Laredo (TV series)

Laredo
Title card
Genre	Western
Starring	Neville Brand William Smith Peter Brown Philip Carey
Theme music composer	Russell Garcia
Composer	Stanley Wilson
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	56
Production
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	60 minutes
Production company	Universal Television
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	September 16, 1965 (1965-09-16) – April 7, 1967 (1967-04-07)
Related
The Virginian

Laredo is an American Western television series that aired on NBC from 1965–67, starring Neville Brand, William Smith, Peter Brown, and Philip Carey as Texas Rangers. It is set on the Mexican border around Laredo in Webb County in South Texas. The program presented 56 episodes in color. It was produced by Universal Television. The series has a comedic element, but like another NBC series that premiered in 1965, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, it was an hour in length, had no laugh track, and characters were not infrequently killed in it, thus going against three unofficial rules for sitcoms at the time.

The pilot episode of Laredo aired in 1965 on NBC's The Virginian under the title "We've Lost a Train". In 1969, the pilot was released theatrically under the title Backtrack. Three episodes from the series were edited into the 1968 feature film Three Guns for Texas.^[1]

The series were about three members of the Texas Rangers and their commander Captain Parmalee, who didn't approve of the Rangers jokes and pranks. The time period was after the Civil War.^[2]

Reese Bennett was a former Union Army office in his forties when he joined the Texas Rangers. Joe Riley was an ex-gunfighter when he joined for both adventure and sanctuary from lawmen outside of Texas. Chad Cooper was from Boston, and had been a member of the Border Patrol during the Civil War. At the beginning of the second season Erik Hunter became a new Ranger.^[2]

Peter Brown, who played Chad Cooper, recalled that the producers of the show wanted the three stars to have the same relationship and camaraderie as did the stars of Gunga Din, and had Brand, Brown, and Smith watch the film three times.^[3]

• Neville Brand as Reese Bennett
• Peter Brown as Chad Cooper
• William Smith as Joe Riley
• Philip Carey as Captain Edward Parmalee
• Robert Wolders as Erik Hunter (26 episodes, 1966-1967)
• Claude Akins as Cotton Buckmeister (5 episodes, 1966-1967)

In "The Golden Trail", Jeanette Nolan is cast as Ma Burns, who investigates the progress of a gold shipment that Reese Bennett is supposedly transporting from St. Louis to Laredo. Jim Davis appears in this episode as a sheriff.^[4] Nolan also appeared as Martha Tuforth in "It's the End of the Road, Stanley" (1966) and as Vita Rose in "Like One of the Family" (1967).

Lane Bradford was cast five times in different roles, as Three-finger Jake in "Rendezvous at Arillo" and as Amos Slaughter in "Which Way Did They Go?" (both 1965), as Ben Slick in "The Treasure of San Diablo" and as Charley Smith in "Road to San Remo" (both 1966), and as Lyle in "Walk Softly" (1967).

Timeless Media Group released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 on November 24, 2009. The 12-disc boxed set features all 56 episodes of the series, as well as bonus features.^[5]

Gold Key Comics published a single issue comic book tie-in in 1966.^[6]

• Laredo at IMDb