Sam Cade

After a string of hits movies to boot(which were mostly Westerns),legendary Hollywood actor Glenn Ford gave TV a try with this weekly series that is now seldom seen nowadays. Here you'll have a show that was part of a modern day Western,and part crime drama show all in one and it was one of those shows that kept you on what would happen next. Ford was the tough and sensitive sheriff of Madrid County who kept law and order with his deputy(Petticoat Junction's Edgar Buchanan). However it did tackle issues that were relevant in its day like the plight of the American Indian,and the overall discrimination of the Mexican American and other minorities. The overall opening sequence of the show(seen with Ford going through the mountain landscape in a Jeep)makes for one of the best shows ever from the early 1970's that is rarely seen. NOTE:The shows theme was written by composer Henry Mancini,and this would be Glenn Ford's only TV series to date which ran from 1971-1973 on CBS.

Cades County had a great opening sequence with Glenn Ford riding his Jeep V6 through the desert landscape to the arrangement by Henry Mancini. It was a Big Picture title sequence for Television. I enjoyed this series and some of the episode's were well written and addressed some of the more difficult American issues of the time. Unfortunately, the budget,screen writing & direction was not of a consistently high standard (I am a fan of the Series). Some episodes were great, others very ordinary. I heard at the time that the network was selecting scripts from independent writers for each episode. If that was the case, a better idea would have been to stick with one set of writers so as to develop the characters and the story lines and retain an audience. We should recall that the early seventies was a time when older Movie stars were attracted to TV. Ford did an admirable job as Sam Cade as he did in all his movie roles. But in the end I believe it was the budget and the poor scripts that killed the series. Glenn Ford travelled to Australia to promote the Series in 1971/72 for the Australian TV Logie awards.

Regards Peter H Sydney, Austraila

This was how the series was called in Portugal when it aired around 1975. How do I add this info?

Cade's County was one of two television series that Glenn Ford tried after his time as a big movie name was up and he knew it. The man was smart and transitioned gracefully into middle age. Westerns are a great medium for older stars to transition in. And Ford had appeared in some of the best westerns ever made.

The show was set in fictional Madrid County in Arizona. If Sam Cade and his deputies seem to cover a large bit of territory, take a good look at a map of Arizona with the county lines printed. There are about a dozen counties and some of them are larger than many of our New England states. The show had no big metropolitan areas like Phoenix, Tucson, or Yuma in it, it was strictly a rural affair.

The show lasted only one season despite good critical reception, not great and decent ratings. CBS pulled the plug on it because right at that time it was going on an anti-violence kick along with the other two networks.

I think one of the things that could have saved it was if they had developed more of the personal lives of the sheriff's office of Madrid County. The show had the potential to be like In The Heat Of The Night set in the Southwest. Ford and his deputies which included, Victor Mohica, Taylor Lacher, Edgar Buchanan, and his son Peter Ford were never really seen too much as three dimensional characters. We knew Ford's father had also served as Madrid County Sheriff and was killed in the line of duty and Edgar Buchanan had served with him. That's all I can remember.

Ford and Edgar Buchanan had a long standing friendship from their first film together, Texas back in 1941. It was only fitting that Ford find a place for Buchanan who had recently left the canceled Petticoat Junction when CBS went on an anti-rural kick. Ford and Buchanan were in about a dozen films together.

Cade's County should have been given a much better chance to succeed from CBS.

Television was usually the springboard for many an illustrious movie career. Clint Eastwood, (Rawhide), Steve McQueen (Wanted Dead or Alive) and James Garner (Maverick), are three Hollywood heavyweights that got their start on the small screen. However, it was also a place where aging movie stars tended to retreat to when their box office clout had begun to fade. Rock Hudson, (McMillan and Wife), Ronald Reagan/Robert Taylor, (Death Valley Days), Buddy Ebsen, (The Beverley Hillbillies/Barnaby Jones. In fact, Ebsen made the transition so successfully, that today he is best remembered as a TV star than as a movie song and dance man.

Well in 1971, Glenn Ford joined that list of illustrious names, with his contemporary Western/Cop show Cade's County. Although always a bankable safe lead in many movies from the 1940's through to the 1960's, it's fair to say that Ford was never really a MEGAstar on the scale of Cable, Grant, Cooper or Astaire, but he did have one quality that no one could deny, he was always likeable on screen and his audiences would, most of the time, leave the theatre satisfied with the finished product.

By the end of the 1960's with censorship all but abolished and a new style of grittier, realistic filmmakers at the Hollywood tiller-pin steering the world of movie making towards a darker landscape that had never really been frequented by people like Glenn Ford, actors of his 'vintage' needed a place to go. Some were lucky enough to make that change to this new seedier style of film. Ford's own best friend William Holden for instance had just made The Wild Bunch, probably the most violent western ever made at that point in time.

Whilst sadly only lasting one Season, Cade's County certainly played to Ford's strengths by amalgamating the two main genres that he had excelled in over his long career, Westerns and Crime. TV was a logical step for Ford. At 55, he was getting too long in the tooth ti be convincing as a romantic lead and TV at that time was still the bastion of family values and to his audiences,, Ford had always epitomised the all American good guy, (with only a few noticeable exceptions over the years), and his name at the top of the credits of a TV show was bound to be ratings winner.....wasn't it? Well, no.

For some reason Cade's County wasn't the smash hit that people were expecting and I think I can understand why. Although totally enjoyable, The show wasn't anything overly special that audiences couldn't already get from other cop shows of the time. The script's were formulaic, the stories too fleeting to garner any real sympathy with one off characters that weren't part of the nucleus of the main core cast.

What makes Cade's County great is Glenn Ford and Ford alone, but Ford's star quality as good as it always was, was never enough to carry a TV show. He was one cog in the machine, an essential one certainly, but still useless without the cogs that make the machine complete.

Ford is joined by long time friend and frequent collaborator Edgar Buchanan, Ford's own son Peter appears in numerous episodes as a junior deputy and the fantastic plethora of guest stars make it a joy to watch too. Some had been working on and off with Ford for decades such as Edmond O'Brien, Russ Tamblyn, Broderick Crawford. Others were just those great characters you loved to see on your screen such as John Payne, Bobby Darin, William Shatner. No expense seemed to have been spared to make Cade's County a hit, but sadly it never was, but even after over 50 years, it's still worth checking out. I'm not aware of any official release of the series on Video or DVD, but there are episodes dotted about on YouTube if you care to find them, and I highly recommend you do.

Enjoy!