Western (juvenile adventure) · Mutual
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok
April 1, 1951 · 275 broadcasts
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok was a flagship 1950s juvenile Western with a neat distinction: it ran simultaneously on radio and television with the very same stars. Debuting on Mutual on April 1, 1951 -- just ahead of the TV premiere -- it sent U.S. Marshal James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok and his comic sidekick Jingles P. Jones to keep order out of the fictional Fort Larabee in the 1870s, all under the national sponsorship of Kellogg's. Guy Madison played Hickok on both radio and TV for the entire run, but the show's comic engine was Andy Devine as Jingles, whose instantly recognizable raspy, crackly voice -- the result of a childhood injury -- and "Hey, Wild Bill, wait for me!" energy made him one of the era's most distinctive sidekicks. Devine had earlier been Roy Rogers' sidekick and appeared in John Ford's Stagecoach. A West Coast stock company filled out the support, with names like Paul Frees, Jack Kruschen, and Ted de Corsia turning up in the credited episodes. A clean example of 1950s radio/TV crossover, the show made Hickok Madison's defining role -- he earned a special Golden Globe and two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. Its TV episodes were later spliced into sixteen feature films, and the property exported as far as Australia.
Collection status:
267 of 275 held (97% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1951
An evening jailbreak is quietly underway in the town of Hangtree while the locals sing on, oblivious, in the saloon.
When freight man Jeff Skinner is killed, his daughter resolves to keep his wagon line running -- and Wild Bill takes up her fight.
Wild Bill's boyhood friend Faro Stroud sits in jail on a murder charge as a lynch mob gathers, and the marshal is determined to keep him alive.
Pete Jennings and his gang have the town of Flat Rock terrorized -- old Pappy Sparks already shot down -- when Wild Bill rides in.
Road agents keep robbing the High Pockets Mine of its gold, and Wild Bill sets out to run the gang to ground.
A schoolteacher is caught up in Reed Bradford's hidden loot when old 'Pop' is shot just before he can reveal where it lies.
A traveling medicine-show huckster fleeces his crowd -- Jingles loses his watch and a widow her savings -- until Wild Bill sees through the con.
A crusading newspaper editor squares off against Horizon City's crooked mayor, whose rigged election only Wild Bill may be able to undo.
Someone is slaughtering the tribe's buffalo to goad them onto the warpath, and Wild Bill races to unmask the agitator before the frontier explodes.
On a rain-soaked night Wild Bill finds an abandoned baby smeared with blood and clutching a gold nugget -- and a deadly secret behind it.
A sheriff has vanished and his own deputy is holding up stagecoaches under cover of blaming the Choctaw, until Wild Bill uncovers the scheme.
Two prospectors disappear in a blizzard and a trained cougar turns killer, putting Wild Bill on the trail of a counterfeiting ring.
Wild Bill rides guard on a cattle drive while Jingles works the chuckwagon, and trouble follows the herd.
With the great dam upstream of Basin City near collapse, Wild Bill races the floodwaters to save the valley below.
With rowdy trail hands spoiling for a fight, Jingles saddles a mule to head off an ambush laid for Wild Bill.
Four bank robbers cut the cards to decide which of them gets to gun down Wild Bill Hickok.
A murdered range detective and a telegrapher's tell-tale key put Wild Bill onto a plot to rob an entire trainload of cattle.
Feuding ranchers Josh Caldwell and Hiram Moore are itching to shoot it out, and Wild Bill must keep the range war from spilling blood.
September 23, 1951
?? Title Unknown ??
The woman who runs the Thunder Rapids lumber camp is shot, and Wild Bill suspects Big Steve Munson, who wants her out of business.
A friendly visit to old Charlie Docket's ranch pitches Wild Bill and Jingles into a mysterious challenge echoing out of Echo Canyon.
An urgent plea from Abner Collins, editor of the Springerville Gazette, sends Wild Bill hurrying to the frontier town on the trail of a 'gold maker.'
In rowdy Slim Chance, Texas, a culture-minded citizen's opera-house doings draw Wild Bill into the puzzle of a red trunk.
A bitter fight over scarce water grips the town of San Veleo, and Wild Bill rides to meet the challenge of Sentinel Ridge.
