Cade's County

Cade's County was one of two television series that Glenn Ford tried after his time as a big movie name was up and he knew it. The man was smart and transitioned gracefully into middle age. Westerns are a great medium for older stars to transition in. And Ford had appeared in some of the best westerns ever made.

The show was set in fictional Madrid County in Arizona. If Sam Cade and his deputies seem to cover a large bit of territory, take a good look at a map of Arizona with the county lines printed. There are about a dozen counties and some of them are larger than many of our New England states. The show had no big metropolitan areas like Phoenix, Tucson, or Yuma in it, it was strictly a rural affair.

The show lasted only one season despite good critical reception, not great and decent ratings. CBS pulled the plug on it because right at that time it was going on an anti-violence kick along with the other two networks.

I think one of the things that could have saved it was if they had developed more of the personal lives of the sheriff's office of Madrid County. The show had the potential to be like In The Heat Of The Night set in the Southwest. Ford and his deputies which included, Victor Mohica, Taylor Lacher, Edgar Buchanan, and his son Peter Ford were never really seen too much as three dimensional characters. We knew Ford's father had also served as Madrid County Sheriff and was killed in the line of duty and Edgar Buchanan had served with him. That's all I can remember.

Ford and Edgar Buchanan had a long standing friendship from their first film together, Texas back in 1941. It was only fitting that Ford find a place for Buchanan who had recently left the canceled Petticoat Junction when CBS went on an anti-rural kick. Ford and Buchanan were in about a dozen films together.

Cade's County should have been given a much better chance to succeed from CBS.

Cades County had a great opening sequence with Glenn Ford riding his Jeep V6 through the desert landscape to the arrangement by Henry Mancini. It was a Big Picture title sequence for Television. I enjoyed this series and some of the episode's were well written and addressed some of the more difficult American issues of the time. Unfortunately, the budget,screen writing & direction was not of a consistently high standard (I am a fan of the Series). Some episodes were great, others very ordinary. I heard at the time that the network was selecting scripts from independent writers for each episode. If that was the case, a better idea would have been to stick with one set of writers so as to develop the characters and the story lines and retain an audience. We should recall that the early seventies was a time when older Movie stars were attracted to TV. Ford did an admirable job as Sam Cade as he did in all his movie roles. But in the end I believe it was the budget and the poor scripts that killed the series. Glenn Ford travelled to Australia to promote the Series in 1971/72 for the Australian TV Logie awards.

Regards Peter H Sydney, Austraila

This series has a strong cast & good production. What happened that it ran so short a time? CBS was a big piece of the problem. This series was on the network which had given itself a black eye with the over hyped western dud Lancer. After such a terrible entry, folks ignored this entry because they were afraid it would be just as bad.

Then, CBS put it on late Sunday evenings. This time slot back in the three network days was a kiss of death for almost any program. As a matter of fact, Johnny Carson's quip concerning this show in a monologue on The Tonight Show then: "According to the latest Nielson ratings it dismayed CBS to find out that more than 90 percent of households tuned to Cades County on Sunday nights are using the program as a night light." Carsons pot shot at the show is a little cruel, but the program was canceled in one season.

Cade's County was a pretty neat show and should have lasted 5 years on the TV of the early 70's, but, that was back in the big 3 network days when there was no cable for another few years yet, and a show had to have a huge audience and not huge competition (like the Ed Sullivan Show). The theme song and opening credits were really sweet for a TV show - Henry Mancini's best song of all time is definitely the "Theme from Cade's County" and watching Glen Ford jump through the air in the Jeep was pretty slick. The show was filmed in the super high-quality style of Universal Studios or a 20th Century Fox movie - better quality than nearly every TV show on the air today - in my opinion, and was quite impressive. Scripts were pretty good too. Can I suggest we have TV Land or the like, have a marathon running these 'lost' TV shows of the early to mid 70's like Cade's County? Great show, and like I said, the song "Theme from Cade's County" is by far the best toe-tappin' song ever from Henry Mancini. Just like "WKRP in Cincinnati", CBS gave a great show a crummy timeslot and killed it way ahead of its time.

I find it astounding that "Cade's County" was on the air for only one season. (When re-run I believe it was called "Sheriff of Madrid", Madrid being the county seat of Cade's county.) Although it was never specified in which state the county existed, everything pointed to Arizona or New Mexico. Ford provided a mature, compassionate hero who was correctly unbending on matters of right and wrong but willing to help people: the ideal lawman. Edgar Buchanan, an actor whom I personally found irritating in most roles, was a fine foil for Ford. As Ford was in his forties there was no hint of Buchana as old mentor so the dynamics were a bit unusual, as though Marshall Dillon's deputy Chester had been twenty years Dillon's senior. Ford's Jeep ripping through the desert landscape was a treat. In one standout episode Bobby Darrin demonstrated acting powers even beyond what he demonstrated in the motion picture "Captian Newman, M.D." The theme song was and is superb.