If Dale Robertson had come along about ten years earlier he would have been a great cowboy hero and Herbert J. Yates no doubt would have had him in his stable of western heroes. But he came along just as the B western was going out of business on the big screen and quite frankly he was a much better actor than some of the B cowboys. He did some serious B films, never quite getting stardom on the big screen, though some of the films were good.
The small screen treated him better with the Tales Of Wells Fargo series in which Dale's character of Jim Hardie narrated his exploits in tracking down those who would rob from his employer the Wells Fargo company.
I think the series was good because it called for Robertson to be a detective as well as a cowboy hero. The scripts were intelligently written given the constraints of developing characters in only thirty minute episodes for the most part.
In the last season the show was expanded to sixty minutes, but the producers also decided to give Robertson's character Jim Hardie a ranch and something of a home life. It never seems to cease, a perfectly good format, tinkered with and then cancellation.
Still Tales Of Wells Fargo gave Dale Robertson his career role, at least the one this fan remembers him best for. And he was a left handed draw, the most well known one on television until Michael Landon as Little Joe Cartwright came along.