A provisions stop in Cornucopia, Nevada plunges Wild Bill and Jingles into gunplay that leads them to Wyatt Foster's secret.
Spending Christmas with the Duncan family, Wild Bill and Jingles meet strange doings on Christmas Eve and an adventure with young Tommy, the 'silver knight.'
On a snowbound New Year's Eve in 1875, Wild Bill and Jingles reach Thomson Corner just in time for the big community dance -- and trouble.
1952
Jingles inherits the Lazy J ranch, but the letter announcing his good fortune draws him and Wild Bill into a deadly trap.
The blacksmith of Salt River City hatches a scheme at his forge to gun down Wild Bill once and for all.
When a slick operator named Lucky Leroy Clover steals a chart to a hidden gold strike, Wild Bill is drawn into the secret of the Hard Luck Mine.
The renegade Black Wolf takes over the Pawnee and plots to raid white settlers' cattle, and Wild Bill races to head off an uprising.
A boy hunts for his father, struck down by poisoned water, and Wild Bill helps run the poisoner to ground.
Jingles finds himself running for mayor of Jackpot, where a crooked political gang has rigged the ballot box against a pair of plucky spinster sisters.
Someone is bent on stopping a surveyor from cutting a road into Hidden Valley, in the tale of how 'Jingles Pass' got its name.
When Jim Betton's brother is shot, Jim sets out to take the law into his own hands, and Wild Bill must stop his revenge.
The train-robbing Choya Gang is undone when a telegraph key -- and a Morse message tapped out by Wild Bill himself -- gives away their identity.
A gang uses semaphore signals to coordinate robberies along the Colorado River, and Wild Bill boards a steamer to stop them.
Wild Bill works to head off open war between the cattlemen and the sheepherders.
Trouble follows the entertainer Violet to the Blue Feather Gambling Palace, where gunplay is certain.
In Thunder Springs, Wild Bill shields a crippled boy from a bully named Big Red -- then finds his horse Buckshot stolen just before the big race.
A gang called the Flame Riders tries to burn homesteaders off land a coming railroad would make valuable.
Tad Mawson, a boy growing up too fast, lands in trouble looking for 'fun' in town, and Wild Bill steps in.
Wild Bill and Jingles investigate a gold mine said to be haunted by a phantom.
The army calls on Wild Bill to smash a gang of horse thieves plaguing the plains around Fort Laramie.
Big John robs the bank at Mossy Bend while his partner Little Mike lingers in town making mischief of his own.
A swindler named Big Ben Bogart has fleeced eight victims with a phony land scheme and is closing on a ninth when Wild Bill takes a hand.
Wild Bill rides to New Mexico to find out how Angus Gordon's cattle keep disappearing off the range -- and who is behind it.
A stagecoach robber's stolen fifteen-carat diamond disappears down the gullet of a prize pig, and Wild Bill must recover it.
Cattle rustling and a shot at Wild Bill lead back to a storekeeper with a fondness for practical jokes.
Wild Bill traces a curious tie between a crank inventor's supposed 'gold-making' contraption and a bank vault that keeps coming up short.
Wild Bill uncovers a plot to tear California away from the United States.
A wagon train in distress calls for Wild Bill and Jingles at Salvation Springs, and the reason proves more than it seems.
Jingles's aching tooth leads the pair to a killer wielding a dentist's drill.
Two outlaws who call themselves Thunder and Lightning take a sheriff prisoner, and Wild Bill rides to free him.
Wild Bill and Jingles set out to break up a counterfeiting gang working near the town of Blue Field.
At a Texas ranch called the Geddings spread, a foreman armed with a spyglass makes no end of trouble for the two lawmen.
Two saboteurs try to wreck a train to keep the railroad from laying its final ten miles of track.
Wild Bill carries the deed to a played-out mine that a man named Ace Clark is strangely eager to buy.
Pursued killers Pecos Jack and his sidekick Muley turn the tables and get the drop on Wild Bill and Jingles.
An outlaw named Duke Nuller means to kill Wild Bill and Jingles by any means -- while Jingles discovers a way with the ladies.
Wild Bill, Jingles, and hard-of-hearing Rocky take on the bank-robbing Black Canyon Gang.
A trespass lawsuit between two ranchers turns to gunplay when Wild Bill and Jingles side with old Uncle Jeff.
