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Special Report
From Black List to Green Wood
Written by exiled leftists, the 1950s Robin Hood television series turns out to have been much more freedom loving and suspicious of collectivism than they knew.
I think it was Thursdays, but it might have been Tuesdays. I’m pretty sure the day started with a T.
It was the best day of the week that year in elementary school for me, because we could get optional chocolate milk with our school lunch, and Robin Hood was on TV in the evening.
Loved that show — the swashbuckling adventures of Robin (Richard Greene), Little John (Archie Duncan), Maid Marian (Bernadette O’Farrell, later Patricia Driscoll), and Friar Tuck (Alexander Gauge), battling the corrupt (but always well dressed) Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Wheatley), week after week. I have no doubt it was that program that instilled in me the love for things medieval that motivates me to dress up as a Viking reenactor on weekends, even at my age.
My adult experiences with rediscovering beloved childhood television programs have mostly been disappointing. When I get a chance to see an episode (or, worse still, buy the DVD set), I can usually expect a rude collision with shoddy writing, wooden acting, and cheap costumes and sets.
So it was with some misgivings that I approached the complete collection of The Adventures of Robin Hood. But it was on sale at a very low price at my local used book store, and I took the chance.
I was pleasantly surprised. The acting is good, the costumes not bad, and the sets (by artistic director Peter Proud) were groundbreaking, achieving an illusion of variety on a limited budget.
Still, for any conservative fan of this series, there must always be the problem of the Legend of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Not the original legend of “Bold Robin” based on English ballads, but the (factual) political legend of how the show came to be written.
Producer Hannah Weinstein was an avowed leftist, and made a point of hiring expatriate American writers, notably several members of the Hollywood Ten, like Ring Lardner, Jr. These writers, living in England where the show was filmed, worked under pseudonyms. They were happy to relate, in later years, how they managed to smuggle redistributionist propaganda into American homes during the Eisenhower years.
All true.
And yet, my own impression is that — at least a lot of the time — the stories they wrote did not bear out their principles nearly so well as they thought.
The very first episode, “The Coming of Robin Hood,” tells how Robin of Locksley — no member of the proletariat, but lord of an estate — comes home to find his property unjustly confiscated by the authorities. His resistance to this injustice makes him an outlaw, and much is made of the fact that the government has no right to steal private property.
That’s not what I’d call a good start for a series promoting Collectivism.
An episode called “The Salt King” in Season Three concerns a nobleman who holds a monopoly on the sale of salt in Nottinghamshire. His underhanded scheme to decrease supplies and raise prices is the stuff that Progressive propaganda is made of, I’ll admit. But, interestingly, the solution Robin and his friends come up with involves not the nationalization of the salt wells, but the threat of competition, when the individual landowners convince the monopolist that they’ve found salt on their own lands.
Another interesting episode from Season Three is “One Man’s Meat,” in which a nobleman with nutritional theories tries to force his servants and serfs to live on a miracle diet composed of nuts and roots. Modern leftists, many of whom are vegetarians, will probably be distressed to see Robin smuggling meat in to the suffering castle occupants. He then proves by means of a blind study (apparently having invented modern science single-handedly) that the nobleman’s food is healthy for pigs.
And what kind of government is more likely to force dietary laws on its citizens, anyway? Capitalist or Communist?
About the Author
Lars Walker is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Hailstone Mountain.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (40) | Leave a comment
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Robbins Mitchell| 10.25.11 @ 6:31AM
It showed on Friday nights here in the US...on NBC if memory serves...Richard Greene would fire an arrow into a stout English oak and 'The Adventures of Robin Hood" would come spinning out of the tree....then he would fire another arrow and when it hit mark a bottle of Wildroot Cream Oil Hair Tonic came spinning out to announce the sponsor....the episodes always held up law and order and the Crown and the Church and most importantly....the English sense of fair play....Donald Pleasance was excellent as the dastardly Prince John
Herb| 10.25.11 @ 7:29AM
I remember those whirling logos as the arrows struck the tree. And the brass fanfares as one mounted group or another rode out of the forest.
"The Adventures of William Tell" is another medieval TV tale I'd like to see on DVD. It featured improved technology (crossbows) and a Teutonic bad guy (Gessler).
