Wanted: Dead or Alive – Starring Steve McQueen

by Guy Belleranti


Westerns were big on television in the 1950’s. One forgotten by many, but quite popular at the time was Wanted: Dead or Alive.

The series ran for three seasons from 1958 to 1961 on CBS, with 94 one half hour episodes being produced. But what really stands out about the series is the fact that it brought a new star into the national spotlight. This star was Steve McQueen.

McQueen played Josh Randall, an intense and coolly efficient bounty hunter. A man of few words (like many of McQueen’s later famous movie characters), Randall was also a man of integrity. For unlike most other bounty hunters, Randall tried to bring his quarry in alive, even helping them if he believed they were innocent. He garnered the respect of many lawmen, and some even went so far as to hire him on to bring in criminals they were unable to.

Randall’s character was made even cooler by the gun he carried, a sawed off Winchester rifle. He carried the weapon on his side like a regular handgun. However, unlike a handgun, Randall’s weapon packed the power of a rifle. Indeed, probably the only gun as cool as Randall’s in all celluloid westerns was the special Winchester rifle used by Chuck Connors’ Lucas McCain character in The Rifleman television series.

McQueen’s character was first introduced in another television western of the period, Trackdown. Trackdown starred Robert Culp (of I Spy fame). In a 1957 episode of Trackdown titled “The Bounty Hunter” McQueen guest starred as Randall. The episode was such a hit that the following year McQueen, as Randall, had his own series.

In addition to bringing back wanted criminals, Josh Randall also hired himself out to protect others, to ride shotgun on stage lines, to find missing people and more. He also sometimes gave part of his reward money to charitable causes.

Certainly there were some implausibility's, or even impossibilities, about the program and Randall’s sawed off rifle, but somehow the character’s cool persona made these seem unimportant.

In addition to McQueen there were a number of other up and coming actors and actresses who appeared on Wanted: Dead or Alive. Among these were Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie), De Forest Kelly (Star Trek), Noah Beery Jr. (The Rockford Files), James Coburn, Cloris Leachman, Mary Tyler Moore and Dyan Cannon.

For a short time during 1960 McQueen’s Josh Randall had a sidekick in Jason Nichols, (played by Wright King). However, for the most part Randall was a one man show.

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