Tenderfoot

When the television series Sugarfoot was winding down its four year run I remember that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance had a way too old James Stewart playing a young attorney who came out west to seek fame and fortune as per Horace Greeley. Will Hutchins as Tom Brewster was more the age of the character that Stewart did.

And Brewster came to us once a month sharing viewing time with Cheyenne, Bronco, and Maverick. You have to remember that the stars of all these TV westerns were aspirant film stars as well and Warner Brothers was going to get maximum use out of them. And of course James Garner from Maverick had the biggest success on the big screen.

Hutchins was a nice peaceable sort of young man in the Wild Bill Elliott tradition. He may have started a greenhorn in the west, a Sugarfoot so to speak, but he learned to handle a Colt .45 with reasonable skill as I recall.

Sugarfoot came at the height of TV westerns, we'll never see these kinds of shows again, I fear.