Ubiquitous
2024-12-04 18:15:20 UTC
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Permalinkcaptain, a millionaire and his wife, a showgirl, an intellectual, a farm
girl, and a buffoon who consistently foils their plans to return home. If you
answered Gilligan's Island, you're wrong but also right. What failed to be
mentioned is that the series takes place in the old West, but otherwise, the
series is, for all intents and purposes, Gilligan's Island. So sit right
back, and you'll hear a tale about Dusty's Trail, the Western-themed
reimagining of the S.S. Minnow's castaways and their comic adventures.
One would assume that the creator of Gilligan's Island would be up in arms
over another series copying the concept, and you would probably be right in
most cases, but not this one. Dusty's Trail was created by the same visionary
who introduced the world to the inept Gilligan and his long-suffering fellow
castaways: Sherwood Schwartz. Only instead of a "three-hour tour," with an
oddly large amount of packed clothing and other personal items stowed aboard
for such a sojourn (a topic for another time), Dusty's Trail focuses on a
group of seven whose wagon and stagecoach are separated from their wagon
train while en route to California. As they try in vain, week after week, to
find and rejoin the wagon train, they encounter scoundrels and bears, among
other things, not all that far removed from the robbers, headhunters, a
gorilla, and even Kurt Russell that the Minnow castaways encountered.
The ties to Gilligan's Island go even deeper than sharing the producer and
the concept, with each of the Minnow castaways mirrored almost exactly in
Dusty's Trail. Forrest Tucker's Mr. Callahan, the wagonmaster, is the
Skipper. Ivor Francis and Lynn Wood are Dusty's Trail's Howell's: Carson, a
wealthy banker, and Daphne Brookhaven. The Professor is a civil engineer
named Andy Boone, played by William Cort. Lulu McQueen (Jeannine Riley), a
showgirl, and Betsy McGuire (Lori Saunders), a school teacher, are the show's
step-ins for Ginger Grant and Mary Ann Summers, respectively. Schwartz even
brought Bob Denver, aka Gilligan, aboard as Dusty, the bumbling shotgun
lookout, trading in his bucket hat for a cowboy hat. And if that wasn't
enough, the Skipper... sorry, Mr. Callahan referred to Dusty as "little pal,"
as opposed to the Skipper's nickname for Gilligan, "little buddy."
The series premiered in September 1973 in syndication, six years after
Gilligan's Island and immediately following the cancellation of Schwartz's
other iconic series, The Brady Bunch. Dusty's Trail had a lot of promise;
Gilligan's Island proved popular, and Bob Denver brought that same charm and
ineptitude he had with Gilligan (Denver actually considered Dusty's Trail to
be his best work). Forrest Tucker was a seasoned television and film actor,
who had recently shown off his comedic chops as Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke in the
1965-1967 sitcom F Troop. Riley and Saunders were both previously in
Petticoat Junction, playing two of the three Bradley sisters (though, not at
the same time Riley played Billie Jo for the first two seasons, Saunders
played Bobbie Jo in the last five), so their roles in Dusty's Trail were not
all that far removed. And while the theme song wasn't "The Ballad of
Gilligan's Island" strong, it did manage to sum up the premise fairly well,
with lines like, "Dusty's the reason for their plight, thanks to Dusty,
nothing's right."
Dusty's Trail didn't fare all that badly, at least as far as first-run
syndicated series are concerned, but it would be cancelled after 26 episodes.
No official reason was ever given, although Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh,
television researchers, did believe that it was so obvious it was a rewrite
of Gilligan's Island that it brought nothing new, and cited it as a
"derivative flop." An attempt to keep the series alive, by combining four
episodes of Dusty's Trail ("Tomahawk Territory," "Horse of Another Color,"
"There Is Nothing Like a Dame," and "The Not So Magnificent Seven") into a
feature film called The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West (per the previously
cited "Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979: A Complete Guide"), didn't succeed,
and they had hit the end of the Trail. Schwartz would go on to keep
Gilligan's Island alive through a series of made-for-TV movies and Saturday
morning cartoons, and Denver's career played out in the Gilligan's Island
projects and cameos in other TV shows. Who knows, if Schwartz had tried
something, anything, different with the series, Dusty's Trail may have been
up there with his biggest properties, instead of being largely forgotten.
Dusty's Trail is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
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Not a joke! Don't jump!