Schoolteacher Tom Dabney is troubled by a mysterious visitor, Chief Running Bear, in a puzzle that stumps even Jingles.
In Farro Flats, a little man named Farino and his champion jumping frog, 'Winged Victory,' draw Wild Bill into a strange adventure.
A gang of train robbers makes off with a railroad construction payroll, and Wild Bill takes up the chase.
Two swindlers 'salt' a worthless mine by blasting gold dust into the rock with a shotgun, and Wild Bill exposes the fraud.
A band of renegades hijacks the Overland Stage Company's gold shipments, and Wild Bill is called in to stop them.
A crook named Miggs schemes to sell timber cut illegally from a government forest in the Utah woods.
A lawyer representing young Lance Duquesne is secretly plotting to grab the two finest ranches in the valley.
In the season's finale, Wild Bill goes after 'The Baron,' a gun-runner whose castle no visiting lawman leaves alive.
On the trail of the Blue Neckerchief bank-robbing gang, Wild Bill and Jingles reach Angels Fort just as the outlaws move in.
A St. Louis swindler peddles worthless mining claims in Eagle's Nest to every dreamer he can find, until Wild Bill unravels the scheme.
A thunderstorm drives the pair to Osage Springs and its striking lady undertaker, whose past hides far more than the graves she tends.
When Duke Daniels guns down a prospector and beats the kindly old 'Mayor' of Mule Mesa, Ed Martin, Wild Bill rides to set it right.
Brownsville's plan to welcome the Governor with a staged joke hold-up goes badly wrong, and Wild Bill is caught in the middle.
Something is killing Sarah Stevens's sheep on Ghost Mountain, and behind the 'werewolf' scare Wild Bill finds a hidden gold mine.
A man who owns half a salt-rich ranch tries to murder Wild Bill and the owner's son to seize the other half -- on Jingles's birthday.
Headquarters sends Wild Bill and Jingles after the Roman Gaul train-robbing gang, and they won't quit while there's one more to get.
When Colonel Chandler vanishes from his horse ranch and a sinister foreman takes charge, Wild Bill uses plain 'horse sense' to crack the mystery.
Wild Bill and Jingles are served poisoned steaks at the Copperville mine and must find out who wants them dead.
Saved from the stake by a young brave named Little Cloud, Wild Bill promises to find the key to peace on the plains.
Told to rest, Jingles goes fishing with Wild Bill, only to have a bolting buckboard, stolen gold, and a pair of outlaws spoil the holiday.
Trigger-happy Jubilee Jenks won't sell his land to the railroad, and his stubborn stand draws Wild Bill into the fight.
A freight wagon is blown up and its driver killed with nothing taken, pointing Wild Bill to Silk Martin's protection racket.
A gunfight is brewing in Snow Valley between the mountain men and the townsfolk, and Wild Bill rides to keep the peace.
Joining a cattle drive to Willow Springs, Wild Bill uncovers a scheme to jack up beef prices by keeping the herd out of town.
Investigating a stage robbery, Wild Bill discovers an impostor working the case under his own name -- and sets off chasing himself across New Mexico.
When Lucky Morgan finds the Lost Apache Mine, Wild Bill must hold off Ace Benson's gang working out of the Blue Heaven Saloon.
Two cattlemen covet a famous lead steer named Old Red, and when one of them is killed the animal is framed for the murder.
Wild Bill hauls a killer to Hangtown for trial, only to have the local judge hand down sixty days in jail to keep the man out of his reach.
The Sioux prepare for war when their chief's daughter lies near death, and Wild Bill is called in for one last hope of peace.
December 10, 1952
The Trail of the Cougar
This time the outlaw is a four-legged one, as a killer cougar puts Wild Bill and Jingles on a deadly trail.
Two bank robbers on white horses gun down a sheriff and vanish, and Wild Bill traces them to Doc Crowley's traveling medicine show.
Answering an old friend's plea in the Dakotas, Wild Bill sets out to foil a crooked ferryboat owner who refuses to carry cattle across the river.
When rustlers begin picking off his prize herd, rancher Red Tolman calls Wild Bill to the Circle Bar, and a blazing fight follows at Rattlesnake Bend.
