Overview
The series centers on Lucas McCain, a widowed Union Civil War veteran (a lieutenant in the 19th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment) and a homesteader. McCain and his son Mark live on his ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory.
The pilot episode, "The Sharpshooter", was originally telecast on CBS as part of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater on March 7, 1958; it was repeated (in edited form) as the first episode of the series on ABC. Regulars on the program included Marshal Micah Torrance (R. G. Armstrong was the original marshal for two episodes, the first and the fourth), Sweeney the bartender (Bill Quinn), and a half-dozen other residents of North Fork (played by Hope Summers, Joan Taylor, Patricia Blair, John Harmon and Harlan Warde). Fifty-one episodes of the series were directed by Joseph H. Lewis (director of 1950's Gun Crazy and known for his film noir style). Ida Lupino directed one episode, "The Assault". Connors wrote several episodes. Robert Culp (of CBS's Trackdown) wrote one two-part episode, and Frank Gilroy wrote "End of a Young Gun".
The February 17, 1959 episode of The Rifleman was a spin-off for an NBC series, Law of the Plainsman, starring Michael Ansara as Marshal Sam Buckhart. In the episode "The Indian", Buckhart comes to North Fork to look for Indians suspected of murdering a Texas Ranger and his family.
The series was set during the 1880s; a wooden plaque next to the McCain home states that the home was rebuilt by Lucas McCain and his son Mark in August 1881. Westerns were popular when The Rifleman premiered, and producers tried to find gimmicks to distinguish one show from another. The Rifleman's gimmick was a modified Winchester Model 1892 rifle, with a large ring lever drilled and tapped for a setscrew allowing for rapid fire by setting the screw to depress the trigger instead of a finger. It also enabled McCain to spin-cock the rifle. Despite the anachronism of a John Browning-designed rifle appearing in a show set 12 years before it was designed, Connors demonstrated its rapid-fire action during the opening credits on North Fork's main street. Although the rifle may have appeared in every episode, it was not always fired; some plots did not require violent solutions (for example, one involving Mark's rigid new teacher). McCain attempts to solve as many problems as possible without having to resort to shooting.
A common thread in the series is that people deserve a second chance; Marshal Micah Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, and McCain gives a convict a job on his ranch in "The Marshal". Royal Dano appeared as a former Confederate States of America soldier in "The Sheridan Story" who is given a job on the McCain ranch and encounters General Philip Sheridan, the man who cost him his arm in battle. Learning why the man wants him dead, Sheridan arranges for medical care for his wounded former foe, quoting Abraham Lincoln's last orders to "...bind up the nation's wounds".
McCain has human foibles. In an episode with Phil Carey as former gunman (and old adversary) Simon Battles, he is unwilling to believe the man has changed and become a doctor. It takes a gunfight (with Battles fighting alongside him) to make him admit he is wrong. In "Two Ounces Of Tin" with Sammy Davis, Jr. as Tip Corey (a former circus trick-shot artist turned gunman), McCain angrily orders him off the ranch when he finds him demonstrating his skills to Mark. McCain has a reputation in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, where he first acquired the nickname "the Rifleman," and where Lucas' wife died in a smallpox epidemic.
The series was created by Arnold Laven and developed by Sam Peckinpah, who would become a director of Westerns. Peckinpah, who wrote and directed many episodes, based many characters and plots on his childhood on a ranch. His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations and his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt the Rifleman's son needed to learn about life put him at odds with the show's producers at Four Star. Peckinpah left the show and created a short-lived series, The Westerner with Brian Keith.
Read more about this topic: The Rifleman