JimH| 10.25.11 @ 8:31AM
Crossbows are not necessarily better. They don't require the training of a longbow but they can't be fired as rapidly. I still remember the William Tell theme. BTW, for old TV fans, my satellite TV has Angel2 and recently they have started showing The Lone Ranger and Sgt Preston. I’ll always remember my father referring to our mutt as Yukon King.
Bill| 10.25.11 @ 9:12AM
"Well King, this case is closed."
Harry the Horrible| 10.25.11 @ 10:14AM
"To train a archer, start with his grandfather."
Crossbows, like muskets, allowed a soldier to be combat effective with minimum training. You could produce effective crossbowmen faster than archers.
RT| 10.25.11 @ 8:14AM
It sounds like the leftists director/producer were too stupid to realize what they were writing.
Fyi, a series I've seen lately on the retro tv station was Daniel Boone. It proved to be a lot better than I expected.
Moe Blotz| 10.25.11 @ 8:28AM
Robin Hood is on Retro via WFMZ in Allentown, PA as well.
DaveD| 10.25.11 @ 8:49AM
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood
Bill| 10.25.11 @ 9:11AM
You beat me to it!
JimH| 10.25.11 @ 1:18PM
I’m old enough to remember there was a Robin Hood show, but not much about it. Seeing the words to the song here makes me realize that the Monty Python Dennis Moore sketch must have been a parody of the show; Especially considering the punch line: This redistribution of the wealth is more complicated than I thought.
Herb| 10.25.11 @ 2:55PM
"Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the night,
"Soon every lupin in the land will be in his mighty hand,
"He steals them from the rich, and gives them to the poor,
"Mr. Moore.....lupin-donor..... extraor.........dinary!"
Joe Redfield| 10.25.11 @ 10:20PM
And don't forget the punch line: "Hmm...This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought."
Joe Redfield| 10.25.11 @ 10:22PM
One of these days I'm going to start reading previous comments before making one myself.
Ammo Guy| 10.25.11 @ 1:32PM
Man, I loved that theme song and it still runs thru my mind from time to time. I even had the 45 RPM disc when I was a tyke until I broke it thru overuse - it was hard as a rock, not flexible plastic like later LPs. And, apropos of Herb's comment above, I also enjoyed William Tell's theme song, which I think went something like this:
"Marching behind William Tell, we know well our cause it is just"
Then something about fighting to be free, but my memory fails me again…
Frank Drackman| 10.25.11 @ 9:42AM
the "MeTV" network has reruns of the original "Gunsmoke", the 30 minute ones in B&W with Chester instead of that waterhead Festus, and a surprisingly hot Miss Kitty...
Jeez-us, Matt kicks butt, unlike the color hour long episodes where the title sequence was the highpoint...
One episode he thrashes a shady gunman in the first scene and spends the rest of the episode intimidating the poor guy to leave town, almost felt sorry for him...
Frank
Ed| 10.25.11 @ 11:44AM
Another blast from the past is "The Rat Patrol".
It was a 60's TV series about the exploits of a fictional force of American-British desert raiders who were based on the British Army's SAS-Long Range Desert Group in North Africa during WWII.
About half of the plots were absurd, and were written by the generalist scriptwriters at the time who also wrote for Westerns, detective shows, and sci-fi series. But the other half were pretty good, considering that the show had a half-hour format.
Today, Special Forces and SAS troops in Afghanistan and Iraq use modern, open air vehicles that sprout a wide variety of machine guns, grenade launchers, and Javelin missiles. For a kid growing up in the 60's, this show was very cool.
albert constantine jr.| 10.25.11 @ 7:54PM
Troy, Moffitt, Hitchcock and Pettigrew Tully, with the Nazi Dietrich as their adversary, I seem to recall from my lunchbox back in 1967. I seem to also remember that Christopher George's Sgt. Troy must've earned at least 6 Purple Hearts from shoulder wounds.
Deborah| 10.27.11 @ 2:30PM
I loved "The Rat Patrol." The boxed DVD set is available at Amazon (which I keep showing to my husband. If he doesn't get it for me this year, I'm going to buy it myself :)
Petronius| 10.25.11 @ 11:57AM
Haven't I seen you at Pennsic?
No game tonight. My late feature will be The Flame and the Arrow. My book at bedtime is 1636 by Eric Flint.
