Who Shot the Sheriff?: The Rise and Fall of the Television Western

by J. Fred MacDonald

This intriguing book is a study of the rise and fall of an American genre of entertainment and communication whose symbols and rhetoric helped define American society for decades. Flourishing in the 1950s and 1960s, the television Western has deteriorated to the point where it is now irrelevant and meaningless. Tracing the evolution of the Western from the late 1940s to the 1980s, the author ties the genre to the political innocence and confidence of the Cold War years and suggests that the social reevaluations that began in the 1960s undermined the believability of Westerns and their entertainment value. Seeking to understand the demise of the TV Western, the book offers an analysis of the interrelationships between popular culture, television, and sociopolitical development in the United States during the past four decades.

172 pages, Hardcover

First published December 9, 1986