Have Gun, Will Travel
Have Gun – Will Travel is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1963. It was rated number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings every year of its first four seasons. It was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version. The radio series debuted November 23, 1958. The television show is presently shown on the Encore-Western channel. Have Gun – Will Travel was created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow and produced by Frank Pierson, Don Ingalls, Robert Sparks, and Julian Claman. There were 225 episodes of the TV series, 24 written by Gene Roddenberry. Other contributors included Bruce Geller, Harry Julian Fink, Don Brinkley and Irving Wallace. Andrew McLaglen directed 101 episodes and 19 were directed by series star Richard Boone.
Episodes
New Mexico rancher Jesse Reade hires Paladin for $1,000 to bring back outlaw Dave Enderly, who has run off to Perdido, Mexico with Reade's daughter Na...
Manfred Holt breaks out of jail, killing two deputies. Is he on his way to kill the banker who testified against him, or to see his family for the la...
A sportsman sponsors a contest, betting that no one can elude his posse in the Mojave Desert. When Paladin shows up riding a camel, the man decides t...
At a stagecoach stop, Paladin sees a peaceful Cherokee rancher being beaten by white men who think his cattle are spreading a sickness. Paladin offer...
An accused murderer who fears that he will be lynched before he can be returned to Bender, Wyoming, for trial, hires Paladin to make sure he gets ther...
When a mail-order bride from Philadelphia gets off the stagecoach in the middle of nowhere, Paladin decides to stay with her to make sure that she is...
Paladin's new friend, stabbed by an assassin, makes a dying request to have his body taken back home to his hacienda in Mexico.
A hobo who was once a circus performer bets a gambler that he can walk across the saloon on a tightrope. When Paladin sees that the gambler intends t...
After winning a batch of old rifles in a poker game, Paladin finds himself involved in a range war.
A wealthy cattleman holds Paladin and two other men hostage. They will all die at dawn unless one of them admits to the murder of the rancher's wife.
A retired colonel sends Paladin to a Nevada mining town to find out what happened to a former saloon girl.
When Paladin finds a woman and her apparently typhoid-afflicted child abandoned by a wagonmaster, he enlists the aid of a female doctor from a nearby...
Paladin escorts an Englishman to his female cousin's ranch they have inherited in Montana, but finds that an embittered trader is plotting against the...
Accompanying a cavalry major on a mission to prevent a war by negotiating a treaty with an elusive Apache chief, Paladin must deal with soldiers who h...
On Christmas eve, an embittered rancher wants revenge on Pawnee Indians who he thinks kidnapped his son several years before.
An Armenian winemaker hires Paladin to find his runaway daughter and break up her ill-considered romance with a cowhand.
The promoter of a wild west show asks Paladin for help taming down a very wild and famous female sharpshooter and show her how to act like a lady.
A rancher having a dispute with his foster son hires Paladin to keep one of them from killing the other in a duel.
When his tailor is killed in an accident at a supposedly worthless gold mine, Paladin discovers that the man was murdered and his heirs are being swin...
A rancher blames Paladin when a practical joke goes awry and his wife is crippled in a riding accident.
Paladin protects a new landowner from Boston, who is having an escalating feud with an established cattle rancher.
A cowboy seeks help for his former girlfriend, a dancehall singer, who he says was forced into marriage and is now being held prisoner.
Paladin is hired to stop a vineyard from being ruined by seepage from an adjacent oil well.
Learning of his son's death, a rich man hires Paladin to locate the daughter-in-law he's never met, but Paladin finds two women both claiming to be he...
Hired to prevent the construction of a dam that would imperil a town's water supply, Paladin finds that he sympathizes more with the Irish engineer wh...
Paladin must contend with other gunfighters as he tries to settle a right-of-way dispute between two railroads in a Colorado town that will die if the...
Paladin defends a schoolmistress who's being theatened for teaching about war crimes that took place during the Civil War.
