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"Sing Me a Song of the Saddle," warbles Gene Autry in this, the premiere episode of his five-season-long television series. Autry was powerful enough in 1950 to disobey his feature film employer Columbia Pictures, who, in concert with the rest of the Hollywood establishment, looked upon television as the enemy. Produced by Autry's own Flying "A" Pictures and sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint Chewing Gum, the series premiered as a 30-minute show on the CBS network at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, July 23, 1950, and proved an immediate success. Not that the content differed much from Autry's feature films: a song or two, a fistfight, a chase sequence -- not necessarily in that order -- and a happy ending. Today, the brevity of the episodes actually works in their favor as opposed to the contemporary B-Western feature films that would stretch the same thin plot lines to an often-excruciating 60 minutes or so. In his initial television episode, foreman Gene Autry hires jockey Billy Stone (Jim Frasher) to work on a ranch belonging to "Sandy" Dawson (Barbara Stanley). But there are rustlers "in them thar hills" and naïve Sandy may have employed their leader, Rod Benton (George J. Lewis). The Gene Autry Show was produced at Pioneertown in California's Yucca Valley by Autry's own production company, Flying "A" Pictures, Inc.