Dale Robertson and the Left-Handed Gun of “Tales of Wells Fargo”

TLDR: Tales of Wells Fargo premiered on NBC on March 18, 1957, starred Oklahoma native Dale Robertson as frontier detective Jim Hardie, hit number three in the Nielsen ratings in its second season, and ran for 201 episodes across six seasons before being cancelled in 1962.

Robertson co-owned the show through his own production company, making him one of the wealthiest television stars of his era. He died in 2013 at age 89.

The show currently streams on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi.

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During a guest appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a host asked Dale Robertson whether his character carried a standard Colt .45 on Tales of Wells Fargo. Robertson replied that he actually carried a “Nielsen .38,” referring to the show’s massive market share.

It was the kind of joke only a man who co-owned his own show could make with complete confidence.

The Show and How It Worked

Tales of Wells Fargo premiered on NBC on March 18, 1957, and ran until June 2, 1962, producing 201 episodes across six seasons.

The premise was built entirely around one character: James “Jim” Whitcomb Hardie, a specialized agent and troubleshooter for the real-life Wells, Fargo and Company express line.

Dubbed “the left-handed gun,” Hardie crossed the frontier protecting gold, payroll, and mail shipments from bandits, train robbers, and outlaw gangs.

The nomadic setup gave the show enormous flexibility. Every episode could take place in a new town with a new set of characters, functioning as a weekly anthology built around a single recurring hero.

This structure kept production costs low and the plots tight.

For its first two seasons it was a ratings powerhouse, reaching number three in the Nielsen ratings during 1957 to 1958 and number seven the following year. The late 1950s craze for adult Westerns was at its peak, and Robertson’s particular combination of physical authenticity and quiet authority suited the moment perfectly.

The show is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi, and airs regularly on the GRIT broadcast network.

Why the Final Season Killed the Show

The structural turning point came at the start of Season 6 in 1961. Under network pressure to compete with longer character-driven programs like Gunsmoke and Bonanza, the show expanded from its half-hour black-and-white format to a full hour in color.

Jim Hardie was given a permanent ranch in Gloribee near San Francisco, a permanent supporting cast, and a domestic life.

It was the wrong decision. The tight, procedural plotting that had made the half-hour episodes so effective could not be stretched to fill an hour without padding.

Writers were forced to invent domestic subplots to fill the time, including a recurring comedic thread about the neighbor Widow Ovie pursuing the ranch foreman Jeb Gaine.

The show also moved from its comfortable Monday night slot to Saturday nights, placing it in direct competition with CBS’s Perry Mason. Ratings collapsed and the show was cancelled in the summer of 1962.

Dale Robertson: The Most Authentically Western Star on Television

Dale Robertson was born Dayle Lymoine Robertson on July 14, 1923, in Harrah, Oklahoma, to parents Melvin and Vervel Robertson.

He grew up on a ranching property, was training and riding horses by age ten, and became a skilled professional boxer during his youth. His participation in two professional prize fights got him declared ineligible for high school athletics, prompting a transfer to the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore, where he was eventually named “All-Around Athlete.”

He performed at regional rodeos and state fairs and had the genuine physical credibility that most Hollywood Western leads were faking.

Robertson was a left-handed fast-draw artist in real life, which became central to his characterization of Jim Hardie. Unlike many contemporary actors who relied on stunt doubles for equestrian scenes, Robertson rode his own horse throughout the series, a mount named Jubilee, ensuring that every riding sequence was authentic.

His World War II Record

Robertson’s rugged screen persona was built on genuine wartime experience. He enlisted on July 25, 1942, following Pearl Harbor, and served through several transfers before being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the armored forces after Officer Candidate School at Fort Knox.

As a First Lieutenant, he commanded the 2nd Platoon of the 322nd Combat Engineer Battalion, attached to the 97th Infantry Division and General Patton’s Third Army during the final phases of the war in Europe.

His platoon’s job was clearing minefields and building infrastructure to support the Allied advance. During the crossing of the Sieg River, his platoon built a floating bridge under sustained fire from German machine guns, mortars, and 88mm artillery.

They subsequently cleared a minefield on the German side after the first two lead jeeps were destroyed by mines.

Robertson was wounded twice in combat. When struck by shrapnel from mortar and 88mm fire in Germany, he dressed his own wounds in the field and continued to command his platoon until the mission was complete.

He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and France’s Cross of Lorraine. He later said of his record simply: “I think that any man there would deserve the same thing.”

How He Ended Up in Hollywood

Robertson’s entry into acting was entirely accidental. While at Camp San Luis Obispo he and several fellow soldiers went to Hollywood to have portraits taken.

A photographer displayed his picture in a studio window. Talent agents spotted it and began writing to his mother. The shrapnel wounds from the war prevented him from returning to boxing, so he stayed in California.

He received advice from Will Rogers Jr. early in his career: “Don’t ever take a dramatic lesson. They will try to put your voice in a dinner jacket, and people like their hominy and grits in everyday clothes.”

Robertson took that advice completely, rejected formal acting training, and preserved his natural Oklahoman delivery throughout his career. He was always candid about his range: “Nobody’s ever mistaken me for Ronald Coleman.”

