Women of the TV Westerns— Setting the Example for Today’s Women
- Apr 7
- 3 min read
By Jocie McKade
March is Women’s History Month. Since it’s time to highlight the ladies of history, I’d like to give a little applause to the ladies of the television western.
These were the women I loved, the ones who didn’t sit around and whine or complain; they just sucked it up and dealt with it. You have to love their grit.
I guess that’s why I love to write about the west. Even though my books are contemporary, in many places today that grit is very much alive, and it is not confined to the western USA.
While the cowboys of television will live on forever in articles, books, and anniversary shows, the ladies of the West seem to have ridden off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. The newest generation of girls and boys, this is disheartening.
The struggle for equality did not begin with the current generation or even the previous, it began quietly, unnoticed until changes had been made so completely that it became the norm.
These women of television westerns were more than just “side-kicks” or ‘arm-candy’ to the cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws. They represented early American life, and these ladies were indeed pioneers.
Granted, much of it was sanitized, glorified, and beautifully scripted for a viewing audience. Yet, these women on Western television shows were some of the first ladies in entertainment to show women as more than fragile females waiting to be rescued, both in their television roles and in their real lives.
These were women who owned and operated ranches, knew a gun as well as a skillet, owned saloons, and in the “real world” they were many working mothers.
They were some of the first to fight with studios to provide paid maternity leave.
Especially when their roles, along with their pay, were cut when they became pregnant. It was a hard, long struggle, and denied too many.
In the world of television, they brought many of these ideas into shape in a fictional context.
The Big Valley’s Barbara Stanwyck had many “artistic discussions” with the show’s producers to keep her character, ranch owner Victoria Barkley, tough, strong, and self-sufficient.
Victoria was a widow dealing with greedy bankers, assorted corrupt officials, operating a massive ranch, raising kids alone, and then she inherited her dead husband’s illegitimate son. This might just be the first definition of grit.
High Chaparral was the second television program that incorporated a mixed marriage (the first was I Love Lucy). High Chaparral featured an American husband and his Hispanic wife.
This was probably one of the first leading roles featuring a formidable Hispanic woman on television. She wasn’t a cook, maid, or secondary character; she was in the forefront, tough as nails, and had a temper that could best most of the men.
Actress Linda Cristal played a strong-minded, tough ranch wife whose marriage to her much older was arranged.
She had a stepson who hated her, an embarrassing, lazy brother, and in-laws living with her. If I knew how to say grit in Spanish, I would!
Who could forget Amanda Blake in the role of Miss Kitty, owner of the Long Branch Saloon in Gunsmoke?
She got Matt Dillon on her terms.
Miss Kitty owned the best drinking place in Kansas. There were no watered-down drinks at the Long Branch.
Kitty was a consummate businesswoman, running her saloon as a profit-making business in the middle of a testosterone-filled prairie.
Not only that, she did this in the most beautiful clothes this side of Paris, had the respect of the entire town, and she made “fancy girls” respectable.
Even earlier than these ladies, there was Annie Oakley, both the very real woman and the television version.
Was there any male gunslinger brave or stupid enough to take her on?
Ms. Oakley was born in a town near where I grew up, so I learned much about her.
One line from an interview she gave has stuck with me to this day for obvious reasons:
“When a man hits a target, they call him a marksman. When I hit a target, they call it a trick. Never did like that much. -Annie Oakley”
Annie was tough and was the best at what she did.
She could wear an elegant dress to meet royalty, or don her jeans and wear a six-shooter on her hip.
These women blazed the trail for the tough women on television who would follow.
While other television shows of the era depicted the perfect “stay-at-home moms”, western television women were as tough as their male counterparts.
We should salute those ladies of the television western who dealt with what stood in front of them with grace, who kept true to their values and spirit, and who possessed honest to goodness -- grit.
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