The Deputy

The Deputy had a fatal gimmick to start with when it debuted on television in 1959. It's star was to be movie legend Henry Fonda who played a US Marshal. But note the title of the series, the one who carried the show for the most part was his deputy in one particular town in his jurisdiction, Allen Case.

Case was a storekeeper in the town so the deputy's job was a part-time gig. He was not a violent man, only resorting to firearms when he absolutely had to. For action fans this was a big no no.

But in plain fact it was Fonda's name that lured viewers to the show and he only appeared in maybe a third of the episodes and in some only brief appearances. So people tuned in for Fonda and didn't get him.

This was a busy period in Henry Fonda's life, he was working in three different mediums, stage, screen, and television. My guess is that he didn't have the time to devote to a weekly television series and opted for this format. After two seasons The Deputy was canceled.

It was an average television western, but the next time Fonda did a regular TV series it was as a full time star.

I recently saw one of the episodes from the series and I had the chance to recorded it,being this will a rare opportunity you'll see Henry Fonda is his only TV series. One interesting part about the show: Fonda was the Marshal who was in charge of law and order in the Arizona Territory of the 1800's as Simon Fry. He always had a deputy beside(who was a storekeeper and lawman as well)him to bring in criminals who broke the law and brought them to justice in the old west. The show was a huge hit when ran on NBC from 1959-1961,when Fonda was still cranking out feature films and starring in a TV series during that time. One note about the show: Fonda also had a second partner helping him out as well,if you catch some of the episodes you'll see a boyish looking Kent McCord(long before he became Officer Malloy on Adam-12 years later)which is rarely seen nowdays. But if you do,it will be a opportunity to catch a great Hollywood actor in one of his best and only TV series that produced 78 episodes and produced by Revue Studios,the same studio that produced the westerns "Wagon Train", "Shotgun Slade",and "The Virginian";the crime shows "Johnny Staccato", "M Squad",and the situation family-friendly comedies "Leave It To Beaver","Bachelor Father",not to mention the anthology drama series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".

I really liked this series. I which they would no more shows like this. Allen Case is great. I know most of these actors are gone. But I think we need more show like this.

There's a sleigh of hand in the very title of this show. Note that the name of the show is "The Deputy". This conveniently allowed Fonda to not have to be a major player in all the episodes. Fonda appears in some episodes throughout the show but more likely than not you'll see him only at the beginning and end (usually this is explained by Fonda's Simon Fry character being "out of town")...and I've even seen a few episodes where Fonda doesn't appear at all! Really, the show's more about Allen Case than Fonda, but the Fonda name was there to draw viewers. Other than Fonda's needing money, I doubt there was any reason he'd do TV...particularly in a stock Western like this one. Don't get me wrong: the show's pleasant in a Revue Studios crank-em-out-cookie-cutter way (guess who produced the show?) and the jazz guitar that's going on in the background (sounds like Barney Kessel! cool!) is nice, but the plots are pretty clichéd and you've been there before. I wouldn't call it on the level of Wagon Train, Laramie, Gunsmoke, or The Rifleman, but it's a pleasant show. Just don't expect to see a lot of Fonda in it.

"The Deputy" is another of those assembly-line half-hour Revue Studio westerns that were pretty popular during the late fifties and early sixties. This one stood out from the rest for several reasons: It was co-created by, of all people, the future Mr. Relevant Sitcom King himself, Norman Lear.

The sprightly jazz theme by Jack Marshall, of "The Munsters" fame.

And of course, the main drawing attraction of Academy Award winner Henry Fonda, who incidentally, despite being top billed, basically just makes a few cameos during some of the episodes, and not even showing up at all in a few of them. The "Deputy" of the show, the reluctant Clay McCord, is portrayed by the late stage actor Allen Case, with Read Morgan joining in later in the run as the eye-patch wearing Sarge Tasker.

Basically, the premise of the show is that Clay McCord, a storekeeper who's quiet by nature, is suckered into becoming the deputy of Fonda's Marshal Simon Fry, based on McCord's ability to handle a weapon. That's basically the show in a nutshell, since the plots are the cookie-cutter type you'd come to expect from Revue. After viewing a couple episodes (which last aired a few years ago on TV Land), you can understand why Norman Lear made the jump to revolutionizing the sitcom. Can you imagine Archie Bunker or George Jefferson in the Old West? My rating: ***** stars out of 10

"The Deputy" is a Top Gun Production from Revue Studios, Hollywood. 76 episodes were filmed between 1959 and 1961.