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Before Lee Majors was the Six Million Dollar Man, he was one of “The Men from Shiloh,” having gotten a lead part in the renamed final season of the long-running Western “The Virginian.”
“The Virginian” premiered on NBC on September 19, 1962, but was not Majors’ first Western. After making his TV debut in an episode of “Gunsmoke,” he starred in ABC’s “The Big Valley,” where he played the illegitimate son of an extremely wealthy, recently deceased ranch owner in California’s Central Valley. Golden Age Hollywood actress Barbara Stanwyck co-starred as the ranch-owner’s widow. “The Big Valley” had an incredible pilot episode and ran for four seasons, but wasn’t exactly a ratings sensation. It certainly wasn’t one of the TV shows that defined the Western genre like “The Virginian.”
When “The Big Valley” ended in 1969, Majors hopped over to “The Virginian,” but Season 9 of the popular Western was quite different from the eight that had come before it. The name of the show changed to “The Men from Shiloh,” and the series jumped a decade ahead in time. There were now four main characters, with different episodes focusing on a different lead. Majors played Roy Tate, a new ranch hand at the Shiloh Ranch.
Despite improved ratings, The Virginian was canceled after one season with Lee Majors
As the first-ever 90-minute TV Western, “The Virginian” holds an important place in the genre’s history. It was a hit in the ’60s, but ratings were struggling by Season 8, which prompted the retooling of the show and Lee Majors joining the cast. The gambit worked; Season 9 was the 18th-biggest broadcast show on television, up substantially from the previous season. However, the age of the Western was ending. “The Men from Shiloh” was one of only four Westerns airing in primetime, and that number was about to go down since even improved ratings weren’t enough to keep the series on the air.
“We did get a substantial 34 share for the season in our ratings. Generally good enough for a renewal. So we succeeded in our mission,” Executive Producer Frank Price recalled in the book “A History of Television’s The Virginian.” He explained that Herbert Schlosser, the president of NBC, “was tired of the show and did not renew it. As with all long-lived shows, the demographics were older. It took years before NBC achieved ratings that good again in that time slot.”
Majors, who according to Price didn’t particularly want to do “The Men from Shiloh” in the first place, fared better than the Western genre. He went on to star in an ABC legal drama, “Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law,” before landing his most iconic role as Steve Austin in ABC’s “The Six Million Dollar Man,” one of the best shows of the ’70s.
