Johnny Crawford

Friday, April 30, 2021

The Rifleman was a show I didn't take lightly. Perhaps due to that, I spent a great deal of time with my father, and I felt the relationship between Lucas McCain and his son Mark. While my mother worked in various places, my dad would spend a great deal of time in the studio or workplace. Since I was their only child, my time was spent in his presence as he worked on his art. This was neither a good or bad thing, but life as only I knew it. The one thing that would bother me the most is when we go out to the market or shopping. I loved leaving the house, but each trip was highly organized with a list of things and places to go, so my dad didn't have to spend time away from his work in the studio. This is logical, of course, but I crave spontaneous movement where we go somewhere just because we are in the mood. This never happened in the household. 

Probably the first thing that made me think of myself is watching Johnny Crawford playing Mark McCain. I notice that we had parallel lives. Like me, Mark would help his dad around their ranch, and especially he would ride into town to pick up supplies. If the mood hits the father, they will go to a hotel to have dinner together. You can tell that this was a special treat for Mark and he would look forward to this trip to the town. I felt exactly the same way when he left our home in Topanga Canyon to go to the Valley to shop for goods and perhaps go out for dinner with the family. Otherwise, it's me watching my father do his art. 

To be honest, I think Mark had many duties he had to do on the ranch. They had no help; it was just Mark Lucas doing pretty much everything. They built the farm by hand, and it seems that there was consistent work to do on the property. I occasionally had to do some chores. For instance, my job was to take the music on the portable record player in the studio. Dad would request a record, and I have to find it and place it on the little turntable. The thing is, most of the records were 45 rpm singles, and my father would request that I play the music over and over again. At the time, the record player was a manual, so everything was done by hand. That kept me busy and alert.  I also had to help my dad with the framing of his artwork.

The one thing that bothered me about The Rifleman was the violence that Mark witnessed by being with his father. Often Lucas would get beaten by a thug outlaw, who was usually a sadist. Or there were scenes with Lucas tied to a post and being whipped or punched by a criminal. While Mark was held off by another thug and unable to help his father. He would yell out, "Pa! Pa!" - but can only witness the beating that his father was given. I have a faint memory of Lucas getting free of his bondage, and Mark would throw the rifle to him. The actor Chuck Connors who played Lucas, was a professional baseball player. He caught the rifle as if he was playing left field in a baseball field. Once the rifle was in his hands, he would shoot the villains down. Mark would run up to his dad with his arms around his waist and crying. Whenever I see scenes like that on The Rifleman, I would find myself tearing up. I imagined my dad being beaten by someone, perhaps a cop or some authority figure like that. 

The rifle that Lucas was a master of was a modified Winchester Model 1892 rifle, with a large ring lever drilled and tapped for a set screw. With his hand in the ring, he can use his rifle like a machine gun. It's hard to forget the show's opening sequence, which always starts off with a closeup of McCain with the rifle walking down a dusty street in the town. Then he pulls the weapon toward the crotch area and shoots the gun. As I get older, I realized that there were many sexualized visuals in the show, including the sadistic beating on Lucas by nasty men. The son would watch his dad as a voyeur and not be able to help him in some cases. There is an intimacy between father and son that I recognize with my dad. Although I have never seen him get beaten up, I can still feel the pain in Mark's eyes. 

For Johnny Crawford, and for other sons with their fathers.