Customer Reviews

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: Season 1

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have just received The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp ( The Complete Season One)from Amazon,which,of course, I was absolutely delighted about.
However on checking the discs I discovered that, although this was supposed to be Season One, the episode Wichita is Civilized is from Season Two. There is also the matter of the transmission dates which are not in chronological order. Hopefully for Season Two and beyond, Infinity Entertainment and Falcon will rectify these glaring errors.

I watched the TV show Wyatt Earp with Hugh O'Brian in the late 1950s when I was a kid and loved it then. Watching episodes from Season 1 (1955-1956) again, I am enjoying them as much as I did more than 50 years ago. They stand the test of time. The quality is very good and shipment was prompt. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys TV westerns from the 1950s and 1960s or anyone who enjoys westerns of any kind.

Roger L. Omanson

Great show, got me singing the Wyatt Earp theme song just like it did when I was a kid. Looking at the show with older eyes now tho I'm really impressed with how strong Hugh O'Brian's performance is. Being more interested in the credits now I became interested in finding something out about Frederick Hazlitt Brennan who seems to have been the show's main writer. I thought it was neat that he was a fellow St. Louisian but was saddened to find out he killed himself. His, Hugh O'Brian's and everybody else's work stands up and speaks well for them and made the first "adult western" a good one.

hi folks,

As a consumer who is often frustrated by bad public domain prints of classic western television (even though they are often touted as Digitally remastered etc etc) I'm just here to say that these prints are stunning and look to be off the original FILM prints. I'll let others discuss running order and credit sequences and I bow to their knowledge on that regarding this series...I'm just delighted to view this classic in the stunning rich blacks and crisp whites of classic film as it was shot.

The Falcon Picture Group of Illinois is to be thanked for producing such a fine DVD transfer of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. The technical quality is outstanding, and the disks are one sided which some "big" studios should do with their old shows.

Wyatt Earp has always been a favorite of mine. My grandfather whistled the Ken Darby Singers' title song as I was growing up.

What I remembered the most was that Wyatt Earp didn't smoke and drank milk. My grandmother would tell us children-"Drink your milk. Wyatt Earp does." What was strange to us kids was that our grandmother drank buttermilk!

The fifties and early sixties were scary times for us children. On our black and white screens we had a window to the world, especially the world of the western heroes.

Some of the best episodes of season one are the ones with Bat Materson and Ben Thompson. The Buntline Special and the Big Baby Contest are especially humorous with some serious moments.

If you want a family oriented series, then Wyatt Earp is a good one. Make no mistake, Wyatt Earp was no saint in this series. His temper got the best of him at times. The Englishman episode shows this side of Wyatt the best.

There is violence. It was a violent time in American history.

Deacon Earp was a role model. Desilu Studios oversaw a number of great series in the 50's and 60's with heroes and wholesome family values which was not political talk back in those days. It was a reality of innocence which Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz brought to the living rooms of America.

Supposedly based on the actual life of the famous lawman and figure from the West, The Life And Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Complete First Season (1955-56), isn't an action oriented, shoot `em up type western. Handsome Hugh O'Brien is great in the role, and although he occasionally gets a chance to demonstrate Wyatt Earp's legendary speed at drawing a gun, the instances where he actually shoots his pistol, are generally few and far between. As a lawman, Earp does his best to uphold the law without resorting to violence, being well aware that his reputation for being extremely fast on the draw, serves to deter most from openly challenging him. The program may be more of a thinking man's Western, as Wyatt Earp typically uses reason, psychology, and his knowledge of human nature to try and deal with potentially explosive situations, rather than a gun. The series was apparently quite well received, as it ran for six seasons and produced a whopping 225 episodes. The first season contains 35 episodes on 5 discs.

Hugh O'Brien plays Earp as a classy gentleman, who can get very tough when necessary. He's extremely likeable, though perhaps too good to be true, as he seems to have few faults. He's almost always confident and in control, although his emotions do sometimes take over. How much truth there is in this characterization, and in the stories that are featured, is for expert historians to say. The real Wyatt Earp usually had a handlebar moustache, which O'Brien certainly does not have (and would probably look quite ridiculous if he did). Regularly featuring gambling, drinking, crooked schemes, crime, and murder, the program is not exactly ideal family fare, but the lack of violence and gunplay, is a change of pace from a program like The Rifleman, where you could pretty much count on Lucas McCain doing some damage with his rifle in nearly every episode. Those expecting a little more action may be slightly disappointed, but like most westerns, the program does attempt to provide some life lessons.