After having killed a bank robber, Paladin is accused of having taken the stolen money. He visits the dead man's widow and tries to make amends.
Trying to locate the thieves who stole a jade chess set, Paladin ends up in a small Montana town where he becomes involved in a romance with a landlad...
When Paladin goes to a mining town to promote a prizefight, his boxer is arrested and he ends up having to take the man's place in the ring -- against...
When Hey Boy's brother is killed for protesting the working conditions on a Chinese railroad gang in Utah, Paladin must get the boy out of jail and br...
Paladin comes to the aid of a young sheriff from the East whose attempts to keep law and order are particularly unsuitable for a cowboy town in Wyomin...
Lonely Leadhead Kane dies and leaves his half of a mine to an actress. Kane's partner wants to challenge the will. Someone wants to make sure Paladin...
Newlyweds with no place to stay end up in Paladin's suite. He learns that the groom's half-brothers are threatening to kill their father. Paladin goes...
Dr. Phyllis Thackeray diagnoses the cook at the Barton Ranch with smallpox. All the cowhands may be infected and need to be vaccinated. Dr. Thackeray...
When a blight kills all the crops except for one farmer's, Paladin must protect him from a greedy storekeeper who wants his farm and his hired gun who...
Paladin is hired to find James Becker. He trails him to Monterey and discovers he has been arrested and is sentenced to work in a silver mine. Paladin...
Paladin is hired to bring in the killer of the sheriff in a Nevada town. He brings him in but has some doubts about his guilt and decides to hang arou...
Paladin agrees to capture an outlaw in return for a statue belonging to the local mission.
Cast
Ratings & Reviews
7.3/10
43 votes
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TMDB Reviews
3 years ago
GUNMAN WHO PLAYS GOD Richard Boone stars as Palladin, the gunman with a card saying "Have Gun, Will Travel". In the days when this was made, he was seen as a forward thinking liberal gunman, even into the sixties and seventies, and especially today. It was like most TV series in that all the corrupt people were white males, and especially so in this one. A lot of people today don't realize this, but this was how nearly every Western was in the fifties, even on TV. The problem with Palladin was that he never minded his own business, even when he made it his business. He always wanted to play God. In the show, he's always right, but his philosophy led too much to the modern day "scapegoating".
2 years ago
Have Gun, Will Travel offers, in the character of Paladin, a protagonist who was atypical amongst the lineup of 1950's western drama heroes. He was the erudite gunslinger, the gentleman-bounty hunter, the fixer of situations gone bad and a constrained vigilante. Contrary to what has been written in another review, Paladin didn't seek to play "god"; however, his line of work may have required that he play any of the roles of judge, jury and executioner, depending on the situation. While not pretending to the status of "god," Paladin could quote with ease passages from the King James Bible or Shakespeare, prior to dispatching the villain at hand. It would also be impossible for Paladin to engage in extensive moralizing, as the show made no pretenses about Paladin's choice to be a gun-for-hire to support his lavish lifestyle and other predilections. Contrary to what has been written in another review, villains were not limited to "corrupt white men," and the series made no off-putting political statements of that ilk. Here, the reader should be reminded that 1950's westerns did feature villainous white men, as well as armed conflict with Indians, Mexican banditos and Comancheros. These were the bread and butter of TV western stories but were not political statements in themselves. Paladin was a considerable thinker, but this is not synonymous with "liberal," as has been claimed in another review.
Many shows from the bygone era of 1950's westerns have aged out of appeal. Have Gun, Will Travel hangs on to its viewing enjoyment, primarily through the complex character and commanding presence of Paladin (Richard Boone). All fictional shows require some suspension of disbelief to achieve immersion in the story; for 1950's westerns, this is less of a stretch than for the litany of modern series pertaining to witches, zombies, vampires and CSI-type police dramas. I highly recommend this series, which is on my "short list" of must-see 1950's western shows.
