It's commonly said of shows like this that they were products of a more innocent era. But it wasn't really so innocent; and as far as TV went, what now looks like innocence was closer to mannerliness: TV was conceived as a guest in the home, and minded its words accordingly. Its purveyors assumed they could and should satisfy everyone, and that everyone shared the same proprieties and ideals to be satisfied. Gradually, this cohesive culture was eroded by a more divisive one; but while it lasted, it produced shows like Here Come the Brides.
This was one of the last examples of the TV Western, now an extinct form, and, to viewers unacquainted with it, HCTB must look like all the others. But it didn't at the time. It seemed to have a dash, a bounce, and a sweetness not seen before. In fact, the first episode brought me more plain, simple happiness than anything on TV before or after. Home videotaping didn't then exist, but I made an audiotape of the episode, and wherever I went, if I was feeling lonely, I'd give it a listen, and it always cheered me.
Before airing, the show was promoted like Petticoat Junction, as a broad farce with cuties. It had that aspect; but what the promos didn't disclose was that it was a rollicking frontier comedy of the North to Alaska school: a mixture of swagger and sweetness--in effect, a musical without the songs. Which is just what it was. In the late fifties George Sidney, the director of several musicals, had planned another one, to star Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones. The writer was N. Richard Nash, in whose frontier comedy The Rainmaker Lancaster had played the title character; the hero of this story, Jason Bolt, bore him more than a slight resemblance. A script and songs were drafted, but ultimately the production was dropped. The script no doubt was filed, and a few years later someone seeking properties to develop happened across it; hence this show.
The producer, Bob Claver, had done an earlier Western, Iron Horse, with a similar period flavor and a similar confidence-man hero. For HCTB he brought in E. W. Swackhamer to direct the pilot episode (later, he would direct all of the show's best ones). Whether Swackhamer influenced the casting is not recorded, but it seems likely, since he was friends with both its leading man, Robert Brown, and leading lady, Bridget Hanley (whom he afterwards married). I expect it was the combination of the three that gave the show its exuberance. Brown seemed born to the part of a honey-tongued backwoods cavalier, and Hanley showed exactly the right kind of gumption for a blend of women's advocate, den mother, and understanding sweetheart.
A show doesn't always remain in the same state, and HCTB passed through at least three: the pilot; the season subsequent; and the one after that (which unfortunately was the last). The pilot looked as if it would make a fun-filled series as it stood; one episode was attempted on that theory, and failed (though it was reworked and shown later), the characters running around aimlessly and with motives that made little sense. Someone--probably script editor William Blinn, to judge from his other work--reoriented the show toward community, friendship, love, and family. The leading character went from hoodwinking the townsfolk to becoming their leading light; his logger gang, originally outsiders (like the brothers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), became the town's most frequent denizens.
The first half of that season was undoubtedly the series' apex. It had two strong supporting characters who later left: hard-headed, good-hearted logger Big Swede and prim but highly principled schoolmarm Miss Essie. It also featured striking turns by guest actors, and utilized a wide range of scriptwriters, who had fun exploring the characters before everything became fixed and while things could still be stretched for the heck of it.
The TV pilot made two big changes from the proposed movie: the hero's love interest, a shady lady, was eliminated; and his big task became, not to import the "brides" he had promised the town, but to keep them there for a year. This gimmick must have seemed certain to guarantee one season; and it did. Without it, the show slowly came apart in its second year.
Not that the gimmick had worked in practice. The local mill owner was out to send the brides packing so he could collect the agreed-upon forfeit, a timber-rich mountain. But he was a notorious skinflint who had paid to have them brought, and gained from their presence there as much as anybody. He made a few half-hearted attempts to tempt one or another girl away; but none was believable, and soon the show gave up on the idea.
What it became about instead was logging, and courtship--but mainly, fun: impersonations; impostures; wagers; contests. In the second season it sobered up slightly and settled into a long string of swindles and abductions (the producer wanted action but TV was in one of its anti-violence phases, so nobody could be killed).
The three leading actors made strong impressions; this show was the best any of them ever did by a long way. The others besides Brown were the pop singer Bobby Sherman, who showed a surprising depth of feeling as the insecure, guileless, sometimes quick-tempered youngest brother, and David Soul as the middle one, who began as a cocky lothario and then turned into a kind of fulcrum holding the excesses of the others in balance: reserved, occasionally too smug in his own intelligence, but generally acting as the voice of reason. However, the most touching scenes were Sherman's--as when, after being cured of his speech impediment by a visiting medicine man, he learns his benefactor was a charlatan and reverts to stuttering again--publicly, in his girlfriend's hearing. Her heart goes out to him; ours do, too.
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