Branded (TV series)

Did You Know?

• Major League Baseball player Ron Perranoski appeared in a 1965 episode while a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• Chuck Connors had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949.
• Timeless Media Group released Branded: The Complete Series on DVD in 2010, but syndication cuts removed three minutes from each episode.

Opening

Each episode opens with McCord's cashiering: his rank patches are stripped and his Light Cavalry Saber is broken in two. He keeps the handle with its pommel and sharpens the remaining blade into a long knife. He is sent out of the fort and the gates close behind him. The exact date and location of the fort are never given, but events place the series during Ulysses S. Grant's first administration, after the Alaska Purchase.

Pilot

In the pilot, "The Vindicator", a newspaper reporter (Claude Akins) presses McCord for a story on the Bitter Creek massacre. McCord refuses to speak. At Bitter Creek, McCord's unit of 31 men was attacked by Dog Soldiers while on a peace mission with General James Reed. McCord realized the general had lost his senses, assumed command, but was wounded and left for dead—the only survivor. After a ten-day coma, he was court-martialed for desertion and drummed out. The reporter finds a widow (June Lockhart) whose husband wrote letters questioning Reed's mental state; those letters could exonerate McCord. McCord convinces her to burn them to protect Reed's reputation, fearing a new war with the Apaches. He never reveals what truly happened.

Production

Larry Cohen pitched the series to NBC and it was accepted without a pilot episode. It aired between Walt Disney Presents and Bonanza, competing with The FBI on ABC and The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions co-produced with Sentinel Productions; Andrew J. Fenady served as producer and later executive producer. Cohen conceived the show as an allegorical critique of Hollywood blacklisting and McCarthyism, calling the hero a "blacklisted cowboy". Midway through the first season, Cohen explained this subtext to Chuck Connors, a staunch Republican; their relationship soured, and by season's end Connors had Cohen removed from creative control. The first season had 13 black-and-white episodes; the three-part "The Mission" was in color. The second season's 32 episodes were all in color. Parts were filmed at the Kanab movie fort and Kanab Canyon in Utah. Current distribution rights are held by CBS Television Distribution.

Impact on popular culture

Branded is referenced in the Coen Brothers' 1998 film The Big Lebowski. The character Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) shows uncharacteristic humility upon meeting Arthur Digby Sellers, who wrote 156 episodes of Branded and lives in an iron lung. Walter's reverence for the series shapes his behavior in the scene.