Each episode runs nearly fifty minutes, and the transitions planned for its commercial punctuations are evident. (After his death, in January, 1963, other stars took his place “The Losers” is hosted by Robert Mitchum). Whereas another series of the time, “The Barbara Stanwyck Show,” featured its eponymous star in every single episode, Powell acted in only a handful of episodes of “The Dick Powell Show.” Mostly he hosted them, delivering an introduction to the camera. Powell, who rose to stardom in film musicals of the thirties and transitioned to being a film-noir headliner in the mid-forties, launched his own production company in the fifties. (The most prominent of these shows was “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” which ran for ten years.) (Thanks to the consummate cinephile Howard Salen, long of Video Room, for the heads-up.) This kind of show had become popular in the mid-fifties, a way of bringing the allure of Hollywood (with the names of stars in the title) to the small screen, and a way for Hollywood actors and directors to keep busy at a time when the movie business, under the onslaught of television, was in a downturn. Ulmer’s “ The Naked Dawn,” Allan Dwan’s “ The River’s Edge,” Michael Cimino’s “ Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” and Clint Eastwood’s “Bronco Billy.” And the past decade has brought David Lowery’s “ Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” Chloé Zhao’s “ The Rider,” and, of course, Jordan Peele’s “ Nope.” Add one to this list: “ The Losers,” a 1963 film directed and co-written by Sam Peckinpah, one of the masters of the Western, famous for films such as “ The Wild Bunch” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.” Yet “The Losers” is barely known and comes from an unlikely source: it was made for television, as part of “ The Dick Powell Show,” an anthology series of dramas and comedies, which ran for two seasons, from 1961 to 1963 a trove of the show’s episodes are streaming on YouTube. Modern-day Westerns-that is, films that use the genre’s tropes and traditions but are set in the present-have a noble history.
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