Josh Randall is a Confederate veteran and bounty hunter with a soft heart. He often donates his earnings to the needy and helps his prisoners if they have been wrongly accused. Randall carries a shortened Winchester Model 1892 rifle called the "Mare's Leg" in a holster patterned after "gunslinger" rigs then popular in movies and television. Randall can draw and fire his weapon with blazing speed. Three Mare's Legs were used in the series, differing in the shape of the lever and the barrel. Although Randall is a bounty hunter, he doesn't chase and capture only men on wanted posters. He also settles a family feud, frees unjustly jailed or sentenced men, helps an amnesia victim recover his memory, and finds missing husbands, sons, fathers, a fiancée, a suitor, a daughter who had been captured many years earlier by Indians, an Army deserter, a pet sheep, and even Santa Claus. This variety, as well as his pursuit of justice and not just money, contributed to the show's attraction and popularity. Except for a few episodes at the beginning of the series, Randall rode a horse named Ringo. Several episodes in 1960 included a sidekick named Jason Nichols, a deputy sheriff turned bounty hunter. He and Randall worked well together on-screen, sharing a chemistry audiences enjoyed. By the start of the third season, Nichols had been dropped. The episode called "The Partners", where Nichols killed three men that Randall felt could have been taken alive, is often considered the episode that broke up the partnership, although that was actually only the second episode with Wright King and long before the last episode he appeared in.
The series was filmed in black and white at the Selznick Studios which was acquired by Desilu Productions and produced by Four Star Television. A number of additional shooting locations were used, with the bulk of the outdoor action sequences shot on the famed Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., widely regarded as the most heavily filmed outdoor shooting location in the history of TV and the movies. A number of sets on the Republic Pictures backlot in Studio City, Calif., also appear in the series, notably the Western street and the Duchess Ranch set, which at the time of production on the series consisted mainly of a large barn, a main house and a bunkhouse.
The first season theme song was written and conducted by William Loose. It was replaced by a new theme titled "Wanted". This theme was used until the end of the series and was written and supervised by Herschel Burke Gilbert.
In 1987, New World Pictures adapted the series into a low-budget film ; Rutger Hauer played modern-day bounty hunter Nick Randall, Josh's grandson.
Home media
On June 7, 2005, New Line Home Video released season 1 of Wanted: Dead or Alive on DVD in Region 1. In 2007, BCI Eclipse acquired the distribution rights to the series and released the final two seasons on DVD. Season 2 was released on July 17, 2007, and season 3 on October 16, 2007. In June 2009, Mill Creek Entertainment acquired the rights to the series under license from copyright holderStudioCanal, and have subsequently re-released the first two seasons. On August 25, 2009, they released an 11-disc box set featuring all 94 episodes of the series on DVD.
