Zane Grey Theater: Season 2

I’d never heard of this series and found it for my dads bday- we all love it, classic western stories with a more personal side vs shoot ‘em up cowboy perspective. Interesting story lines too, not so run of the mill. Nice for the whole fam

Almost five years after VCI released the complete first season of Zane Grey Theater on DVD, Timeless Media has stepped up to offer fans the second season of this great western anthology series hosted by Dick Powell. And what a season it is! The 28 episodes feature Hollywood legends like Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Robert Ryan, Howard Keel and Hedy Lamarr, as well as future television stars like Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Pernell Roberts, James Drury, and DeForest Kelley.As originally aired, the season also included the pilot for the popular television series "The Rifleman", here presented as "The Sharpshooter" (episode 2.21). Due to legal complications, this episode will NOT be included on the four-disc set. That's disappointing ... but there are still enough treasures here to qualify as five-star, "must-see" viewing.Thank you, Timeless Media! Here's hoping you won't make us wait another 5 years before you release Zane Grey Theater, Season Three!EPISODES INCLUDED:2.01 - "The Deserters" - Margaret Hayes, Tom Pittman, Joe De Santis2.02 - "Blood in the Dust" - Claudette Colbert, Jeff Morrow, Barry Atwater, Denver Pyle2.03 - "A Gun is For Killing" - Edmund O'Brien, Marsha Hunt, Robert Vaughn2.04 - "Proud Woman" - Hedy Lamarr, Paul Richards, Roy Roberts2.05 - "Ride a Lonely Trail" - Walter Brennan, Val Dufour, John Zaremba2.06 - "The Promise" - Tommy Sands, Gary Merrill, Whitney Blake, Carl Benton Reid2.07 - "Episode in Darkness" - Dewey Martin, Anne Bancroft, Phil Pine2.08 - "The Open Cell" - Dick Powell, Marshall Thompson, Steve Terrell2.09 - "A Man to Look Up To" - Lew Ayres, Diane Brewster, Will Wright2.10 - "The Bitter Land" - Peggy Wood, Dan O'Herlihy, Marian Seldes, Richard Beymer2.11 - "Gift From a Gunman" - Howard Keel, John Dehner, Jean Willes, Michael Landon2.12 - "A Gun for My Bride" - Jane Greer, Eddie Albert, Onslow Stevens2.13 - "Man Unforgiving" - Joseph Cotten, Claude Akins, Johnny Crawford, Dan Blocker2.14 - "Trial by Fear" - Robert Ryan, Harold J. Stone, Ed Platt, David Janssen2.15 - "The Freighter" - Barbara Stanwyck, Robert H. Harris, John Archer, James Bell2.16 - "This Man Must Die" - Dan Duryea, Carole Mathews, Karl Swenson2.17 - "Wire" - Lloyd Bridges, June Vincent, Edward Binns, James Drury2.18 - "License to Kill" - MacDonald Carey, John Ericson, Jacques Aubuchon2.19 - "Sundown at Bitter Creek" - Dick Powell, Cathy O'Donnell, Nick Adams, Jeanne Cooper, Peter Breck, Tex Ritter2.20 - "The Stranger" - Mark Stevens, Dan Barton, Denver Pyle2.21 - "The Sharpshooter" - Chuck Connors, Johnny Crawford, Leif Erickson, Dennis Hopper, Sidney Blackmer, R. G. Armstrong (NOT INCLUDED)2.22 - "Man of Fear" - Dewey Martin, Julie Adams, Arthur Franz2.23 - "The Doctor Keeps a Promise" - Cameron Mitchell, Carolyn Kearney, Peter Breck2.24 - "Three Days to Death" - Michael Rennie, Chris Alcaide, Earle Hodgins2.25 - "Shadow of a Dead Man" - Barry Sullivan, Carl Benton Reid, Whitney Blake, DeForest Kelley2.26 - "Debt of Gratitude" - Steve Cochran, James Whitmore, Walter Sande2.27 - "A Handful of Ashes" - Thomas Mitchell, June Lockhart, Gene Evans, Dabbs Greer2.28 - "Threat of Violence" - Cesar Romero, Lyle Bettger, Chris Alcaide2.29 - "Utopia, Wyoming" - Gary Merrill, Joanne Gilbert, Pernell Roberts

Got acquainted with this show several months ago on the "GRIT" channel, I'd never heard of it before but found the stories very interesting. Each episode is introduced by Dick Powell relating some interesting old west/historical facts. Many of the episodes are based on actual events, but most have some interesting ironical twist that make the stories pop. Quality of the DVD was good, and did not seem to cut off bits as I still had many of them in memory from watching them recently.

This series was a special pleasure in my youth. I was sorry to see that they were unable to show the episode which was the beginning of "The Rifleman" series. I was also disappointed because so many of Dick Powell's pre-show monologs were deleted. For me, they were great entertainment. And their ideas of what a sodbuster's house or kitchen might look like was unintentionally funny. Despite all these problems, the shows are still a pleasure to watch. Established stars and character actors showed why they were the cream of their crops, and it was fun to see actors who would later become much better known in some of their earliest roles. I'd forgotten that Robert Vaughn had been suck a scary, grinning homicidal maniac and he carried it off well. As far as I'm concerned, "Sundown at Bitter Creek" was worth the price of the collection. It wasn't as marvelous as I remembered it, showing its age in a few ways, but it was still a very touching story of a gunfighter condemned to be a sort of Flying Dutchman. Nostalgia might not be what it used to be, but it was still a pleasure seeing the old shows again.

I just received my copy yesterday and must say the picture quality, while quite good, is not quite as crisp and sharp as season one (released by VCI). The two bonus features make up for the small difference in picture quality and the absence of the episode that was the pilot for "The Rifleman" tv series because of legal reasons. The bonus features are:A bio of Zane Grey narrated in part by Zane Grey's son.A copy of the rare early (1933) Randolph Scott western, "Man Of The Forrest". This print is sharp and pristine. From what I've read the only DVD of this film has terrible picture quality. It's a pretty good western, making this DVD set a terrific buy.

Simple good old-fashion Westerns. Some of the episodes are so-so, but most are excellent. No long drawn out hard to follow plots. There are a few that deliver strong moral and values lessons. I am not disappointed and I am a hard-to-please TV critic.

actually I would have liked stories wrote by Zane Grey. Stories that had not so much violence and gun gun play

More superb stories narrated by Dick Powell from the first program created by his Four Star Productions. Hopefully, Timeless will release the rest of this series, as well as the dozen or so other TV shows currently unreleased on disc that were produced by Four Star for all 3 networks from the late '50's through the mid '60's. As mentioned, The Rifleman pilot, The Sharpshooter, is missing from this set, though it is the first episode on the season one DVD set of The Rifleman, and does appear in The Rifleman reruns on television. This is different than the case of Hawaii Five-0, where a second season episode, Bored, She Hung Herself, from 1970, was omitted from the season set and later, the complete series megaset, for legal reasons, but was not commercially available for viewing elsewhere, and is not rerun in syndication.