mema-03384
OK, from the very first episode I was I love with Robert Fuller and the series. I spent my youth (omg) watching every western ever made for TV. I find now that I still watch Laramie reruns on GRIT and STARZEncore . To my amazement I find the same people show up as "villains or have small roles" anywhere from one to five times a season. This I never noticed before, probably because I didn't care then. Other than Laramie I now watch John Wayne westerns. Oh well, there really isn't much on TV anymore anyway. My granddaughter got the IMDb icon for my iPad so I could look information for myself. It really is very helpful and I like it. She got tired of having to look up everything for me and I couldn't read her phone anyway.
Dalbert Pringle
Out of all the many TV Westerns that there are to choose from in the 1950s and early-1960s, I personally rate Laramie as the absolute best of the very best.Very masculine, very rugged and very-very entertaining, Laramie was definitely a real action-packed TV show that easily ranks, in my books, as the ultimate epitome of the "near-perfect" cowboy-fantasy saga.Featuring plenty of guest stars and an excellent cast of regulars, headlined by Robert Fuller, as Jess Harper, and John Smith, as Slim Sherman - Laramie proudly showcased these 2 strapping and husky, young dudes who literally lived and breathed the true "Code of the West", a set of values which existed, just as they existed, in absolute accordance with the belief in loyalty, morality, and personal pride.Set (during the 1870s) on the very edge of a vast and spectacular frontier within the Wyoming Territory, Laramie was a serious and often good-natured show. It never skimped on the violence when it came to depicting the many hardships that were encountered by those pioneers who faithfully strove to tame the wildness of the great, old west.Filmed in b&w (with each episode running approx. 50 minutes), Laramie is definitely a show that I highly recommend to anyone who really appreciates a superb TV Western that stands tall above all the rest.
bkoganbing
Before Laramie became infamously known as the location of Matthew Shepard's murder it was best known as the title of a western set there in old west Wyoming. The premise was young Slim Sherman as played by John Smith and his younger brother Andy (Robert Crawford, Jr.) trying to hang on to the family ranch after their father had been murdered by a cattle baron trying to grab the land.It was a tough go for the Sherman Brothers and the family cook Jonesy who was played by Hoagy Carmichael. But in that pilot episode a lone Shane like gunfighter Jess Harper showed up. The Shermans took him in and he became a family member with roots at the ranch. After that only fools messed with the Shermans especially if they knew that they had Robert Fuller to mess with as Jess Harper.Laramie was one of many towns founded as a rail depot of the Union Pacific. But into the hinterlands of Wyoming still one of our most rural states you got some place on horseback or by stage. And the Shermans had a franchise way station at their ranch which I'm sure supplemented their income during a lean year for cattle. It allowed for a whole range of stories combining the stagecoach way station with the ranch.Laramie had a respectable run of four years. Carmichael and Crawford dropped out and housekeeper Spring Byington and orphan Dennis Holmes joined the Sherman ranch. Bob Fuller went on to a good career, a stint on Wagon Train after Laramie was canceled and later a long run on the Jack Webb produced Emergency.John Smith had done a few films before Laramie and got a second lead in the John Wayne film Circus World. He dropped out of sight after that and some thirty years later I read in an obituary that he had died of cirrhosis of the liver. There's probably one awfully tragic story there.But I prefer to remember John Smith as Slim Sherman zealously guarding home and hearth with Jess Harper to back him up. Maybe we'll get to see Laramie again some day.
