A western with a face-lift, Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion simply relocated the hero to the Arabian Desert.
Buster Crabbe’s Captain Gallant (pictured) may not have ridden a horse and fought Native Americans, but he did have a camel, bad guy Arabs, and even a comic sidekick in the form of Fuzzy Knight.
Gallant was the guardian of Cuffy Sanders (Crabbe’s real-life 10-year-old son Cullen, pictured below), a boy who was orphaned after his Foreign Legion father and brother died.
Crabbe was gung-ho for a series about a young boy helping him defend justice and shot 39 episodes in 9 months.
The actor was considerably less excited about the sandstorms that he and his son would get caught in.
In the beginning, the show was filmed with actual Legionnaires operating out of their headquarters in Sidi-bel-Abbes, northern Algeria, and over the Atlas Mountains into the vast Sahara Desert.
Under the guidance of future James Bond producer Harry Saltzman, the filming moved to Libya, Tripoli, and Italy, where the political climate was less hostile.
The show ran as Foreign Legionnaire in syndication.
Captain Michael Gallant Buster Crabbe
Pvt. Fuzzy Knight
Fuzzy Knight
Cuffy Sanders
Cullen Crabbe
Sergeant Duval
Gilles Queant
Marthe
Marie-Jose Darene
Von Frietsche
Fred O’Brady
Grunner
Jean Werner
Karl
Robert Cunningham
Carla
Norma Eberhardt
The Colonel
Roger Trevielle
