8 Things You Didn’t Know About Classic Western TV Show ‘Death Valley Days’

DEATH VALLEY DAYS, Ronald Reagan, 'Tribute To a Dog,' (Season 13, Episode 9, aired December 24, 1964), 1952-1975 — Everett Collection

Though it might not have the name recognition of Gunsmoke, another 1950s-era TV show also began its life as a radio drama and went on to become one of the longest running Westerns in pop culture. That was Death Valley Days, which first aired on radio nearly 100 years ago, from 1930 and 1951 and on TV from 1952 to 1970.

Even after the syndicated anthology stopped filming new stories, reruns aired with new introductions (and a new host, as you’ll see below) until August 1, 1975. Now that Death Valley Days has been off the air for 50 years, though, scope out trivia about the production below.

1 A borax company came up with the premise

Hoping to promote its 20 Mule Team Borax brand of household cleaners, Pacific Coast Borax Company sought to sponsor a Western radio show and asked advertising agency McCann Erickson to develop it. McCann Erickson hired radio writer Ruth Woodman, who visited Death Valley every summer for 14 years to boost her knowledge of the area, according to the 20 Mule Team Borax website.

Death Valley Days became a TV show in 1950, with its intro depicting a team of 20 mules crossing a desert plain.

2Death Valley Days marked Ronald Reagan’s last time acting on screen

Not only did Ronald Reagan host Death Valley Days for a time, he also acted in four installments: Season 13’s “Tribute to the Dog” and “No Gun Behind His Badge” and Season 14’s “No Place for a Lady” and a “A City Is Born.” Those performances became Reagan’s final onscreen acting roles, as he was elected governor of California in 1966 and U.S. president in 1980.

In fact, when Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 1976 presidential election, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that both his movies and reruns of Death Valley Days were subject to the equal time rule, as the Associated Press reported at the time.

3 Gene Autry’s production company was behind the show

Gene Autry’s Flying A Productions was involved with the Death Valley Days TV show, according to Variety. The company also produced the TV shows The Gene Autry Show and Buffalo Bill Jr.

“Why should people pay money to see in the movies what they could see free at home?” the Singing Cowboy asked in 1950 as he formed the production company, perVariety.

4 Merle Haggard introduced reruns

Every episode featured an introduction by a host — originally actor Stanley Andrews in character as The Old Ranger. Then Reagan played emcee, followed by The Detectives’ Robert Taylor and Tales of Wells Fargo’s Dale Robertson.

The show returned in reruns in 1975, with country-music star Merle Haggard providing new introductions.

5 The same TV show ran under different titles, with different hosts

TV executives repackaged Death Valley Days episodes under different titles, including Frontier Adventure (with Robertson again serving as host), Call of the West (hosted by John Payne), The Pioneers (Will Rogers Jr.), Trails West (Ray Milland), and Western Star Theatre (Rory Calhoun), according to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows.

6 Then-unknowns Clint Eastwood and Angie Dickinson acted on the show

Before he was a well-known star and director of Western films, Clint Eastwood played the character John Lucas in the Death Valley Days Season 5 episode “The Last Letter.” That installment aired in 1956; Eastwood had made his screen debut in an uncredited Revenge of the Creature role just a year earlier.

Angie Dickinson, later known as TV’s Police Woman, played three different characters in three different Death Valley Days episodes in 1954. Those appearances marked Dickinson’s first time playing named characters on screen. Her only credited screen appearance before then had her playing an unnamed receptionist in an episode of The Mickey Rooney Show.

7 It was nominated in the now-defunct Best Western or Adventure Series Emmy category

DEATH VALLEY DAYS, Don Haggerty, Tom Skerritt, ('Honor The Name Dennis Driscoll,' October 1, 1964), 1952-1975

Everett Collection

At the 1955 Primetime Emmy Awards, Death Valley Days was nominated for Best Western or Adventure Series but lost the race to Stories of the Century. The other programs in the running that year were Annie Oakley, The Roy Rogers Show, and Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok.

1955 was the first and last year that category was included at the Emmys, but a Best Western category made a one-off appearance in 1959.

8 Episodes have been preserved and scanned in 4K

In the 2010s, Rio Tinto — the parent company of what was Pacific Coast Borax Company — tasked the restoration company Cinelicious to restore more than 450 episodes of Death Valley Days and scan those episodes in 4K. For Rio Tinto, the restoration was “very much about their corporate legacy and the series’ important part in television history,” Steve Wystrach, who was supervising the process as a manager of the U.S. Borax Film Archives, told Post Magazine at the time. “It’s also about American history, since every episode is based on a factual event.”