TV SERIES · 1959– · USA
Rawhide
13 archived facts 2 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (13)
- #001
Clint Eastwood used the same gun and wore the same boots in Rawhide as he did in the "Spaghetti Westerns" A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He also wore the same boots in Unforgiven (1992).
- #002
When the series began, Clint Eastwood was 28 years old, but his character was supposed to be 19.
- #003
In 1966, Eric Fleming drowned while filming a movie in Peru. He was 41 years old.
- #004
Eric Fleming's face was shattered by a 200-pound steel block while he was in the Navy and was rebuilt through plastic surgery.
- #005
Wishbone's full name is George Washington Wishbone. Mushy's full name is Harkness Mushgrove III.
- #006
Although Eric Fleming was the star of the series, Clint Eastwood is prominently featured on recently released DVD packages because of his later fame.
- #007
By the mid-1960s, after making a name for himself with his first two westerns for Sergio Leone, Eastwood had begun to become a major movie star in Europe. To capitalize on this growing fame, the producers of Rawhide hastily edited two stories, "Incident of the Running Man" (from Season 3) and "The Backshooter" (from Season 7), together with some additional footage and released them in Europe as a feature film titled The Magnificent Stranger (1966) that highlighted Clint Eastwood's central role in its advertising. The film was shown in theaters in Italy in 1966 and in West Germany in 1967 before Eastwood became aware of it. Unhappy with what the producers had done, he contacted his lawyer, and as a result a cease-and-desist notice was sent to distributors, preventing the film from being shown anywhere else and pulling it from release. As of 2022, the film has not been shown anywhere or released on any home media since 1967.
- #008
From Season 8 onward, the lead character Gil Favor (played by Eric Fleming) was written out of the series. Clint Eastwood's character then took over the lead role. This caused a ratings decline and the series was cancelled. The reason for the decision is not clear, but in a later interview Eric Fleming joked that the studios did it to save themselves a million dollars. In reality, however, Fleming was not paid that amount.
- #009
The Mexican assistant was named "Hey Soos." The actual spelling of his name is "Jesus," which is pronounced "hey soos" in Spanish. If the character's name had been "Jesus," there would have been angry letters.
- #010
Clint Eastwood (Rowdy Yates) and George Kennedy (George Wales) appeared together in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Eiger Sanction (1975).
- #011
The series is based on cattle drives from Texas to Kansas in the 1800s.
- #012
The theme of this series was used in The Blues Brothers (1980).
- #013
The destination of the series' cattle drives was always Sedalia, Missouri, which the series portrayed as a popular destination for cattle drives. This is in fact based on historical truth. In the 1860s, Sedalia, Missouri was the terminus of the Missouri Pacific Railway. Cattle cars from Texas regularly came to Sedalia to deliver animals intended for rail transport to the slaughterhouses in Chicago. While each longhorn in the Llano Estacado was worth three to four dollars, a steer in Chicago was worth ten times that amount. Cattle owners could earn more profit through these cattle drives than from anywhere else. From 1866 to 1874, Sedalia was the railhead terminal for many cattle herds, and the pens covered a large area of the city. The city also experienced a population boom because of the economic opportunities opened up by rail transport. Several former soldiers from the American Civil War who had served in Sedalia's military garrisons during the war returned in the post-war period to settle there permanently.
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