Laredo

Laredo

Rustlers, bank robbers, and their own wild schemes: a band of Texas Rangers keeps getting in and out of trouble, under the jaundiced eye of Captain Parmalee.

Laredo is an American Western television series that aired on NBC from 1965–67, starring Neville Brand, William Smith, Peter Brown, and Philip Carey as Texas Rangers. It is set on the Mexican border around Laredo in Webb County in South Texas. The program presented 56 episodes in color. It was produced by Universal Television. The series has a comedic element, but like another NBC series that premiered in 1965, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, it was an hour in length, had no laugh track, and characters were not infrequently killed in it, thus going against three unofficial rules for sitcoms at the time.

The pilot episode of Laredo aired on NBC’s The Virginian under the title, “We’ve Lost a Train” (April 21, 1965; season three, episode 30). In 1969, the pilot was released theatrically under the title Backtrack. Three episodes from the first season of the series were edited into the 1968 feature film Three Guns for Texas.^{[1][self-published source?]}

Laredo combines action and humor with the focus on three fictional Texas Rangers. Ranger Reese Bennett (Brand) is older than his two partners, Chad Cooper (Brown) and Joe Riley (Smith). Reese was previously an officer of the Union Army during the American Civil War. Originally from New Orleans, Chad was in the Border Patrol during the war, and joined the Rangers to search for gunrunners who had ambushed fellow border patrolmen. Joe was a gunfighter, who was at times on the wrong side of the law. He joined the Rangers to obtain protection from a sheriff. Chad and Joe tease Reese about his “advanced” age; he was in his 40s.

The three Rangers are led by the stern and disciplined Captain Edward Parmalee (Carey). The character of Ranger Erik Hunter (Robert Wolders) joined the others in the second season, while Ranger Cotton Buckmeister (Claude Akins) worked with Reese and the others in five episodes.

Peter Brown recalled that the producers of the show wanted the three stars to have the same relationship and camaraderie as did the stars of Gunga Din, and had Brand, Brown, and Smith watch the film three times.^[2]

Cast