If you were in grade school around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of manned powered flight, you may have had a Daisy air rifle, but every Western character you watched in the movies or on TV or read about in the comic books, with the exception of Lash LaRue, carried one or two Colt single action revolvers. Heck, they even relied entirely upon them in those fictional extended gunfights when a rifle, or at least a carbine, would have served them a lot better.
That continued well into the 1960s and beyond. If one were to draw conclusions from what was shown on the television screen, one would believe that no one but Colt sold a noticeable number of revolvers in the "old west". Many of us became enamored by those Colt SAAs and the "Frontier Six Shooters." We became familiar with the way they worked, with the grip, and with the balance. That created a demand that resulted in Bill Ruger's great innovations, in the Great Westerns, and in Colt's return to production.
But in reality, there were other large revolvers available back in the day. We recently had a thread here on the Remington 1875. And there were the top-break Smiths.
A little research shows that Buffalo Bill Cody, Virgil Earp, Bob Ford, Pat Garret, John Wesley Hardin, Frank and Jesse James, Charlie Pitts, Bill Tilghman, and Cole and Jim Younger carried Smiths at one time or another, along with many Wells Fargo drivers and guards.
I cannot help but wonder whether our perceptions and the demand for period revolvers might have been different had Hollywood portrayed a somewhat more balanced picture of revolver preferences in the old west.
Of course, we would never see Alan Ladd fanning a Schofield, and there were practical reasons for selecting one over the other.
But the real question in my mind is, might some of us have developed the same affinity, for lack of a better word, for the appearance, workings, grip, and balance of a top-break Smith and Wesson as we have for the Colt Model P, had our screen heroes carried them?
That continued well into the 1960s and beyond. If one were to draw conclusions from what was shown on the television screen, one would believe that no one but Colt sold a noticeable number of revolvers in the "old west". Many of us became enamored by those Colt SAAs and the "Frontier Six Shooters." We became familiar with the way they worked, with the grip, and with the balance. That created a demand that resulted in Bill Ruger's great innovations, in the Great Westerns, and in Colt's return to production.
But in reality, there were other large revolvers available back in the day. We recently had a thread here on the Remington 1875. And there were the top-break Smiths.
A little research shows that Buffalo Bill Cody, Virgil Earp, Bob Ford, Pat Garret, John Wesley Hardin, Frank and Jesse James, Charlie Pitts, Bill Tilghman, and Cole and Jim Younger carried Smiths at one time or another, along with many Wells Fargo drivers and guards.
I cannot help but wonder whether our perceptions and the demand for period revolvers might have been different had Hollywood portrayed a somewhat more balanced picture of revolver preferences in the old west.
Of course, we would never see Alan Ladd fanning a Schofield, and there were practical reasons for selecting one over the other.
But the real question in my mind is, might some of us have developed the same affinity, for lack of a better word, for the appearance, workings, grip, and balance of a top-break Smith and Wesson as we have for the Colt Model P, had our screen heroes carried them?
