Late last week TVShowsOnDVD.com reported that Timeless Media Group would be releasing a pair of relatively obscure westerns (both with unaired episodes) in April. Yesterday came the news that Timeless plans to release yet another NBC western yet another obscure western later this year. Frontier Circus ran for 26 episodes during the 1961-1962 season on CBS.
The series starred Chill Wills, John Derek and Richard Jaeckel as the owners and operators of a circus traveling the Midwest in the late 1880s, performing in a new town each week. Guest stars included Elizabeth Montgomery, Don Haggerty, Eddie Albert, Vera Miles, Dick York, Claude Akins, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Mickey Rooney. The complete series comes out on April 20th.
“FRONTIER CIRCUS”, which, I believe, was a slight variation of “WAGON TRAIN”, actually aired on CBS’ Thursday night schedule in the 1961-’62 season- originally at 7:30pm(et), then moved back a half-hour to 8pm in February for the remainder of the season, before being cancelled.
The series was part of an MCA/Revue “package deal” with the network to virtuallly program an entire evening’s schedule (as they did more succesfully on NBC). They produced “FRONTIER CIRCUS” [7:30], “THE {NEW} BOB CUMMINGS SHOW” [8:30, although it briefly flipped its time with the former in February], and “THE INVESTIGATORS” [9:00]; “CBS REPORTS”, produced by CBS News, filled the remainder of the Thursday night schedule at 10. However, stiff competition from NBC {“DR. KILDARE”, “HAZEL”} and ABC {“THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET”, “THE DONNA REED SHOW”, “THE REAL MCCOYS”, “MY THREE SONS”} forced two of the MCA-produced series off the air by mid-season: only “FRONTIER CIRCUS” survived the entire season. Its 26 black and white episodes were syndicated by MCA during the ’60s, but with the advent of color, it disappeared from local stations by the early ’70s, and “deposited into the vault”.
Now, it gets another chance to be “rediscovered”…
Again, “FRONTIER CIRCUS” was originally telecast on CBS- NOT “NBC”. NBC/Universal may own the series, but it did not appear on NBC!