Spankings in Westerns Series

[Michael]

Hello everybody.

I've just joined the Forum inspired in fact by 64Fordman's excellent recent piece on "Before Cable" and the equally thoughtful replies to it. I'm impressed by the intelligence on display. This could be regarded as a sort of companion piece as I also grew up in the long ago, maybe even longer ago.

I was aware of my fascination for spanking at an early age and back then there were plenty of catalysts for a young chap- at school and in the media from the family cartoon on the back page of the newspaper to the TV shows. There were Westerns series on almost every night- and I'm British.  This was the late 1950s and early 60s. I'd say that on the whole they were pretty conservative and though they undoubtedly could stir up quasi-erotic thoughts in the likes of us their creators were making a very different point.

Two things I'd say were preoccupying them when they wrote characters, usually girls, whose behavior (I'll opt for American spelling here) warranted a good spanking. One was the emergence, or perhaps re-emergence, of the teenager, this time with rock n roll and attitude-laden movies like "Rebel Without a Cause". The other was the Cold War. There was a general fear of non-conformity, and the need to maintain given, safe values. But why should girls be targeted more than boys? The Hays Code was still just about surviving, and that had been predicated on the dangers of  feminine allure and innuendo- think Mae West- and had come in on the back of the Flapper craze. They were perhaps the first rebellious, disorderly teenagers and they were girls.

So let's engage with some passing detail in these series. They weren't for the most part to do with husbands spanking wives. That's something a little different and the wives here tended to be as conservative as their menfolk. It was about young women on the cusp of full adulthood having to be taking in hand or restrained by male authority figures. A father leads his big daughter away at the end of "The Buckbrier Trail" episode of Bronco to be spanked for defiance. A guardian tells his ward to wipe off her red lipstick and later spanks her with a hairbrush in "The Guardian" episode of Temple Houston. A trailmaster spanks a hussy's bottom in "The Nancy Styles Story" episode of Wagon Train after she admits her own father should have done it to her a few times. The marshal himself turns a misbehaving young lady over his knee in the "Brunette Bombshell" episode of Bat Masterson

Though in each case the build-up is cumulative and impressive the spankings themselves are either off-screen or exceedingly brief. They were seen more I think as a regrettable necessity than something to dwell on. They were to teach a lesson and to change the attitude of a girl but not a spectacle in their own right. Fast rewind back a generation and 64 Fordman's excellent evocation of Cowcatcher's Daughter. This was a very different beast. It wasn't part of a series in quite the same way, but none the less it did form part of an on-going tale of Andy Clyde as Pop Martin struggling to contain the contrariness of his daughter Marjorie. And it was the climax of that story.

It was made on the cusp of two very different era- the Roaring Twenties and the Flappers on the one hand, and the Great Depression on the other. The Hays Code was barely into its stride but productions like Cowcatcher helped it on its way. As well as bathing nude as Fordman describes, the daughter also talks knowingly of consorting with hoochie coochie dancers at the Circus and has trained her horse to push her boring fiancé down the well before brazenly flirting with a traveling cattle inspector. In particular she's run away from her effete Finishing School back east.

This latter is what really makes her old father want to roll up his sleeves with her. From the opening scene he's promising that she won't be able to sit down when he gets through with her. There is then her long ride home in disgrace on the back of the foreman's horse while the audience consider what's in store for her. She's pretty blasé at that point and then at the ranch she reckons at first that she can twist her father round her little finger.

In fact she's just building up more trouble for herself. This is a spanking to be savoured not dealt with largely out of sight. In an earlier version her father tucks her under his arm on the veranda but in the final cut she's chased into the house and is already clutching her bottom in anticipation. In a 1950s episode it might have ended there- enough information had been given. But here the actress gives a bravura performance of a seventeen or so year old girl squirming across her father's knee as she gets her bottom spanked in full view of the cameras This is embarrassing she wails as the foreman stays on the veranda listening to the proceedings. It's not embarrassing me replies her father and the same goes for the production which is not the slightest bit coy about the scenario.

I see I could attach (pictures maybe) but as a newbie I'll get this off first. Glad to have found you all.

Best from Michael