Amid the hot springs and geysers of little-known Black Canyon, Wild Bill and Jingles find danger -- and the Black Canyon gang.
A cold-eyed killer who calls himself 'The Stranger' leads Wild Bill and Jingles on a three-day running gunfight.
On a snowbound New Year's Eve in 1875, Wild Bill and Jingles reach Thomson Corner just in time for the big community dance -- and trouble.
1953
Jingles buys a cafe and hangs up his badge, only to run headlong into a pair of crooks working a protection racket.
Badger Black brings in a trigger-happy gunhand called Brownie to protect his maverick-branding racket, and Wild Bill rides to break it up.
A fortune in gold is hidden aboard a wagon train bound for Tombstone, and Wild Bill and Jingles ride guard through the danger.
At the Morton, Montana fair, Wild Bill and Jingles battle a plot to wreck young Danny's chance in the big quarter-horse race.
Wild Bill and Jingles take on a gang of smugglers working the Rio Grande and the strange secret of a riverside windmill.
A visit to old friend Sid Hawkins's ranch turns eerie when Wild Bill and Jingles confront a mysterious voice rising from the well.
A tough old-timer called Grandpa Grainger and his big pair of .44s prove a handy -- and troublesome -- ally for Wild Bill and Jingles.
Wild Bill and Jingles are drawn into the capture of a man called Trader Joe, where rope-and-six-gun justice proves as dangerous as the crime.
Riding the untamed timber country of Colorado, Wild Bill and Jingles come up against a savage killer.
A monstrous killer grizzly turns up at Sunshine Smith's ranch just as a bandit stages a hold-up, and Wild Bill must deal with both.
Cattle vanish without a trace, and Wild Bill and Jingles take on the most baffling case of their careers -- the Phantom Rustlers.
An Irish settler stands to lose his timberland to the scheming Mark Slater, and Wild Bill rides to his aid.
A blaze of six-guns gives Wild Bill and Jingles a deadly welcome to the town of Shady Rest.
Riding to help Sheriff Stillwell of Desert Hole, Wild Bill finds him shot in the back beside a scrap of paper bearing a single word: 'SON.'
Railroad man Hard Rail Hennessey enlists Wild Bill to survey a mountain route, and trouble follows into the struggle for the Main Divide.
Rancher Charlie Oatum is bound to drive his prize herd up the trail to Dodge City, and Wild Bill rides shotgun against the bandits waiting along the way.
A cougar's night cry, vanishing cattle, and three menacing strangers put Wild Bill and Jingles on the trail of an unseen killer.
When old Pop Jenkins is beaten between the carnival tents and shots ring out on the midway, Wild Bill investigates a killing under the big top.
Prospector Melba Smith is ambushed the moment she strikes gold, and only a lucky turn brings Jingles to the rescue against the claim-jumpers.
The Coyote Kid is framed for a bank robbery, and Wild Bill and Jingles bait a trap to catch the men who really did it.
A silver bullion shipment disappears in the wreckage of a train, and Wild Bill hunts the men behind the explosion on Broken Wheel Grade.
When Slim Gilroy vanishes, Wild Bill and Jingles ride to find out what evil has taken hold at his gold mine.
Two shootings -- Slick Runyon and Bud Oliman -- send Wild Bill after the link between them in a big cleanup out of the Santa Fe office.
Out roping wild horses on the mesa, Wild Bill and Jingles ride into a carefully planned stagecoach robbery.
Cash Dawson dams up Dead Rock Creek and demands payment for the water, and Wild Bill takes the settlers' side.
A renegade wolf is slaughtering calves, but Wild Bill finds a man named Blaine Jackson even more dangerous than the beast.
Duke Trent's gang cows Sage City after smashing its newspaper, and the lawmen find themselves cornered underground as they fight back.
May 1, 1953
?? Title Unknown ??
A swindler's phony-stock scheme is undone by Wild Bill and his eager new junior deputy, young Billy.
A spry old-timer feels his oats and gallops back into the thick of the action with Wild Bill and Jingles.
Wild Bill arrests smooth-talking Mel Sutter for shooting the mayor, and that's only the start of the trouble.
Rustlers hit Sunshine Smith's ranch, and it falls to Pedro the cook to help save the day for Wild Bill and Jingles.
