| Temple Houston | |
|---|---|
 Jeffrey Hunter in Temple Houston (1963) | |
| Genre | Western Legal drama Comedy |
| Directed by | Leslie H. Martinson William Conrad Robert Totten Irving J. Moore Alvin Ganzer Robert D. Webb |
| Starring | Jeffrey Hunter Jack Elam James Best Frank Ferguson Chubby Johnson Mary Wickes |
| Opening theme | "The Yellow Rose of Texas" as arranged by Frank Comstock and Ned Washington |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers | William T. Orr Jack Webb Jeffrey Hunter |
| Producers | Richard M. Bluel Joseph Dackow Lawrence Dobkin Jimmy Lydon |
| Editor | Byron Chudnow |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production companies | Apollo Productions Rancom Productions Inc. Temple Houston Company Warner Bros. Television |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | September 19, 1963 – April 2, 1964 |
Temple Houston is an American Western television series starring Jeffrey Hunter as real-life 19th century Texas lawyer Temple Lea Houston. It ran for one season on NBC from 1963 to 1964. It is considered "the first attempt ... to produce an hour-long western series with the main character being an attorney in the formal sense."[1] Temple Houston was the only program which Jack Webb sold to a network during his ten months as the head of production at Warner Bros. Television.[2] It was also the lone series in which Hunter played a regular part.[3] The series' supporting cast features Jack Elam and Chubby Johnson.
Temple Houston is based loosely on the career of the real-life circuit-riding lawyer Temple Lea Houston (1860–1905), son of the more famous Sam Houston. Little, however, binds all the episodes together under a common framework. The series variously cast the characters and situations in both an overtly humorous and a deadly serious light. Author-historian (and attorney) Francis M. Nevins asserts of the first episode entitled "The Twisted Rope", "Clearly, the concept here is Perry Mason out West", going so far as to note that Temple Houston's court opponent "apes Hamilton Burger by accusing Houston of 'prolonging this trial with a lot of dramatic nonsense'".[1] Later episodes turned Houston into more of a detective than a lawyer. Over the course of the series, the bulk of the narrative sees Houston actually gathering evidence, rather than trying cases. In the end, the series largely eschewed criminal law in favor of overtly humorous plots, such as in the episode "The Law and Big Annie", in which Houston uses his legal expertise to help a friend decide what to do after he inherits an elephant.[1]
The producers tried to avoid any storylines that would embarrass the two surviving children of Temple Houston who were still living when the series aired.[4]
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | "The Man from Galveston" | William Conrad | Dean Riesner, Michael S. Zagor | N/A |
| 1 | "The Twisted Rope" | Abner Biberman | S : James Warner Bellah; T : Jack Turley | September 19, 1963 |
| 2 | "Find Angel Chavez" | Herman Hoffman | John Hawkins, Steve McNeil | September 26, 1963 |
| 3 | "Letter of the Law" | Robert Totten | Donald S. Sanford | October 3, 1963 |
| 4 | "Toll the Bell Slowly" | Gerd Oswald | Robert Leslie Bellem, Carey Wilber | October 17, 1963 |
| 5 | "The Third Bullet" | Alvin Ganzer | Antony Ellis | October 24, 1963 |
| 6 | "Gallows in Galilee" | Robert Totten | E.M. Parsons | October 31, 1963 |
| 7 | "The Siege at Thayer's Bluff" | Alvin Ganzer | Preston Wood | November 7, 1963 |
| 8 | "Jubilee" | Robert Totten | John Robinson, Paul Savage | November 14, 1963 |
| 9 | "Thunder Gap" | Leslie H. Martinson | Harold Jack Bloom, Thomas Thompson, Preston Wood | November 21, 1963 |
| 10 | "Billy Hart" | William Conrad | Herman Groves, Norman Jolley | November 28, 1963 |
| 11 | "Seventy Times Seven" | Robert Totten | D.D. Beauchamp, Arthur Browne Jr. | December 5, 1963 |
| 12 | "Fracas at Kiowa Flats" | Leslie H. Martinson | Carey Wilber | December 12, 1963 |
| 13 | "Enough Rope" | Irving J. Moore | Robert Vincent Wright | December 19, 1963 |
| 14 | "The Dark Madonna" | John Florea | Gerry Day | December 26, 1963 |
| 15 | "The Guardian" | Robert D. Webb | Donald S. Sanford | January 2, 1964 |
| 16 | "Thy Name Is Woman" | William Conrad | Ken Pettus | January 9, 1964 |
| 17 | "The Law and Big Annie" | Ken Pettus | Cecil Smith | January 16, 1964 |
| 18 | "Sam's Boy" | Irving J. Moore | Warren Douglas | January 23, 1964 |
| 19 | "Ten Rounds for Baby" | Irving J. Moore | William R. Cox | January 30, 1964 |
| 20 | "The Case for William Gotch" | Leslie H. Martinson | Herman Groves | February 6, 1964 |
| 21 | "A Slight Case of Larceny" | William Conrad | Ken Pettus | February 13, 1964 |
| 22 | "Last Full Moon" | Leslie H. Martinson | Robert Sabaroff | February 27, 1964 |
| 23 | "The Gun That Swept the West" | William Conrad | Unknown | March 5, 1964 |
| 24 | "Do Unto Others, Then Gallop" | Leslie H. Martinson | Ron Bishop | March 19, 1964 |
| 25 | "The Town That Trespassed" | William Conrad | Jack Turley | March 26, 1964 |
| 26 | "Miss Katherine" | Leslie H. Martinson | Ken Pettus | April 2, 1964 |
The earliest known conceptual documents for Temple Houston date back to 1957.[5] It took about six years for a pilot to be filmed. That pilot, The Man from Galveston, was filmed in March 1963, but was never broadcast on television. Instead, the 57-minute film was released theatrically late in 1963. The series used a different cast from the movie pilot.[6] Jeffrey Hunter was the only cast member to star in both pilot and series, although his character was re-dubbed Timothy Higgins in the pilot when it was released as a theatrical film.
The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television and Apollo Productions, a company co-owned by star Jeffrey Hunter, who had demanded to produce it in exchange for a film and television commitment to Warner Bros.[5]
By December 1963, the series was rated 31st of the 32 new shows that season.[5] NBC then ordered a switch back to more humorous stories.[7] but the change merely allowed the series to continue to the end of the season.
Temple Houston was pulled after one season of twenty-six episodes. Hunter later indicated that he thought the series failed because of an inability to establish a consistent tone.
Because the show produced so few episodes, it had little presence on the domestic syndication market. However, it appears to have enjoyed limited international syndication. The series was shown in Japan in 1963,[8] and on Australian regional television station GTS-4 in 1974.[9]
In the United Kingdom the series was shown on BBC One television between October 1964 and July 1965, inspiring one of the few pieces of memorabilia from the show—a 1965 British annual.[10] As in the US, the pilot The Man From Galveston was never shown on UK TV but did duty as a cinema second feature in April 1964 (supporting Warner's Mary, Mary).
