This Short-Lived ’60s Western Show Changed The Genre For The Better

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The 1960s was the era of the classic TV Western, delivering such beloved shows as “The Virginian” and “The Wild Wild West.” One show you don’t often hear mentioned alongside those legendary series, however, is ABC’s “The Outcasts,” which is a shame seeing as it was the first Western TV show to feature a Black co-star.

1968 gave us some classic Western films in “The Great Silence” and “Once Upon a Time in the West.” It was also the year Clint Eastwood set out to prove he could lead American features with “Hang ‘Em High.” Meanwhile, the genre as a whole was moving into its revisionist era, whereby the traditional, more simplistic myth-making of the John Wayne era was being superseded by an altogether more cynical take on the culture and characters of the Old West.

There had been signs of this shift on the small screen, too. Eastwood had been showcasing the hardscrabble experiences of cattle drovers on “Rawhide” since 1959, and in 1965, Rod Serling created the short-lived Western series “The Loner,” in which he aimed to present a more realistic depiction of the frontier. That same year, Chuck Connors’ “Branded” dramatized the nightmare of McCarthyism via the story of a United States Cavalryman falsely accused of cowardice.

By 1968, ABC was ready to try something entirely new, at least when it came to casting their latest Western series, and cast Otis Young in “The Outcasts” alongside Don Murray. Like Serling’s 1965 experiment, the show only lasted one season. The always socially conscious Serling surely would have approved of Young’s casting but critics and general audiences didn’t seem to approve enough to keep it on the air.

In September 1965, Raymond St. Jacques joined the eighth and final season of the show that turned Clint Eastwood into a cowboy, “Rawhide.” He played Simon Blake, a new driver on Rowdy Yates’ cattle drive, in what was the first time a Black actor had been cast in a regular role on a TV Western. It’s debatable whether Blake could reasonably be called a co-star.  His name did appear in the opening titles, fourth after Clint Eastwood’s. But this wasn’t a case of a show being built around a Black co-lead. That wouldn’t happen until three years later, when Otis Young became the first Black actor to co-star in a television Western series.

“The Outcasts” was an hour-long show starring Don Murray as former Confederate officer and slave owner Earl Corey alongside Young as former slave and Union Army officer turned bounty hunter Jemal David. “In the decade following the Civil War people of all creeds and colors were part of the West,” the narrator announces after the opening titles. “The following is a story about two of those people.” The series sees the seemingly mismatched pair team up as bounty hunters, though their adventures saw them foiling scams, being framed for murder, keeping watch over a ranch, and even in the case of David, becoming a town sheriff. 

Young had a handful of film and TV roles to his name at the time, but was essentially an unknown. Sadly, his ABC Western didn’t launch him to fame. The show lasted just one season and while there was talk of it being too violent, there’s little information about the actual reason for its cancellation. Regardless, Young’s involvement makes “The Outcasts” an important moment for the TV Western.

​​”The Outcasts” was one of several TV shows featuring Black leads that emerged following the publication of the Kerner Commission report in February 1968. The report evaluated of the causes of the so-called Long, Hot Summer of 1967 in which urban rebellions took place around the United States. One section concerned media, urging networks to hire more Black newscasters and actors. As the headline of the March 6, 1968 issue of Variety read, “TV Advised to Think Black.”

“The Outcasts,” which debuted in September of 1968, was seemingly part of ABC’s response. Disappointingly, critics didn’t seem too impressed by the effort. In an essay collected in “The Glass Teat,” Harlan Ellison summarized Otis Young and Don Murray’s adventures thusly: “They mooch around together, preying on their fellow man and snarling at one another for sixty minutes of self-conscious ethnic drama.” Ellison is the same man who had nothing but harsh words for “Star Wars” and famously detested Hollywood. He’s also the same man who James Cameron called “a parasite who can kiss my a**” after Ellison forced Orion Pictures to include a thank you to him in the credits of “The Terminator.” so his take on the show wasn’t necessarily the most objective. Elsewhere, the New York Times‘ George Gent claimed “The Outcasts” was “little more than a routine oatburner out of the old Republic studio stables.” But he did praise Young for “bring(ing) a strength and humor to his role of the wiley bounty hunter that is a pleasure to watch.”

More than that, Young was helping pave the way for Black actors in Westerns, and it would have been interesting to see whether he would have got more recognition had “The Outcasts” remained on the air for longer than it did.