Wild Bill steps in when a land-grabber named Bat Scanlon moves against Chief Big Grin and his tribe's territory.
The notorious badman Bart Quincy holes up near Buzzard Lake, where a canoe ride nearly spells disaster for Jingles.
A hunted man who never removes his hat and a Boston 'little dude' kidnapped off the stagecoach pull Wild Bill into a tangled mystery.
In the season finale, Wild Bill, Jingles, and 'Whitewater Sam' shoot a raging river to run down a gang of smugglers.
A stagecoach robbery of railroad-land deeds that stumped Wild Bill for six months finally breaks open in a blazing fight over 'teller's gold.'
The shooting of Luke Smithers is solved by an unlikely clue -- Jingles's own dirtied shirt.
A vicious outlaw marks his robberies with a red skull, drawing Wild Bill and Jingles into a hair-raising hunt.
A neighborly errand turns deadly when Wild Bill and Jingles step into the middle of the Green Valley feud.
Wild Bill brings a gang of bank robbers to justice with unlikely help from Miss Petty and her ladies'-wear shop.
Wild Bill and Jingles find unexpected danger squarely in the middle of a crooked land-office business.
When a mysterious killer strikes the Curry brothers' horse ranch and five hundred head vanish, Wild Bill rides into a thunderous, lucky stampede.
The cunning outlaw Rockerset hatches a scheme to make Wild Bill and Jingles gun each other down at Gundown Tunnel.
Visiting a placer mine, Wild Bill and Jingles survive one murder attempt after another -- even a deadly jet of water -- set by an old enemy.
Bound home from St. Louis aboard the riverboat River Queen, the pair meet a killer and a saboteur working the Mississippi run.
Trailing the robbers of the stage office, Wild Bill and Jingles ride into a four-shotgun ambush and track the gang to the Blue Parrot Cafe.
A boy riding the Tucson-to-El Paso train unwittingly points the lawmen toward two men wanted for robbing a bank.
Cattleman Whip Willard threatens to ruin Stormy Evans and touch off a range war, and Wild Bill rides into a dangerous round-up.
A trip to dedicate the new courthouse in Logan's Center nearly becomes Wild Bill's last, when an enemy turns to poison.
The rhyming Pedro brings word that the outlaw Black Barney is back, and Wild Bill and Jingles set out to put him away again.
Freight wagons keep disappearing, and a man named Dan Hunter knows why -- because the scheme is his own.
On election day in Iron Mountain, crooked Mayor Slick Randall is bent on silencing editor Jim Carlin, and Wild Bill wades into the gunfire.
A strange hermit of Split Rock Canyon helps Wild Bill and Jingles run down a pair of bank robbers.
For once Wild Bill's constant gun practice fails him, leaving him helpless before the drawn gun of a smooth 'high-tone stranger.'
Wild Bill and Jingles come upon two plucky youngsters fleeing the outlaws who shot their father to steal his silver mine.
A gang of pickpockets works the Feather Falls fair and murders the sheriff, in a caper mixed up with Jingles, a cake contest, and a 'talking' mule.
December 11, 1953
The Red Sands of Danger
Two outlaws will do anything for a picture on Nobeard's saddle blanket -- a map to a treasure hidden out on the reservation badlands.
A man alone in a lakeside cabin is shot dead with a silver bullet, and Wild Bill follows the trail of seven such bullets.
The slick outlaw Sugarfoot Jack seems to rob stagecoaches in two places at once, and unraveling the trick leaves Wild Bill's life hanging by a tangled rope.
December 25, 1953
The Santa Claus Trail
A new brand on the range is a neat cover for selling stolen cattle, and Wild Bill and Jingles are mistaken for the rustlers behind the 'walking Double X.'
1954
January 1, 1954
The Party in Gunpowder Pass
A black-bearded gang blockades the railroad's push into Lonesome Valley, and Wild Bill is brought in to break the gunsmoke blockade.
A traveling medicine show is a front for Slick Jensen's swindle, and Wild Bill sees that 'Doc' Willoughby is not what he claims.
Night raiders gun down Lige Morton and others along the New Mexico border, and Wild Bill rides into a rip-roaring 'Boot Hill special.'
