September 30, 1958: "The Rifleman" Premieres

September 30, 1958: The Rifleman premieres on ABC. It is a Western, the most popular form of TV programming at the time.

Chuck Connors played Lucas McCain, a Lieutenant in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Having lost his wife Margaret to illness, in 1881, he buys a ranch about 3 miles outside the fictional town of North Folk, in the New Mexico Territory, where he raises his son, Mark, played by Johnny Crawford. (New Mexico gained Statehood in 1912.)

The opening theme at the beginning of each episode depicted McCain walking down the street of a town, while rapid-firing his Winchester 44-40 1892 model rifle that had been modified at the trigger and lever. (This makes the rifle an anachronism.) The rifle's modification allowed McCain to fire the rifle only by hand pumping the lever, which had a setscrew imbedded in it to trip the weapon's trigger.

McCain fires 12 shots from his rifle during the opening credits: 7 shots in the 1st close-up, and 5 more as the camera switches to another view. The blank cartridges are shorter than standard cartridges, so the magazine can hold more of the blanks. The soundtrack contained a dubbed 13th shot, to allow the firing to end with a section of the theme music.

The series ran for 5 seasons, had second chances as a common theme. Micah Torrance, the town Marshal, played by Paul Fix, was a recovering alcoholic. Some episodes saw the repairing of friendships broken by the Civil War.  

Like James Arness, the star of Gunsmoke, Connors was an imposing Western figure due to his height, in his case 6-foot-5. He played basketball at New Jersey's Seton Hall University, and 53 games for the Boston Celtics in 1946 and '47. He went on to play 1 baseball game for his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949, coming to bat once as a pinch-hitter, never playing the field for them. He then got traded to the Chicago Cubs, and played 66 games at 1st base for them in the 1951 season.

The Cubs' top farm team at the time was the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. While playing in L.A., this athlete found off-season work as a stuntman, and, like John Wayne, moved from stunts to acting, mostly in Westerns. After The Rifleman, he played Jason McCord, the lead in Branded. He died in 1992, at age 71. Johnny Crawford, who had been a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club, became a singer and the leader of a retro swing band, and lived until 2021.

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September 30, 1958 was a Tuesday. Baseball was between the end of its regular season and the start of the World Series. Football was in midweek. And the NBA and NHL seasons hadn't started yet. So there were no scores on this historic day.