Saddle Stiff

first shown January 16th 1972

 

 

'After Ben fires a ranch hand, he wagers with Ben that he cannot find a job and put in a decent week's work. Ben, feeling self conscious about his age, calls his bet and goes to work as Ben Brown. He discovers the name Ben Cartwright is hated, many people think he's a land thief.'

 

Guest Stars: Buddy Ebsen as Cactus Murphy, Don Collier as Paul Walker, Charles H Gray as Cass Beckenridge, Jay W MacIntosh as Sally Walker, Richard Farnsworth as Tate, Hal Riddle as Tiller, Henry Wills as Yokum.

 

 

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This is an unusual story in which Ben decides to prove that he is still fit enough to do the work of a ranch hand and discovers that a crooked Ponderosa foreman has been fleecing ranchers and giving Ben Cartwright a bad reputation.

The story opens with Ben being thrown while breaking a horse. While Hoss, Joe and Jamie react with gentle humour, Ben is not amused. Middle aged ranch hand Cactus is critical of Ben's riding and also critical when Ben slips off Buck through not checking the cinch so Ben fires him. Cactus retorts that Ben couldn't get hired or complete a week's work at his age and Ben decides to take up the challenge.

He sets out as plain Ben Brown and obtains work for an honest, pleasant couple: Paul and Sally Walker. Ben is shocked to learn that the Walkers think Ben Cartwright is crook. A gang controlled by a Ponderosa foreman, Breckenridge, intimidate and

exploit small ranchers, trying to force them off their land. Ben (as Ben Brown) had encountered the gang himself. (Breckenridge had actually been hired by Hoss and Joe a year ago but never communicated with the Cartwrights in person after that, only by letter.)

Cactus, meanwhile has sought work with the Breckenridge gang but upon witnessing their intimidation of the Walkers and Ben, he throws in his lot with the latter. When Paul Walker injures his arm during a round-up, Ben and Cactus take over the ranch work between them and also capture Breckenridge and his gang.

When the gang sneak into the Walker ranch, two of them are captured trying to set fire to the barn while Breckenridge is setting fire to the house. Ben defeats Breckenridge in a fist fight, dramatically amidst smoke and flames, while Cactus watches with some approval.

In the end, Cactus dryly says that he still can't work for someone like Ben and that he has decided to work for the Walkers instead.

While I liked the idea of the story, I thought that the adventure never really took off. Possibly my tape is an edited version but continuity seemed to be lacking. Co-writer John Hawkins was a very talented writer as was the equally talented director William Claxton but somehow something was missing for me.

One major missing part was the recurring problem of far too little Hoss and Joe. Now, if Ben had decided to go off to prove himself, I think that they would have surreptitiously kept an eye on him. It would have enhanced the story to maybe have Hoss and Joe checking up on Breckenridge, realising he was a crook and setting out to help Ben, especially as they had hired Breckenridge in the first place.

I actually thought that Hoss and Joe were going to turn up in the penultimate scene where Ben beats Breckenridge in a fist fight. With no disrespect to Ben, I'm sure he could have done a ranch hand's work but I don't think he would have defeated a strong man half his age in a fight. It would have been more credible for the strong Hoss or the agile Joe to have done this as well as adding surprise interest.

I thought that Cactus was insolent to Ben in the beginning and I think that Ben would have fired him and not been baited about his own fitness. However that was needed for the story line. I thought that we needed more scenes to understand what Breckenridge was up to as he was the source of all the conflict.

I also think that a weakness of the direction was that there were a lot of riding scenes for Ben and Lorne wasn't comfortable with riding. It might have been more sympathetic to Lorne and the Ben adventure if a different activity had been chosen.

Don Collier's performance as Paul Walker was very well acted, as was the smaller role of Sally Walker played by Jay MacIntosh. I wanted the kind, decent Walkers to receive justice and succeed with their ranch. Buddy Ebsen gave a fine performance as Cactus but for me somehow there wasn't the spark or the humour that I would have
expected between Lorne/Buddy and Ben/Cactus.

I did feel quite worried about Lorne as I didn't think that he looked very well either facially or in his physique.

Overall quite a good episode but probably one which I would fast forward at times if I watched it again.

Final point: In the beginning, Ben is annoyed with Hoss and Joe for not having purchased a windmill for a new water well. Do we take it that Ben accepted Adam's advice about windmills after all? LOL!!