A Man Called Shenandoah
A man with no past searches the West for his identity.
A Man Called Shenandoah is an American Western television series that aired on ABC-TV from September 13, 1965, to May 16, 1966, with reruns continuing until September 5, 1966. Produced by MGM Television, the series starred Robert Horton, who had previously co-starred on Wagon Train and initially vowed never to do another television western. The show is notable for its amnesiac protagonist, a man searching for his identity after being shot and left for dead.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Western
- Writer
- Ed Adamson
- Robert C. Dennis
- Robert Hamner
- E. Jack Neuman
- Samuel A. Peeples
- Paul Savage
- Daniel B. Ullman
- Director
- David Alexander
- Murray Golden
- Tom Gries
- Harry Harris
- Nathan H. Juran
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Don McDougall
- Jud Taylor
- Starring
- Robert Horton
- Opening theme
- "Oh Shenandoah"
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Seasons
- 1
Facts from the source article.
Did You Know?
- When reruns aired on Turner Network Television in the 1990s, only 29 of the 34 episodes were rebroadcast.
- Since 2017, the series has aired in the United States on the GetTV network as part of their Western-themed programming block.
- A Blu-ray presentation made from new 4K resolution scans of the original negatives was released by Warner Archive Collection on November 2, 2024.
Overview
Robert Horton stars as a man who is shot and abandoned to die. In the first episode, two buffalo hunters discover him on the prairie. They suspect he might be a wanted criminal, so they haul him to the nearest town, hoping to collect a reward. When he wakes up, he has no memory of his past or why someone tried to kill him.
The doctor who patches him up dubs him "Shenandoah," saying the name means "land of silence." For the rest of the series, Shenandoah travels across the West, hunting for clues about his former life. He finds out he was a Union officer in the Civil War and starts to think he was married. The series wraps up with "Macauley's Cure," where Mrs. Macauley tells him, "It's not always important who you are; it's always important what you are."
The show featured a long list of guest actors, including John Anderson, Robert Anderson, Claude Akins, Ed Asner, Elisha Cook Jr., Jeanne Cooper, Richard H. Cutting, John Dehner, Bruce Dern, Elinor Donahue, Leif Erickson, Beverly Garland, Sally Kellerman, DeForest Kelley, George Kennedy, Martin Landau, Cloris Leachman, John McIntire, Martin Milner, Leonard Nimoy, Jeanette Nolan, Warren Oates, Susan Oliver, Joyce Van Patten, James Doohan, and Michael Witney.
Theme song
The theme song was a version of the folk tune "Oh Shenandoah" with new lyrics by Robert Horton, who sang it. Horton had a musical theater background. His recording was released as a Columbia single in 1965 and also appeared on his album The Man Called Shenandoah (Cs-9208, stereo; Cl-2408, mono). The series was a hit on Rhodesian Television in central Africa. A local musician, Nick Taylor, reworked the song, and it climbed to Number 3 on the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation hit parade.
More in American Broadcasting Company Western Dramas
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced