Publicity photograph for The
Monroes (© Milt Rosen/Qualis Productions/20th Century Fox-Television
– reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
It's always a great feeling when the lost
is found, when a mystery is solved – and especially so when the lost had been
lost, and the mystery concerning it unresolved, for over 40 years.
Right from a very early age, I had always
been fascinated by mysterious and mythological creatures, making my eventual
cryptozoological career little short of inevitable. And so it was that a
certain episode of a Western show that my family and I viewed one Sunday
afternoon on British television during the mid-1960s, when I was around six
years old, engaged my attention to a far greater degree than might otherwise
have been expected, given the fact that, normally, the Western genre held
little if any interest for me.
The episode in question concerned the stalking
of a family living alone in the American wilds a century or so previously, by a
mystifying but greatly-feared beast of such rapacious, belligerent, yet elusive
nature that it was referred to superstitiously by the local Native American
people as a devil (a name that, as far as I could recall, also featured in the
title of this episode). They also called it by another, more exotic-sounding
name, and, as in all the best suspense movies, the creature itself was never
seen, until the very end. Instead, the viewer had to be content with savage
growls, rustles in the undergrowth, and off-screen activity.
Finally, the 'devil' was lured close enough
to be shot, and at the denouement it was revealed to be an unexpectedly large
specimen of a creature not generally encountered in those parts. But what
exactly was that creature? Only at the end was its English name finally given,
and it proved to be a species that, as a young child, I had never heard of
before – the wolverine.
Known scientifically as Gulo gulo,
native to northern North America and also to northern Europe and northernmost
Asia, the wolverine or glutton is the largest living terrestrial member of the
mustelid family, growing to the size of a small bear. Moreover, it is
infamously ferocious, powerful, intelligent, and tenacious, making it one of
the most feared species of mammal throughout its range. Little wonder, then,
that in the episode it had been referred to by the native people as a devil.
This particular programme had a strong
impact on me, as I had been enthralled waiting to discover what the mystery
beast in it was, and I can remember watching it avidly a second time a couple
of years or so later when the series in which it appeared was repeated on
television (even though I now knew the creature's identity beforehand), but
after that, nothing. As far as I am aware, neither the entire series nor this particular
episode from it was ever broadcast on British television again. But what was
the series?
The years passed by, and despite
remembering the wolverine episode in great detail, I never could recall the
name of the series itself, and whenever memories of the episode periodically
came to mind I always promised myself that I'd pursue this intriguing little
mystery, but somehow I never did. Eventually, even the wolverine episode faded in
my recollection until it became little more than a hazy, half-forgotten dream.
And although I would often flick through books on vintage television, I never
obtained any clues as to its series' identity.
A wolverine (public domain)
Just like its subject, however, the
wolverine episode was nothing if not tenacious, and about 8 years ago it came to
mind yet again – but now, armed with the vast research power of the internet, I
decided that the time had come to track down this cryptozoological tele-phantom
once and for all. I began my search on YouTube, in the hope that the episode,
or at least an excerpt or two from it, had been posted there. I knew that I
could still remember enough details to be able to recognise it, should it be
there. But despite using a variety of key words – 'Western', 'television', 'wolverine',
'devil', '1960s' – nothing promising came up.
So I turned my attention to Google, and
used the same key words in its search engine. After a time, I thought I'd
discovered it, but it was a false lead. Google had turned up an episode from
1963 called 'The Wolverine' in a Canadian TV series entitled The Forest Rangers, in which a ferocious
wolverine turns up in Indian River (the fictional location where this series
was set), killing all the livestock there. This plotline certainly compared
closely with the programme that I had seen, and the creature was even referred
to in it by the same exotic name that I now recalled from 'my' episode –
carcajou, an Ojibway name. But when I researched The Forest Rangers series, I discovered that its rangers-focused
storylines didn't accord at all with those of the series that I had viewed all
those years ago. Exit The Forest Rangers.
Happily, however, my continued Googling did
finally achieve the long-awaited success that I had been hoping for, because
there, at last, on my computer screen, was the answer. The series, created by Milt
Rosen and first broadcast in 1966, was entitled The Monroes, which was produced by Qualis in association with 20th
Century Fox-Television, and included Michael Anderson Jr and Barbara Hershey (playing
the parent-substitute figures of big brother Clay and sister Kathy) among its
stars. It centred around the story of
five orphans (Clay, Kathy, twins Jefferson and Fenimore, and Amy, aged from 18
down to 6 years of age) trying to survive in 1876 as a family on the frontier
in the area around what is now Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyoming,
after their father and mother had drowned.
Running
for just a single season, 'The Monroes' consisted of 26 episodes – the
fourth of which, entitled 'The Forest Devil', was the wolverine episode that
had played such a key role in kindling my interest in cryptozoology as a
youngster and had afterwards teased and tantalised my mind for over four
decades.
And as if my solving this longstanding
mystery from my childhood were not satisfying enough, I then discovered that
the entire episode had actually been uploaded on YouTube (click here to view it). Needless to say, and for the
first time since the mid-1960s, I duly sat back and watched 'The Forest Devil'
– an experience made even more memorable this time by being able to view it in
colour. For just like so many other families in Britain at that time, we'd only
owned a black-and-white television during the 1960s, so until now I'd never
seen this programme in colour.
Returning when an adult to a television
show, a book, or even a location that had been so appealing as a child does not
always live up to expectations, with the long-treasured memory of it sometimes
proving to have been much more special than the reality. However, I'm happy to
report that in the case of 'The Forest Devil', it was every bit as thrilling
and enjoyable now, even in these jaded 21st-Century times, as it had
been for me back in the 1960s, when everything was still bright and fresh and
new and exciting.
It also showed me that miracles, even if
they are only very minor, personal ones, do indeed still happen in this mundane
old world of ours. And that is something else well worth treasuring.
To view a complete listing of all of my
Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly
accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
Front cover of a Dell comic book of The Monroes (© Dell/Milt Rosen/Qualis Productions/20th
Century Fox-Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use
basis for educational/review purposes only)
