I am reminded of Gunsmoke, and the other 1950's cowboy series, many of which were written, produced, funded by first generation Jewish men. "In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S. Paley, a fan of the Philip Marlowe radio series, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a hardcore Western series, about a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West". Robinson delegated this to his West Coast CBS vice president, Harry Ackerman, who had developed the Philip Marlowe series.[4]
Ackerman and his scriptwriters, Mort Fine and David Friedkin, created an audition script called "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye" based on one of their Michael Shayne radio scripts, "The Case of the Crooked Wheel", from mid-1948. " Wikipedia on Gunsmoke.
It is quite interesting that Jewish writers were central to crafting America's cowboy mythology and yet were also largely written out of the history of the country's colonial expansion. While present in what would become the US since 1654, they/we have remained internal aliens, simultaneously pivotal in constructing the nation's representations of itself and permanent outsiders. (Ok. I confess; George Soros paid me to say that.)
I am reminded of Gunsmoke, and the other 1950's cowboy series, many of which were written, produced, funded by first generation Jewish men. "In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S. Paley, a fan of the Philip Marlowe radio series, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a hardcore Western series, about a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West". Robinson delegated this to his West Coast CBS vice president, Harry Ackerman, who had developed the Philip Marlowe series.[4]
Ackerman and his scriptwriters, Mort Fine and David Friedkin, created an audition script called "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye" based on one of their Michael Shayne radio scripts, "The Case of the Crooked Wheel", from mid-1948. " Wikipedia on Gunsmoke.
It is quite interesting that Jewish writers were central to crafting America's cowboy mythology and yet were also largely written out of the history of the country's colonial expansion. While present in what would become the US since 1654, they/we have remained internal aliens, simultaneously pivotal in constructing the nation's representations of itself and permanent outsiders. (Ok. I confess; George Soros paid me to say that.)