MovieChat Forums > Laramie (1959) Discussion > Body count in The Company Man

Body count in The Company Man

posted 10 years ago by ben-thayer
11 replies | jump to latest

This episode was brutal. 10 men get killed...with at least five by Jack Slade (John Dehner) himself (and possibly one more during the final shootout, I couldn't quite tell).

I won't deny I'm a bit confused by some of this episode. Why would the stage line hire a superintendent that just goes out and executes people regularly with no trial? Isn't taking the law into your own hands a crime? In Gunsmoke it is. I've seen it said a hundred times...Dillon tells men that about to hang someone that they'll be brought up on murder charges if they proceed.

But the first time we see Slade he's got some guy strung up for hanging, and he just rides off and leaves the body swinging, no burial here.

Then he comes to Sherman Ranch and nearly shoots it out with everyone there (multiple times).

Then he threatens to kill Samuel Clemens for disagreeing with Grandma Walton about Jonesy's coffee, while seated at the dinner table. This one is particularly questionable...wouldn't the stage line take issue with passengers being executed? Especially one as famous as Sam Clemens?

Then he takes down 4 of the bad guys with 4 quick rifle shots, when Slim and Jess say they could've easily taken all four with no shooting.

I've seen John Dehner play some really nasty, demented characters, but this one is full-on *psycho*.

[–] Bilwick1 10 years ago

I've been watching episodes on GritTV ("Television with Backbone!") and I was surprised how high the body count was in general.

[–] ben-thayer 10 years ago

I'm still trying to understand why a stage line would have a superintendent on the payroll that just goes around executing people...28 men, if Clemens' statement was correct. And this likely doesn't count the one guy Slade hanged at the beginning, nor the 4 others he shot later in the episode. So he's up to 33 (or possibly 34) by episode's end.

Slade seems to be in the habit of killing anyone who looks at him wrong. I mean, threatening to kill Sam Clemens over disagreeing with Grandma Walton...? And no one says anything about the stage line *possibly* taking issue with its passengers being executed over a difference of opinion on coffee flavors!

Oh, and one other thing. This show has shown a good number of shootouts, and there are a *lot* of missed shots. Slim and Jess seem to regularly get shot at unsuccessfully. Not a lot of great marksmen with the bad guys around Laramie I guess.

But when Slim, Jess and Slade confront the guys guarding the rustled herd, Slade caps off 4 rounds from his rifle in quick succession and each shot is not only a hit but a deadly hit.

[–] Bilwick1 10 years ago

I'm figuring the Slade in Laramie was based on real life gunman Jack Slade, who I believe did work for Overland and was quite homicidal. The real Slade operated and was killed in the Civil War era, whereas Laramie is set in the post-Civil War West.

[–] ben-thayer 10 years ago

Well I'll be...just looked him up on Wiki.

As superintendent, he enforced order and assured reliable cross-continental mail service, maintaining contact between Washington, D.C., and California

OK, so I guess that explains things.

Interesting that his reputation was a result of none other than Mark Twain...!

Slade's exploits spawned numerous legends, many of them false. His image (especially via Mark Twain in Roughing It) as the vicious killer of up to 26 victims was greatly exaggerated

I found one link that describes Slade in a manner much more similar to the Laramie character:

http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/061994.html

[–] Bilwick1 10 years ago

Just saw the Slade episode today. You're right: the body count was pretty high for an early Sixties "family" type western. I liked the fact that Salde (John Dehner) was such a complex character--repellent in that first scene with him lynching a guy, more subtly shaded later on. The real Slade came to a less dignified end.

[–] MisterFranks 9 years ago

John Dehner was an awful actor, and when he played the bad guys, he was probably at his best. Jack Slade was supposed to be brutal, and what we see in Laramie, is John Dehner's interpretation, as a bad actor.

Overall, the episode was very heavy-handed, but then Fuller and Sherman are over the top in their remarks against Slade. Horse stealing was always a hanging offense. Shooting horse thieves who were well armed was not such a major injustice.

One thing I do not like about Laramie is that Hoagy Carmichael always seems exhausted and is constantly complaining. The kid (Mark McCain's brother) is very whiny and annoying. Fuller is a nasty guy who is always threatening to leave and has a giant chip on his shoulder. Sherman seems to be some kind of low-self-esteem guy who is always enabling the three jerks that live with him.

I have been watching season 1, and I notice that the kid and Carmichael are gone after season 1, so that should make the show better.

[–] Bilwick1 9 years ago

I've always enjoyed Dehner's performances in whatever I've seen him in, Mister Franks. Of course, your mileage may vary, no accounting for taste, that's what makes horse races, etc., etc. Also Dehner wasn't playing the historical Slade, who was eventually hanged by Vigilantes, but the LARAMIE writers version of Slade.

"Horse stealing was always a hanging offense." You base that statement on what? It's true that ranchers who had been victimized by horse thieves might, out in the hinterland and catching a horse thief in the act, administer rough justice at the end of the rope, but I don't think that legally it was ever a hanging offense. And LARAMIE seems to take place not in the raw West before courts and lawmen were set up, but at a time when the West was getting civilized. (Note the abundance of sheriffs, etc., in most of the episodes.) You're saying that this fictional version of Slade was RIGHT in lynching whoever he felt like lynching, and that Slim and Jess were WRONG in opposing him? Weird.

[–] MisterFranks 9 years ago

Slim and Jess were WRONG in opposing him?

I am saying that Slim and Jess are as close to a homosexual couple as I have ever seen in an old-time Western (never seen Brokeback Mountain).

They just flamed out when Slade shot the rustlers, who were in fact all armed and had orders to shoot to kill.

It seemed like much ado about nothing.

[–] MisterFranks 9 years ago

Far from being a comprehensive history, this is what Wiki says:

"In the United States, the Anti Horse Thief Association, first organized in 1854 in Clark County, Missouri, was an organization developed for the purposes of protecting property, especially horses and other livestock, from theft, and recovering such property if and when it was stolen. Originally conceived by farmers living in the area where Missouri, Illinois and Indiana intersect, it soon spread, with the first charter organization in Oklahoma Territory being created in 1894. By 1916 the associated numbered over 40,000 members in nine central and western US states, and a drop in horse thefts had been noted.

Between 1899 and 1909, members of the Oklahoma branch of the AHTA recovered $83,000 worth of livestock and saw the conviction of over 250 thieves.[8] A similar group, which operated mainly in Ohio, was the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society. Men suspected of being thieves would be pursued by members of the organization, and often hanged without trial.[9] The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves was a third such organization that operated in the United States, this one in Dedham, Massachusetts. It is today "the oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States, and one of Dedham’s most venerable social organizations."

[–] Bilwick1 9 years ago

Yes, I know about the Anti-Horse Thief Association. I have been studying frontier history seriously for about forty years. As I wrote previously, hanging horse thieves seems to have been practiced by private citizens. I don't think horse theft was ever legally a capital offense punishable by death. And even if it were, that wouldn't justify a private citizen (such as Slade) bypassing a trial and executing the sentence himself.

[–] liscarkat (19447) 4 years ago

The weekly body count on "The Rifleman" was even higher, and it only ran twenty-four minutes. Somebody has put together a YouTube video of all of Lucas McCain's kills.

https://shoeuntied.wordpress.com/2017/04/01/so-how-many-people-did-the-rifleman-actually-kill/