The first season finds Wyatt Earp reluctantly becoming a lawman in the town of Ellsworth, Kansas after the sheriff is gunned down. It's not long before he is hired to become the Marshall in Wichita, Kansas. After bringing some order to the town, Earp moves on to Dodge City, Kansas (the home of Gunsmoke's Matt Dillon) to become the Marshall there in 1876. Earp's first days in Dodge City are dramatized in the final episode of Season One.

This is the wild west, where lack of respect for the law and for any man wearing a badge, is extremely common. Either Earp's life or his job, seem to be constantly at stake. Earp has a temper, and is sometimes bullheaded. He often bumps heads with the local judge, threatening to quit, or putting his job on the line by doing things his way. Fortunately after a while, he gains the support of a loyal group of deputies to back him up, but things don't seem to go smoothly for very long. Earp never really establishes a close relationship with any of the other semi-regular characters, and as something of a loner, his moves from town to town occur with no big goodbyes.

Wyatt's friendship with Bat Masterson is featured in some early episodes, and then resurfaces much later in the episode "Bat Masterson Again". Bat believes he is in love, but is in danger of being gunned down by a man interested in the same woman. Wyatt provides some very insightful training in the fine art of shooting, that later saves Masterson's life. In "The Pinkertons", Earp has an encounter with the famous detective Allen Pinkerton, who is portrayed as arrogant and accustomed to throwing his weight around. However in this story, Wyatt saves Pinkerton's life. Another notable episode is the season finale, which features Earp's arrival in Dodge City, where numerous troublemakers are already gunning for the new Marshall. The town is so violent, that Earp ends up shooting almost as many men in one day, than in his entire time in Wichita. Surviving in Dodge, will be no easy matter for Wyatt Earp.

Image quality for the episodes in Season One is quite good for a program some 55 years old. For whatever reasons, subsequent seasons of the program have not been released. That's unfortunate, as with Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, the level of action is sure to increase, and he would later establish solid relationships with Bat Masterson, and Doc Holiday.

I absolutely love westerns from the 50's, this was no exception. My only disappointment is wanting all the episodes right now! I do hope they will get it out quickly.

It's a pleasure to be able to look back on shows that entertained us and helped us grow up during the 50's and 60's. The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was one of those shows the acting was terrific and Hugh O'Brien did a great job in the lead role. The DVD's look good and it's well worth the money. Have fun reliving those days of yes 'ter year

This was the first adult TV western series, aired before Gunsmoke. The episodes are very good. The problem is the DVD production. Many episodes are out of order, so to watch the seies in the order it was originally aired, you must jump from one disc to another and back. Yes, there are two episodes from season two on the last disc, but they are before the final couple of season one episodes. Finally, the show opening credits are from a much later season, after Earp moved to Tombstone (which would make the credits shown from season five or six), not the Ellsworth and Witchita episodes. Seasons two, three and four are set in Dodge City... will the opening still be from Tombstone? These minor details makes this a flawed DVD set. I hope the future seasons have the correct show opening credits and the episodes are in the order they originally aired.

The problem is not with the content but with the manufacture of the discs. I love the Wyatt Earp TV series. I used to watch it on TV, as a kid. I was really disappointed, though, when I plugged in the first disc. My DVD player, a high end LG model, begain to vibrate excessively and make a loud chattering noise as the player tried to track the information on the disc. Although I got a picture, the heavy vibration and loud noise caused me to eject the disc after less than 1 minute, for fear that it would cause my player to come apart. Thinking that maybe I had gotten just 1 bad disc, I tried the other 4, one at a time. THEY ALL CAUSED THE SAME PROBLEM. I tries a few of my other DVDs just to make sure that thr problem wasn't in the player. It wasn't. I have watched sevral other DVDs on the same player and they all run quiet and smooth. This was definitely defective manufacturing. Too bad! I returned the set to Amazon for a refund because I was afraid that a replacement might have the same problem. Since all of the other reviews are all 5's, I can only assume that those reviewers received an earlier press than what I got. BE CAREFUL HERE !