Lars Walker | 10.25.11 @ 12:50PM
Petronius, whom are you addressing? If it's me, no, I've never been to Pennsic, though my friend Michael Z. Williamson keeps telling me I should go.
Petronius| 10.25.11 @ 7:01PM
Sorry
Do you belong to Vikings NA?
Lars Walker | 10.25.11 @ 8:22PM
No, an independent group affiliated with the Sons of Norway.
JimH| 10.26.11 @ 10:03AM
As they sang in Bay Ridge.. 10,000 Swedes were chased through the weeds by one sick Norwegian.
Occam's Tool| 10.25.11 @ 9:59PM
The great Michael Z Williamson, military SF writer extraordinaire? (Although Tom Kratman IS better.)
Lars Walker | 10.25.11 @ 10:01PM
Yes. I used to be a Baen author too.
Jim Woodward| 10.25.11 @ 12:19PM
Of couse there was also " Have Gun, Will Travel ".
Paladin, philosophy and poetry.
JimH| 10.25.11 @ 1:22PM
It's on every nigh on Encore Westerns. The original most interesting man in the world.
Resistanceisfutile| 10.25.11 @ 4:49PM
Recall only the opening music and then the arrow whishing thru the air. I want to comment on the Errol Flynn movie tho. As I recall, when Robin first meets Marian, he takes her into the forest and shows her all the poor people; looked like stock footage from some documentary of the depression. I don't know the players, but I trow that the writers were at least pink!
Stan Redmond| 10.25.11 @ 5:22PM
Now we have Robin Fed and Friar Bawney. Stealing from the middle class taxpayer to give to the super politically connected too big to fail friends to save the middle class taxpayer from too big to fail evild-oers.
My how we have evolved.
al bundhii| 10.25.11 @ 6:38PM
I believe that if I think nice thoughts very intensely I will be watching one of those new old-TV channels some night and Sugar Foot--followed by Whirly Birds, and then The Nurses-- will come onscreen. And if The Millionaire would begin to be broadcast I could faint in retrojoy.
Occam's Tool| 10.25.11 @ 10:00PM
I wish the SyFy channel would bring back MST3K...
Lars Walker | 10.25.11 @ 10:02PM
Don't we all.
marshcope| 10.25.11 @ 10:34PM
All the crashing illusions I am being faced with in my old age, and now I find that one of my favorite shows of the (19)50s was written by exiled American Communists. One of the recurring themes of the Robin Hood legend was that when good King Richard would come back to England he was sweep away the evil deeds of Prince John and the mean Sheriff. Were the Reds writing the Robin Hood TV show thinking of some lion hearted hero of the recent past; FDR, Lenin, Henry Wallace?
Lars Walker | 10.25.11 @ 10:56PM
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what they meant.
marshcope| 10.25.11 @ 10:35PM
'was sweep away" should be "would sweep away"
POST American| 10.25.11 @ 10:37PM
-----And speaking of entertainment --media and
Hollywood-----
One and all OBSERVE, Hollywood has NOT ONLY
been obediently producing predictive programming for
cultural destruction, tech worship and EUGENICS
---for 4 decades ----and REFUSED
ANY address of the awesome
HALOCAUST being covered up
across the Pacific ---------------BUT
has 'mysteriously overlooked' the 20th
---30th-------40th-------50th---------and NOW
60th Anniversaries of the awesomely
relevant, yet unfolding, Globalism and
EUGENICS 'unfriendly'
--------------------KOREAN WAR----------------------
Deborah| 10.27.11 @ 2:42PM
I never saw "Robin Hood" the television show. Please, can someone tell me what years it was broadcasted? My family did not get a television set until the late 50s, and my little west Texas town only received signals from two television stations (from Sweetwater and Abilene).
A great article, Lars. It makes me want to buy the collection, even knowing that some of the recordings are messed up.
Lars Walker | 10.29.11 @ 10:39PM
The Adventures of Robin Hood ran in original episodes from 1955 to 1959. And in re-runs long after that.
Vincent Rigdon| 10.27.11 @ 4:10PM
Thanks so much, Lars! I have found that Netflix has LOTS of old series on DVD. (Currently watching my way thru Perry Mason. I, too remember looking forward to "Robin Hood" after grade school. Another show about pirates on another weekday. The most painful of all: "Wildroot Cream Oil!" Would that I had a use for the stuff today!