After the Golden Age of television, which featured original live dramas, Westerns dominated the early series. In fact, we've already seen one spanking from this genre, in Bat Masterson, and we're now going to examine three more, all from the long-running classic series Rawhide.
Rawhide was the continuing story of a long cattle drive and starred Eric Fleming as trail boss Gil Favor. Fleming had been a stage actor and might have gone on to a successful film career, but he was killed in a tragic accident while filming a movie in South America. The secondary lead was Favor's ramrod Rowdy Yates, played by a young and at the time little-known actor who did go on to a very successful film career: Clint Eastwood. Eastwood isn't the spanker in any of these scenes, but he is present in one of them.
The face that won Gil Favor's favor.
Let's begin with the last of the three chronologically, Damon's Road (Part 2), which first aired on November 30, 1964. This one has the best-known spankee guest star, Barbara Eden! Now every red-blooded American male spanko past a certain age has wanted to spank Eden ever since her days on I Dream of Jeannie, a rather silly sitcom that aired years after Rawhide and which was somewhat redeemed by expert performances from the four principal players: Eden (as Jeannie), Larry Hagman (as Tony), Bill Daily (as Roger), and Hayden Roarke (as Dr. Bellows). The combination of Eden's beauty, Jeannie's disobedience (which drove the plots by getting Tony in trouble with Dr. Bellows), and her sexy "arabian nights" sort of costume made her the subject of countless spanking fantasies.
Fritz Weaver as Damon.
Eden here plays Goldie, the girlfriend of the dishonest Damon (Fritz Weaver, left), who's trying to build a railroad line but whose workmen have deserted him. Weaver may be unfamiliar to younger viewers, but he was a popular guest star in the 60's and 70's, appearing on series like Twilight Zone. Needing replacements, Damon sets his sights on the drovers working for trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming).
Eric Fleming as Gil Favor, who's becoming suspicious that Goldie's attentions are not sincere.
Damon's idea is to have Goldie play up to Favor, thus enlisting his aid in controlling the drovers, whom he is going to trick into signing work contracts to avoid jail. She gets his attention without any trouble, but because she keeps drawing back every time he gets a little frisky he begins to grow suspicious.
Goldie conks Favor on the head with a blackjack and later throws his boots out the window, which the producers seem to have thought was terribly funny for some reason, then accuses him of abducting her. Unfortunately, despite having Fleming well-cast as the stern and handsome spanker and Eden excellent as the bad girl spankee, this is actually the weakest of the three scenes from Rawhide because everything about this episode was singularly inept.
"You're entirely mistaken, Gil." Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - what a very bad girl she is!
Damon's Road seems to have been intended as a light-hearted change of pace episode, perhaps modeled on such Western movies as North to Alaska, after more sober fare such as Incident at Dead Horse which revolved around a hanging. But neither the situation nor the characters are the least bit funny here - Damon and Goldie are scoundrels without charm - and padding the plot out to two hours just exposes its flimsiness. There were two scenes prior to the spanking scene as filmed where a spanking could and should have taken place, but instead they left us without a resolution of the situation between Favor and Goldie. That's what we meant by "padding" (when what was needed was "paddling"!). Returning to confront Goldie in her dressing room, Favor had a great opportunity to spank her; instead he just leaves her there tied up, and when she escapes he no longer has the option of putting her OTK and instead bends her over a bannister - a needlessly shaky position.
