The Rifleman Cast Then and Now (2023)

The Rifleman is one of the most iconic Western series in history, which paved the way for other Western classics. Today, we're taking a look at The Rifleman cast then and now to see how they've changed through the years.

00:00 - Intro
0:19 - Bill Quinn as Frank Sweeney
1:24 - Harlan Warde as Banker John Hamilton
2:31 - Hope Summers as Hattie Denton
3:34 - John Harmon as Eddie Halstead
4:39 - Joan Taylor as Milly Scott
5:44 - Patricia Blair as Lou Mallory
6:49 - Paul Fix as Micah Torrance
7:55 - Chris Alcaide as Regular Baddie
9:00 - Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain
10:11 - Johnny Crawford as Mark McCain

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The Rifleman is an American Western television program starring Chuck Connors as rancher Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the fictional town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in black and white, in half-hour episodes. The Rifleman aired on ABC from September 30, 1958, to April 8, 1963, as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first primetime series on US television to show a single parent raising a child.

The program was titled to reflect McCain's use of a Winchester Model 1892 rifle, customized to allow repeated firing by cycling its lever action (an anachronism, because the model was not manufactured until after the period of the show's setting). He demonstrated this technique in the opening credits of every episode, as well as a second modification that allowed him to cycle the action with one hand using a technique known as "spin-cocking".

The series centers on Lucas McCain, a Union Civil War veteran and widower. McCain had been a lieutenant in the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and he had received a battlefield commission at the Battle of Five Forks just before the end of the war. (This conflicts with episode 3/25, "The Prisoner", in which a former Confederate cavalry major states that he was Lieutenant McCain's prisoner after the Battle of Fort Donelson.) Having previously been a homesteader, McCain buys a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory, in the pilot episode. His son Mark and he had come from Enid, Oklahoma, following the death of his wife, Margaret (nee Gibbs), when his son was six years old.

The series was set during the 1880s; a wooden plaque next to the McCain home states that the home was rebuilt by Lucas McCain and his son Mark in August 1881.

A common thread in the series is that people deserve a second chance; Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and McCain gives a convict a job on his ranch in "The Marshal". Royal Dano appeared in "The Sheridan Story" as a former Confederate soldier who is given a job on the McCain ranch and encounters General Philip Sheridan, the man who cost him his arm in battle. Learning why the man wants him dead, Sheridan arranges for medical care for his wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln's last orders to "... bind up the nation's wounds".

Despite his status as the series' protagonist, Lucas McCain is not without fault; he has his flaws. Throughout the series, he is extremely protective of his son to the point of being over-protective at times. He also has a tendency to be stubborn and bossy, and has a bit of an inflated ego. In "Death Trap", an episode with Philip Carey as former gunman (and old adversary) Simon Battles, he is unwilling to believe the man has changed and become a doctor. It takes a gunfight (with Battles fighting alongside him) to make him admit he is wrong. In "Two Ounces Of Tin", with Sammy Davis Jr. as Tip Corey (a former circus trick-shot artist turned gunman), McCain angrily orders him off the ranch when he finds him demonstrating his skills to Mark. Corey suggests he is a hypocrite, because McCain has an equally deadly reputation in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, where he first acquired the nickname "the Rifleman", and where his wife had died during a smallpox epidemic.
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