The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters is a 26-episode western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 television series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...

 novel

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Robert Lewis Taylor, which was later made into a short-running television series on ABC from September 1963 through March 1964, featuring Kurt Russell as Jaimie....

 of the same name by Robert Lewis Taylor

Robert Lewis Taylor

Robert Lewis Taylor was an American author and winner of the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Taylor was born in Carbondale, Illinois and attended Southern Illinois University, which now houses his papers, for one year. He graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor...

. The show aired in the 1963-1964 television season and was produced by MGM Television.

The television series

The ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 program was considered a good western aimed at young baby boomer

Baby boomer

A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...

s, especially boys. It is remembered for its haunting theme music and for breakthrough performances from the then 12-year-old Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell

Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...

 in the role of Jaimie and Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...

 in the role of Linc, a stubborn wagonmaster. Although it started out with an ensemble cast

Ensemble cast

An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...

, which included Dan O'Herlihy

Dan O'Herlihy

Daniel O'Herlihy was an Oscar nominated Irish film actor.-Early life:O'Herlihy was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age...

 in the role of Jaimie's father, Sardius "Doc" McPheeters, by the end of the run it largely reduced to just the characters of Jaimie and Linc on a recurring basis. The character actress Donna Anderson

Donna Anderson

Donna Anderson is an American actress, who had a film career as a character actress during the 1960s and 1970s. She appeared on television in the series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters and Little House on the Prairie and many more.-Early life:Anderson was born Donna Knaflich in Gunnison,...

 played Jenny, the young pioneer woman who befriends Jaimie during the perilous journey west.

For several episodes, The Osmonds

The Osmonds

The Osmonds are an American family music group with a long and varied career—a career that took them from singing barbershop music as children, to achieving success as teen-music idols, to producing a hit television show, and to continued success as solo and group performers...

 were cast as the singing sons of the Kissel family.

The program faced stiff competition on CBS at 7:30 Eastern on Sundays from My Favorite Martian

My Favorite Martian

My Favorite Martian is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 29, 1963 to May 1, 1966 for 107 episodes...

, a sitcom with Ray Walston

Ray Walston

Ray Walston was an American stage, television and film actor best known as the title character on the 1960s situation comedy My Favorite Martian. In addition, he is also remembered for his roles as Luther Billis in South Pacific , Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees , J.J...

 and Bill Bixby

Bill Bixby

Wilfred Bailey Everett “Bill” Bixby III was an American film and television actor, director, and frequent game show panelist.His career spanned over three decades; he appeared on stage, in motion pictures and TV series...

, and the first half of The Ed Sullivan Show

The Ed Sullivan Show

The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....

. NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 aired Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in the same time slot.

Film

After the series was canceled, Kurt Russell and the late Charles Bronson reprised their roles of Jaimie McPheeters and Linc Murdock in the 1964 theatrical movie called Guns of Diablo

Guns of Diablo

Guns of Diablo is a Metrocolor 1965 Western directed by Boris Sagal, starring Charles Bronson, Susan Oliver and Kurt Russell. Charles Bronson is a wagon scout , who runs into difficulties when he meets old flame Maria , now married to corrupt lawman Rance Macklin .This was actually an expanded...

, an expanded color version of the series' final episode, "The Day of the Reckoning" (March 15, 1964). Russ Conway

Russ Conway

Russ Conway was a British popular music pianist. Conway had 20 piano instrumentals in the UK Singles Chart between 1957 and 1963, including two number one hits.-Career:...

 appeared in the film as "Doc" McPheeters, replacing Dan O'Herlihy

Dan O'Herlihy

Daniel O'Herlihy was an Oscar nominated Irish film actor.-Early life:O'Herlihy was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age...

in new sequences.