Have Gun was created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow, two innovative ex-radio writers who had been tipped that CBS was in the market for a cowboy show with a "different" twist. They thereupon fashioned the first truly adult TV Western-a story centered on a cultured gunfighter who had named himself Paladin after the legendary officers of Charlemagne's medieval court. A gourmet and connoisseur of fine wine, fine women, and Ming Dynasty artifacts, Paladin would quote Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare with the same self-assurance that he brought to the subjugation of frontier evildoers.

     Because the concept revolves entirely around Paladin, its success hinged on the ability of the actor portraying him to, in creator Rolfe's words, "play a high-1.Q. gunslinger and get away with it" (see Ed­son). When Western movie icon Randolph Scott (the first choice for the role) was unavailable, the producers turned to Richard Boone who, they were overjoyed to find, actually could ride a horse. Boone's intimidating growl, prominent nose, and pock-marked visage physically distanced him from the standard fresh-faced cowboy hero in the same way that his character's cultured background distinguished him from those prairie-tutored rustics. After watching Paladin muse about Pliny and Aristotle, one television critic marveled, "Where else can you see a gunfight and absorb a classical education at the same time?" (see Edson).

     The show's identifying graphic was Paladin's calling card-bearing an image of the white knight chess piece and the inscription, "Have Gun-Will Travel ... Wire Paladin, San Francisco." The responses that these cards generated were brought to Paladin by the show's only other continuing character-an Asian hotel minion named Hey Boy (Hey Girl in 1960--61 when actress Lisa Lu temporarily replaced actor Kam Tong who had moved to another series). Without an ensemble cast, the entire weight of the series rested on Richard Boone's shoulders. Paladin's mannerisms and motivations had to be what propelled and interlocked the show's episodes from week to week and season to season.

     A descendent of Kentucky frontiersman Daniel Boone, method actor Richard successfully met this challenge both on camera and off, directing several dozen of the later episodes himself. The sophisticated elegance of his character also brought him more loyal fan mail from females than was received by any of his more photogenic cowboy contemporaries. The show's off-beat quality was further enhanced by its practice of using mainly new writers who had not been drilled in conventional saddle-soap storylines. Have Gun became an immediate hit, ranking among the top five shows in its first season, and was the consistent number three program from 1958 to 1961. By early 1962, however, Boone was growing weary of the project and felt it had run its course. "Every time you go to the well, it's a little further down," he lamented to a Newsweek reporter. "It's sad, like seeing a [Sugar] Ray Robinson after his best days are past. You wish he wouldn't fight any more, and you could just keep your memories."

     Have Gun's distinctive inversion of the television horse opera provided many memories to keep. In virtually every episode, Paladin would be seen in ruffled shirt, sipping a brandy or smoking a 58¢ cigar before or after embarking on his latest paid-in-advance as­signment to the hinterland. Like Captain Marlowe from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he was always the brooding observer as well as the valiant, if somewhat vexed, participant. Unlike the archetypal Western hero, Paladin wore black rather than white, complete with an ebony hat embellished by a band of silver conches and a holster embossed with a silver chess knight. He sported a villain's mustache and was not enamored of his horse, declining even to justify its existence with an appealing name. And he seemed to relish the adventures of the mind-his chess matches and library-far more than the frontier confrontations from which he drew his livelihood.

     As articulator of Have Gun's central premise, its theme song, "The Ballad of Paladin," became a success in its own right. Sung by the aptly-named Johnny Western and written jointly by Western, Boone, and series creator Rolfe, the tune was a hit single in the early 1960s. The first lines of the lyric encapsulated both the show's motivating graphic and the chivalric roots of its central character: "Have gun, will travel reads the card of a man, A knight without armor in a savage land."

     Occasionally, this unshielded self-sufficiency would cause Paladin (again like Conrad's Marlowe) to tum on his employers when he determined them to be the unjust party. For a nation that, in 1957, was just becoming politically aware of cowering conformity in­ justices, this may have been Have Gun's most potent, if most understated, element.