode aired July 8, 1962.

Twenty years after he left the show, Garner returned to series TV as Bret in the short-lived 1981-82 series “Bret Maverick.”

The two episodes of “Maverick” being released are: “Duel at Sundown,” with Clint Eastwood, and “Shady Deal at Sunny Acres,” with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

“Cheyenne,” which premiered Sept. 20, 1955, on ABC, lasted eight seasons but has never achieved the cult status of a “Gunsmoke” or “Wagon Train.”

Set in the days after the Civil War, “Cheyenne” followed the adventures of Cheyenne Bodie (tall, rugged Clint Walker) as he traveled the West. Every week, Cheyenne had a new job and inevitably had a gunfight showdown with the bad guys.

In 1958, Walker walked off the Top 20 series because Warner Bros. refused to release him from certain aspects of his contract. The studio didn’t give in to his demands and continued the series with Ty Hardin playing Bronco Layne.

By early 1959, Walker, who legally was not allowed to work anywhere else, unhappily returned to “Cheyenne,” which continued until 1963.

The episodes of “Cheyenne” being released are: “The Iron Trail,” starring Dennis Hopper, and “White Warrior,” with a pre-”Bonanza” Michael Landon.

With Walker back in the saddle, Hardin was given his own series, “Bronco,” in the fall of 1958. Bronco was an ex-Confederate Army captain who went west to seek adventure. Though “Bronco” never became a huge hit, it had a healthy four-season run.

The two episodes of “Bronco” being released are “The Shadow of Jesse James,” with James Coburn as Jesse, and “Death of an Outlaw.”