Bounty hunters were common in the Old West during the latter half of the 19th century.
They made a living from the rewards offered for capturing wanted criminals and since it didn’t matter if the criminals were brought back alive, the bounty hunters were not bound by the constraints that hampered lawmen.
One such bounty hunter was Josh Randall, who brought in his quarry “dead or alive” with the help of a sawn-off .30-40 calibre Winchester carbine he called his “mare’s leg” and used like a pistol.
Josh’s approach to bounty hunting was summed up in his motto: “If he’s got a price on his head, I’ve got an empty pocket”.
But Randall was a compassionate bounty hunter and sometimes found himself in the position of protector, struggling to safeguard his prisoners from less scrupulous bounty hunters.
Josh’s occasional assistant was Jason Nichols (Wright King) who travelled with an unnamed mutt he called “Hey, Dog.”
Although he had just appeared in the film The Blob(1958), it was this CBS show that made McQueen a star.
Wanted: Dead or Alive was spun-off from an episode of the Robert Culp western series Trackdown called ‘The Bounty Man’. The series was computer-colourised in the 1980s for US syndication.
Josh Randall
Steve McQueen Jason Nichols Wright King