In a raging blizzard, two outlaws trigger an avalanche to escape Wild Bill and Jingles, and a fast-talking stranger lends a hand.
A harmless-looking old-timer called Tuffy Tombstone proves to be about the deadliest outlaw west of St. Joe.
A ghostly rider on a white horse has gunned down Sam Gaines and three others, leading Wild Bill down a trail of bewildering mystery.
An explosion and a murder at the 'played-out' Yellowjacket mine send Wild Bill and Jingles fighting for their lives eight hundred feet underground.
Jingles fancies himself a detective and sets out to crack the case of a dead man's silver dollar -- with plenty of trouble to follow.
Jingles is shot by a mysterious 'voice in the window' as a counterfeiting gang lets loose a rain of phony twenty-dollar bills.
February 5, 1954
Grandpa's Gold Mine
Why is Dud Baker so desperate for money? The lawmen aim to find out, in a gold-and-gunsmoke dash toward the border.
The Panhandle Kid gets the drop on Wild Bill and Jingles, protesting he's been framed for a stage robbery -- and Wild Bill sets out to prove it.
Jingles's long-winded Uncle Peter blows into town just as schemer Monty Dixon moves to take it over -- and Uncle Pete has other ideas.
A survey of Thunder River with the eccentric Dr. Percy Hummingbird leads Wild Bill and Jingles straight to a bandit hideout.
Jingles is shot from ambush -- and the newspaper carries the story before it even happens, putting Wild Bill onto 'Fingers' Wilson.
Hot-tempered Doug Douglas threatens to kill banker Cherney, who brands him an embezzler, and Wild Bill uncovers a clever frame-up.
Rustlers are bleeding Blue Valley dry, and Wild Bill and Jingles ride to the aid of the widow Hodges.
Hide hijackers prey on the buffalo hunters of the plains, and Wild Bill rides into the deadly business of the buffalo robe.
Wild Bill and Jingles cross the border to break up a gang smuggling stolen army guns.
A tough hombre named Big Tom is blamed for a string of stage robberies, but Wild Bill wonders whether he's really the guilty man.
Put on the trail of an outlaw called The Rattler, Wild Bill and Jingles are caught off guard by one of his gunmen while swimming.
A crook named Dirk Reagan offers a gunman four thousand dollars to kill Wild Bill, and only the fury of a windstorm saves the lawmen.
A shiny new steam fire engine looks like a bargain until Wild Bill exposes the 'hot' swindle run by a firebug called Torchy.
The sheriff is shot and Jingles lands in jail, all tangled up with stolen money and Jingles's newfangled dishwasher invention.
Wild Bill risks his life to learn why the Acme Construction Company is bent on keeping the telegraph line from going through.
A freight wagon is blown up and its driver killed with nothing taken, pointing Wild Bill to Silk Martin's protection racket.
When hydraulic miners threaten the valley farmers, their leader Mark Latham calls in Wild Bill to face a pair of high-pressure killers.
Wild Bill's guns have been tampered with, and a Pennsylvania Dutch gunsmith helps him head off a huge cattle raid on the Walking J ranch.
An eastern reporter, 'Pug' Donovan, is kidnapped by an outlaw called The Rock to chronicle his robberies, and Wild Bill rides to free him.
After a stagecoach robbery leaves young Bobby Wilson missing, old Grandpa Grainger lends Wild Bill a hand -- and some dynamite.
A wanted poster and a scream from Miss Petty's dress shop put Wild Bill on the trail of Zip Toler and a stolen necklace.
Wild Bill and Jingles face an unusual quarry -- a twelve-year-old boy with a gun and the nerve to use it.
A rickety toll bridge and a schemer called 'Cartwheel' draw Wild Bill and Jingles into a rustlers' plot over a prized new breed of cattle.
A cold-eyed killer who calls himself 'The Stranger' leads Wild Bill and Jingles on a three-day running gunfight.
This time the outlaw is a four-legged one, as a killer cougar puts Wild Bill and Jingles on a deadly trail.
Wild Bill and Jingles must find a new way to battle one of the most frightening foes they've faced -- a monster lurking in a cave.
October 22, 1954
?? Title Unknown ??
Lawless Crossbone Valley has never known order until Wild Bill and Jingles saddle up for one of their most dangerous rides.
