Furia salvaje

MGM which had produced and had a great success with the big screen adaption of the Kenneth Roberts novel Northwest Passage decided it would make a perfect setting for a small screen series. Although the episodes were of good quality, there was no interest apparently in a series set during the French and Indian War which was what the Seven Years War was called in North America.

Keith Larsen starred as Major Robert Rogers founder of Rogers' Rangers and he was supported by Don Burnett as the college educated Langdon Towne, portrait painter and mapmaker and Buddy Ebsen as Hunk Marriner. Ebsen certainly was no stranger to backwoodsman's buckskins having co-starred with Fess Parker in Walt Disney's Davy Crockett.

Robert Rogers is credited by many historical sources as being the originator of guerrilla warfare with his Rangers who wore green buckskins the better to blend in with the forest instead of regular British army uniforms. They could live off the land and move silently as an Indian through the woods and kill just as silently. Some of the scenes in this show could be quite brutal and definitely not for the pre-teen kids. After the massacre of General Braddock's forces by the Indian allies of the French on their way to relieve Fort Pitt, Rogers' case was made with the British command.

Ironically enough Rogers offered to put together another set of Rangers among the Loyalists to the crown during the American Revolution. His status as American hero got taken down quite a bit after that and he died in relative obscurity.

I wish the show had gained more of a following it was pretty good, but if it had Buddy Ebsen would not have been available to play Jed Clampett