The Rebel (American TV series)

The Rebel
Nick Adams as Johnny Yuma
Created by	Andrew J. Fenady Nick Adams
Starring	Nick Adams
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	76
Production
Production locations	Paramount Pictures Studios Hollywood, California
Running time	30 minutes
Production companies	Celestial Productions Fen-Ker-Ada Productions Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	October 4, 1959 (1959-10-04) – June 18, 1961 (1961-06-18)

The Rebel is a 76-episode

Synopsis

The series portrays the adventures of young

Olive Sturgess guest-starred twice on The Rebel, as Jeannie in "The Scavengers" (1959) and as Charity Brunner, a woman in search of her missing miner husband, in "The Pit" (1961). In the second episode, Sturgess's real-life six-month-old nephew, Leonard Sturgess, played the baby required in the script.^[2]

Guest stars

Episodes

Season one (1959–60)

Season two (1960–61)

Series highlights

The first episode, "Johnny Yuma", is set in early 1867. It shows Johnny Yuma returning to his hometown nearly two years after the end of the war. His father, Ned Yuma, the sheriff, had been killed by a gang who took control of the town. Dan Blocker plays the gang leader. Yuma gets his father's shotgun in this episode.

The third episode, entitled "Yellow Hair", has Yuma captured by the historical

Several place names mentioned throughout the episodes clearly place the action in post-Civil War Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Forts noted in episodes, such as Fort Griffin and Fort Concho, were actual frontier Texas outposts of the late 1860s and are now state historic sites. In a first-season episode, Yuma encounters rag-tag rebel CSA soldiers in the corrupt mining town of La Paz, Arizona. The actual town of La Paz was the seat of Yuma County between 1862 and 1870; it stood in the Confederate Arizona Territory, which existed briefly during the Civil War. Nothing remains of La Paz but crumbling foundations and a historical marker.

Singing the theme song over the titles each week, Johnny Cash also appears as a frustrated would-be rapist playing a banjo with mounting intensity as he excitedly peers through a window at his tied-up prey in the 13th episode, "The Death of Gray".

In "Vicious Circle", Yuma identifies the Confederate unit he served in as the 3rd Texas, but he does not indicate the branch of service. Other episodes show saddlebags stenciled with CSA and an old uniform jacket with yellow collar and cuffs, indicating his regiment was likely the 3rd Texas Cavalry.

Robert Blake guest stars as an extremely young gunslinger in the episode titled "He's Only a Boy".

The 25th episode, "Fair Game", gained attention at the end of 2015 because it appears to be a principal source for Quentin Tarantino's feature The Hateful Eight, including a female prisoner (Patricia Medina) and a few significant plot twists.

After the show's original run on ABC finished in June 1961, it was picked up by NBC and rerun as a summer replacement series from June to September 1962.

Cancellation

The Rebel was a ratings success for ABC, commanding a 35% share of the Sunday-evening audience in its time slot, and was actually scheduled to be renewed for a third season, as part of a new hour-long series entitled The Rebel and The Yank, which would have again starred Nick Adams as the Rebel, and future The Virginian star James Drury starring as "the Yank", a former Union soldier working as a doctor in the Southern United States. Despite the show's success, ABC decided to pass on the series due to two factors, first, its violence (at a time when the network was trying to withdraw from violent programming), and second, the network's new "counterprogramming" format, in which a different type of show was scheduled against the network competition in that time slot, such as a comedy or variety show against an action-adventure show. Thus, The Rebel was cancelled, The Rebel and The Yank project never came to fruition. The series was replaced by a new variety show, starring Steve Allen. This program was not a success, lasting less than four months.^[3]

Theme song

The show's theme song, "The Rebel" alias "The Ballad of Johnny Yuma", was composed by Richard Markowitz, with lyrics by Andrew J. Fenady. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.^[4] It was recorded by Johnny Cash, but it was not released as a single until April 1961, shortly before the show went off the air. Nick Adams recorded the theme, which was released on Mercury Records (#71607) by March 1960. During syndication, the theme song was replaced by the DeWolfe Music Library instrumental track "Dodge City No. 1" by Jack Trombey.

Popular culture

Two episodes of the sitcom

", Jerry retorts to Kramer that Johnny Yuma is a Rebel. The Rebel was also a 1966 Allan Sherman song from the album Allan Sherman Live!; and later, in 1994, it was applied to the compilation album My Son, the Greatest.

Merchandise

Board Game

At the time, a board game based on the show was released by Ideal^[5] in 1961.

Comic Book

At the time, Dell Comics (or Dell Publishing Co.) issued only four stories that were based on The Rebel^[6] in their Four Color Comics anthology series, Issue #1076 and Issue #1138, released in 1960 and Issue #1207 and Issue #1262, released in 1961.

Home Media

On August 18, 2015,

Timeless Media Group released The Rebel- The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.^[7]

The 11-disc set contained all 76 episodes of the series as well as bonus features.

References

1. ^ "The Rebel - Television Obscurities". 24 November 2009.
2. ^ Mike Fitzgerald. "Olive Sturgess". westernclippings.com. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
3. ^ http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v012/p0056-p0073.pdf ^{[bare URL PDF]}
4. ^ Western Writers of America (2010). "The Top 100 Western Songs". American Cowboy. Archived from the original on 19 October 2010.
5. ^ The Rebel | Board Game | BoardGameGeek
6. ^ The Rebel Info (Dell Publishing Co.) - ComicBookRealm.com
7. ^ "TVShowsOnDVD.com - Goodbye". www.tvshowsondvd.com. Archived from the original on May 10, 2015.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Rebel (TV series).

• The Rebel at
  IMDb
• Pilot for the unsold seriesThe Yank starring James Drury