The Virginian was a Western TV show that ran from 1962 to 1971. It was based on the 1902 Owen Wister novel, “The Virginian, A Horseman of the Plains.” The star was the foreman of the Shiloh Ranch, played by James Drury.
He was known only as The Virginian, the man with no name. The series circled around the foreman’s quest to maintain an orderly lifestyle at Shiloh. It was set in Medicine Bow, Wyo., around the year 1898. The Shiloh ranch was named after the two-day American Civil War Battle of Shiloh, Tenn.
The Virginian ran for nine seasons; it was television’s third longest running Western after Bonanza and Gunsmoke. Towards the end of its run, spaghetti Westerns were becoming popular, so the format was changed in the final season and it was renamed to The Men From Shiloh. Sadly, it was discontinued along with other Western shows in what was known as the “rural purge” of 1969 to 1971. CBS had become known as the “country broadcasting system” and sought to change its image.
Drury grew up on a ranch in Salem, Ore., and moved to Houston, Texas in 1974. Besides The Virginian, he appeared on Walker Texas Ranger, Kung Fu, The Red Skelton Show, Perry Mason, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Forbidden Planet and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1991, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. I had an opportunity to talk to him about the show, and discovered that he is a real authentic Old West individual, who doesn’t just talk the talk but grew up in an outdoors lifestyle with guns and horses.
Here's a complete interview with James Drury.