Fury

This was one really great kid's show that was broadcast on Saturday morning during the late sixties before it ended its run. I remember it later was in syndication under the title of Brave Stallion. I've not seen it since it went off the air.

My guess is because the episodes were done in black and white the syndication market for the show has dried up. That's a pity because if all it takes is color, where's Ted Turner and his crayons?

I still remember the premise of the show. Jim Newton as played by Peter Graves lost his wife and son in a car crash. One day while in the big city he spots a young orphan kid named Joey Clark in some trouble. He goes to bat for him and pretty soon young Joey who was played by Bobby Diamond is living on the Broken Wheel Ranch along with Graves and his hired hand Pete Wilkie who was William Fawcett who was in the Gabby Hayes tradition of cowboy sidekicks. We're informed he cut his teeth on a branding iron.

Diamond was a rebellious kid that first season, the show was all about straightening him out. But he adjusted pretty quickly as television series go. Of course part of it was the presence of Fury, a beautiful coal black stallion who only let Joey ride him. Rather than try and break him, Graves and Fawcett went with the flow.

Some other semi-regulars came and went. The first couple of years Graves had a love interest in schoolteacher Ann Robinson. There was Ralph Seay as the sheriff who always popped in at the end of the show to take bad guys into custody after Fury had nearly stomped them to death. Diamond had Jimmy Baird as PeeWee as a friend.

From the rebellious kid, young Diamond became a role model. He was the good influence on other troubled youngsters. In fact at one point Graves officially adopted him and he was henceforth referred to as Joey Newton and the fact he was adopted was never brought up. Something like the fact you never heard about the respective spouses of Robert Reed and Florence Henderson in The Brady Bunch.

In the last couple of years a new family was brought in as neighbors as Diamond was getting older. It was the Lamberts and young Roger Mobley as Packy Lambert became Joey's friend. I think the producers had in mind to eventually have Fury belong to the Lamberts and continue the series. But it got canceled in 1960.

There certainly have been far worse and few better kid's shows than Fury. Ted Turner get out your crayons and let's get this one back on the air.