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The Deputy Facts and Trivia
The Deputy is a 1959-1961 half-hour NBC western series featuring Henry Fonda as Marshal Simon Fry of the Arizona Territory and Allen Case as Deputy Clay McCord.

# Henry Fonda's first television series was this western, set in the Arizona territory in 1880 (as Fonda's character often said during an opening narration on many episodes.)

*Fonda's sequences were shot all at once each season so that he would be free the rest of the year to pursue film and theater work.

# An album of songs sung by Allen Case titled "The Deputy Sings" was released in 1960.

# The following two episodes have fallen into the public domain: "The Deputy: The Hard Decision (#2.18)" (1961) and "The Deputy: The Return of Widow Brown (#2.30)" (1961).

The Deputy (1959-1961) - Starring Henry Fonda DVD
 

Production

Fonda narrated most episodes and appeared briefly at the beginnings and ends, playing the lead in only six episodes in the first season and thirteen in the second. Usually he would give his deputy the assignment then more or less thank him afterward at the episode's conclusion. As Fred MacMurray later did while shooting the sitcom series My Three Sons, Fonda shot all his work at once to leave himself free for other projects. The difference in quality between Fonda's episodes and Case's was often cited by both critics at the time and Fonda himself in later interviews. Fonda wore a growth of stubble on his face as Fry, decades before the Sonny Crockett character in Miami Vice did the same and attracted so much attention that special razors were marketed to achieve that look.

The series was created by Norman Lear, who would go on to develop some of the biggest TV comedy hits of the 1970s, like All in the Family, Sanford and Son and Maude. The show was also produced by Revue Studios, and featured a high-tuned jazz guitar score by Jack Marshall, who later composed The Munsters theme.

Guest actors appearing in the series included Chris Alcaide, Roxane Berard, Dennis Cross, Francis De Sales, Clu Gulager, Wallace Ford, Ron Hayes, Gregg Palmer, Tyler McVey, Denver Pyle, Vito Scotti, Quintin Sondergaard, and Gary Vinson. The format of the half hour show with its older professional lawman and his young assistant was similar to Warner Brothers Television's Lawman.

The Deputy aired at 9 p.m. Eastern on Saturday. In its first year, it followed NBC's short-lived adventure series, The Man and the Challenge, starring, among others, George Nader and Jack Ging. It faced competition from Mr. Lucky on CBS and from The Lawrence Welk Show on ABC. In the second season, CBS dropped Mr. Lucky, and The Deputy faced competition from the second half of Checkmate, co-starring Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot, and Doug McClure.

Four years after The Deputy, Case co-starred for a season as Frank James with Christopher Jones in the title role of ABC's The Legend of Jesse James.