At Fitz Longman's ranch, Wild Bill and Jingles face a strange double threat -- a human varmint and a deadly animal one.
Wild Bill and Jingles use a public auction to bait a trap for a killer, bidding for more than they let on.
As cattle keep vanishing, a gang schemes to kill three birds with one stone, and Wild Bill rides to a rustlers' reckoning.
Jingles's longed-for visit to his grandparents' old hometown turns out to be anything but the restful holiday he expected.
Old retired sheriff Grandpa Grainger is the only man who can name the haul from a robbery three decades gone -- and the Beeman brothers aim to keep him quiet.
Jingles buys into a phony gold mine and is astonished when it actually pays a dividend, setting up a curious swindle for Wild Bill to unravel.
A mirror flashing in the sun signals a warning, and Wild Bill races to protect the railroad's future from a hidden threat.
A run of suspicious accidents at a lumber camp draws Wild Bill and Jingles into deadly danger along the timber trail.
Jingles is bent on celebrating Wild Bill's birthday even as the pair fight to save Ma Turner's home from a suspiciously eager forecloser.
Camped in the shadow of Hangman's Tree, Wild Bill puzzles over Horace Fineweather -- a harmless old snoop, or a ruthless land-grabber?
Wild Bill faces a slippery, weasel-faced outlaw named Wheezy Keel and hunts the stagecoach bandits he runs with.
While Jingles murders a little opera, a gang robs the bank and answers Wild Bill with a six-gun serenade of hot lead.
During a wild land rush west of Wichita, Wild Bill and Jingles fight to keep the peace against Monty Bogus and his gang.
A bushwhacker pistol-whips kindly old Uncle Joe, guns down his friend, and makes off with the gold, and Wild Bill takes up the chase.
A headline announces the return of 'the Phantom,' a masked outlaw from ten years back whom no witness ever survived, and Wild Bill braces for the reckoning.
Supplies aren't reaching Fort Charles and four investigators lie dead, and a man called Lowdown claims only he can feed the hungry soldiers.
Caught in a gun-blazing race for mayor of Brownsville, Jingles fights back with an unlikely weapon -- some mighty dangerous laughter.
Deputy Ezra and several others are shot with a peculiar special gun, and Wild Bill hunts the owner of the deadly killing machine.
Miss Petty's apparent kidnapping from her dress shop is really a lure, with the two lawmen the real quarry.
A young woman begs Wild Bill to help find her missing grandfather, an amateur geologist -- and she has good reason to fear for him.
A miner strikes it rich and dreams of schooling his son, but a killer has other plans, and Wild Bill rides into the Teton country to stop him.
In a Christmas tale, a boy's wish for a tall tree with a silver star gives way to worry when his innocent father is accused of bank robbery.
After the widow Brown is stuck with a pocketful of counterfeit silver, Wild Bill settles matters the hard way with a crook named Cash Royale.
Jingles turns part-time reporter for the Gazette and lands his big story -- a stagecoach robbery -- squarely in the line of fire.
In the radio series' final broadcast, a heartless outlaw steals the money for the new schoolhouse on New Year's Eve, and Wild Bill sets things right.
The Story
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok was a flagship 1950s juvenile Western with a neat distinction: it ran simultaneously on radio and television with the very same stars. Debuting on Mutual on April 1, 1951 -- just ahead of the TV premiere -- it sent U.S. Marshal James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok and his comic sidekick Jingles P. Jones to keep order out of the fictional Fort Larabee in the 1870s, all under the national sponsorship of Kellogg's. Guy Madison played Hickok on both radio and TV for the entire run, but the show's comic engine was Andy Devine as Jingles, whose instantly recognizable raspy, crackly voice -- the result of a childhood injury -- and "Hey, Wild Bill, wait for me!" energy made him one of the era's most distinctive sidekicks. Devine had earlier been Roy Rogers' sidekick and appeared in John Ford's Stagecoach. A West Coast stock company filled out the support, with names like Paul Frees, Jack Kruschen, and Ted de Corsia turning up in the credited episodes. A clean example of 1950s radio/TV crossover, the show made Hickok Madison's defining role -- he earned a special Golden Globe and two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. Its TV episodes were later spliced into sixteen feature films, and the property exported as far as Australia.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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