His early film work included playing Jesse James in Fighting Man of the Plains (1949) and a supporting role in The Cariboo Trail (1950), both Randolph Scott Westerns.

These led to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox and a string of starring roles through the early 1950s. His relationship with the Hollywood press was famously combative.

He refused to cooperate with powerful gossip columnists including Louella Parsons, winning the press’s “Sour Apple Award” for most uncooperative actor three consecutive years.

He later joked: “That dang Sinatra had to hit some photographer in the nose and stop me from getting my fourth.”

How He Owned the Show and Built His Fortune

Robertson was one of the most financially savvy television actors of his era. Rather than working purely as a contract player, he co-owned Tales of Wells Fargo through his own production company, Overland Productions, which co-produced the show alongside Revue Studios.

This ownership stake granted him a direct percentage of profits, syndication rights, and merchandising income.

As the show spawned Dell Comics, Little Golden Books, and hardcover novelizations, Robertson accumulated wealth that allowed him to operate with complete creative and financial independence.

His backend ownership was a genuine rarity in early television and set a precedent for stars seeking equity participation in their programs.

Personal Life and the Return to Oklahoma

Robertson was married four times. His first marriage to Frederica Jacqueline Wilson from 1951 to 1956 produced his daughter Rochelle. He married actress Mary Murphy in June 1956, but the marriage was annulled six months later after Murphy filed suit claiming Robertson had concealed his opposition to having children.

He married Lula Mae Harding in 1959, a union that lasted until 1977 and produced his daughter Rebel Lee. His final marriage to Susan Dee Robbins in 1980 lasted until his death.

By the late 1960s, disillusioned with the changing culture of Hollywood and financially secure, Robertson began stepping away from acting. He was characteristically direct about his motivations: “I never set out to be an actor… but I needed money.”

Once those financial goals were met, he retired from acting in the mid-1970s and returned to Oklahoma to establish Haymaker Farms, a 430-acre horse breeding and boarding operation northeast of Yukon.

He owned upwards of 235 horses at a time and produced five grand champions across quarterhorse, polo pony, and racehorse categories. He also operated the Dale Robertson Insurance Company.

He spent his final years in San Diego, California. Dale Robertson died on February 27, 2013, at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, at the age of 89, from complications related to lung cancer and pneumonia.

The Supporting Cast

For the first five seasons, Tales of Wells Fargo was essentially a one-man show built around Robertson. The expanded Season 6 introduced a permanent ensemble.

Jack Ging played Beau McCloud, Hardie’s young Wells Fargo partner. William Demarest, who would later become widely known as Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons, played Jeb Gaine, the gruff ranch foreman.

Virginia Christine, famous to mid-century audiences as “Mrs. Olson” in decades of Folgers Coffee commercials, played Widow Ovie Swenson, the comedic neighbor.

Mary Jane Saunders played Ovie’s daughter Mary Gee, and Lory Patrick played younger daughter Tina. The same Wyatt Earp corporate rivalry that hobbled the Bat Masterson series was part of the broader Western television landscape all these shows navigated simultaneously.

The domestic dynamic between Demarest and Christine provided a warm counterweight to the action sequences, though it also represented the dilution of the show’s core identity that ultimately doomed the season.

The Guest Stars Worth Knowing

Tales of Wells Fargo served as a training ground for the next generation of Hollywood talent. Among its most notable guest appearances: Robert Vaughn as Billy the Kid, Charles Bronson as Butch Cassidy, Martin Landau as Doc Holliday, and Chuck Connors in the pilot episode.

Jack Nicholson delivered one of his first professional television performances in the 1961 episode “The Washburn Girl.” Steve McQueen, Leonard Nimoy, James Coburn, Michael Landon, and Adam West all made early appearances on the show before ascending to stardom.

The Real Wells Fargo and the Real Inspiration for Jim Hardie

The character of Jim Hardie was entirely fictional, but series creator Frank Gruber based him and many of the early episode plots on the real memoirs of Fred J. Dodge, a Wells Fargo undercover detective who worked for the company for over fifty years.

The real Dodge was nothing like Hardie. While Hardie operated as a visible, badge-wearing frontier lawman who engaged in a shootout almost every episode, Dodge spent his career in deep secrecy.

He posed as a gambler in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1879 while gathering intelligence on stagecoach robberies, worked closely with Wyatt Earp, and passed along information to the Earp brothers just days before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

He was eventually elected constable of Tombstone while still on the Wells Fargo payroll, then moved to Texas and Oklahoma to pursue the Doolin-Dalton gang. He retired in 1917 and spent his final years writing his memoirs, which were discovered in a wooden closet and published posthumously in 1969 under the title Under Cover for Wells Fargo: The Unvarnished Recollections of Fred Dodge.

The real Wells Fargo company authorized the use of its name and historic stagecoach imagery for the show, recognizing the brand equity value of a prime-time series.

The arrangement transformed what was historically a hard-nosed corporate monopoly into an idealized frontier force for civilization. No formal objections were raised about historical accuracy.

The only “objections” in the series were narrative devices in which conservative branch managers questioned Hardie’s unorthodox methods.