Riverboat begins in 1847. The Captain has a lever action carbine. In a later episode he has breach loading muskets with a crew member reloading for him, but I don’t think they were around until 1865 or 1866.
Maverick takes place at the time of the antebellum South, but again there are lever action carbines. Maverick’s pistol appears to be contemporary. What other errors occur?
Lots and lots of “made to look like” guns as well. A friend owned a firearm attributed to a secondary piece from the old Daniel Boone show that was a trap-door Springfield made to look like a flintlock “Bess”. Onscreen it looked ---- OK. In person not so good.
Very little from the 60s especially worried about such things; they were making entertainment and not history - for television even more so. You had a better chance in the early silent films as enough originals were available and film-actor-safety rules were less stringent.
No one making a Western in the 60s cared about historical accuracy. Given that there were probably less than 10 gunfights (as portrayed on TV) during the entire era shown, that should be obvious. If you think of it, why would someone risk a quick draw contest when they could just shoot the guy when he doesn’t expect it?
Guns were chosen because they looked good. Wyatt Earp had a Buntline Special on TV, even though he never used one. *The Rifleman *used a modified Winchester Model 1892 even though the show was set ten years before it was invented.
But no one was bothered by that. In many ways, people were more sophisticated back then.
IIRC it was Clint Eastwood who led the charge towards period-accurate weaponry. Most of his movies are quite good in that regard, even the Spaghetti Westerns.
Maverick very definitely takes place after the Civil War not before it. In fact, very few of the traditional TV westerns are antebellum.
True not definitively before, usually. But even as a kid (with some interest in guns) I was nagged by early seasons of Bonanza, the show opens on the eve of the Civil War, where everybody had metal cartridge revolvers and lever action rifles. Even right after the Civil War those would have been curiosities. But in shows of that era only certain backward trapper/hillbilly people ever had paper cartridge or muzzle loading guns, which everyone would have had in particular shows and seasons of 50’s/60’s Westerns, and lots of people still would have had in the 1870’s even, including Natives who almost always have metal cartridge lever action repeaters in those shows (IIRC archaeology of the Custer battle field of 1876 estimated around 25% of the Native warriors did, many had muzzle loaders and single shot breechloaders besides bows which the TV shows sometimes also show). In some old Westerns US soldiers even have Winchesters which was basically never the case.
I recall seeing Little Joe reload by changing the cylinder on his revolver, presumably because it was cap and ball.
Maverick does have a reference to “Our American Cousin”, but I can’t imagine the South being in such good shape during Reconstruction. Perhaps the life style of Southerners was as exaggerated as their weaponry.
Probably about as realistic as John Wayne playing cowboys.
I recently watched the 1959 John Wayne film “The Horse Soldiers” set during the American Civil War and the weapons were surprisingly accurate. The Union cavalry carried bulky-looking single action revolvers and single shot carbines, while their Confederate opponent’s carried mainly muzzleloader muskets and rifles.
The few times it was obvious they were using the wrong guns was in large group shots of the Union cavalry firing where it’s obvious a few of the extras are working the bolts of their rifles which wouldn’t appear for another 20 years.
You better watch your tone, Pilgrim!
The revolvers in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” always puzzled me because they had cartridges, but also had the under-barrel loading lever used to push the ball into the cylinder, a feature of cap-and-ball revolvers. As an example, look at the scene where Tuco goes into the hardware store and assembles one good gun from the best parts of several.
predictably the first thing I thought of
maybe had converted cylinders to make it easier to use standard blanks?
I had considered that. Those modern conversions are nothing new–there was a booming business in the 1870s for conversion kits to make cap’n’ball revolvers cartridge-ready. They may have used such kits on their movie props, though those kits would be anachronistic in the Civil War period of the film.
The Remington 1858 New Model Army had swappable cylinders as early as, well, 1858. The Remington has appeared in many westerns and people often assume that it is a more recent model or a conversion. Changing the cylinders was a bit tricky, but it could be done fairly quickly as long as you were standing still. Ducking from bullets or on horseback…maybe not so much.
Little Joe was on the floor of a barn, and he had great encouragement.
Did the Cartwright’s have brass cartridge belts to go with their cap and ball pistols?
Just a further note on dates.
The Maverick episode “According to Hoyle” cites the 1976 edition of that book.
The Ponderosa prequel to Bonanza is set in 1949 and Little Joe was not yet a teenager.
In Blazing Saddles the German SS soldiers are seen equipped with Springfield 1903 rifles which weren’t available in the old west.
Neither were SS soldiers, theaters, limos, nor horse trailers.
I’m not sure about sissies.
Considering the history of New York, by some definitions if not my own, I figure its a safe bet.
I was watching an old episode of “Wagon Train” the other day, and the kids were singing “Up on the House Top” and I said, “Aha! an anachronism!” Till it looked the song up and found out it was written in 1864.