User Reviews

A great monologue about the horror that is war (in this case Connors' killing a soldier at Gettysburg) by Chuck Connors highlights this fine episode of The Rifleman, "Face of Yesterday". It concerns a bitter ole drunk named Hank Clay (the marvelous character actor, John Anderson) who coerces innocent men into pulling their gun against his step son, Simon (Ben Cooper), a marvel at the quick draw. Simon does this for his father, who eggs on others to pull, and has been the victor up until before Lucas (Chuck Connors) and his boy, Mark (Johnny Crawford) arrive in town. Marshal Micah (veteran western supporting actor, Paul Fix) informs Lucas that Hank goads men into gunfights with Simon, warning him that it is possible he could be the next target. Sure enough, Hank eyes Lucas and knows his rep as an expert with a rifle, so the boozing lush confronts him aggressively in a goods store, grabbing up Mark (a no-no) when the two get in each other's way, threatening to strike him. That incites Lucas to grab up Hank, "encouraging" him not to push him to anger, and especially lets him know that touching his boy is not acceptable. So Hank runs to get Simon, and when Lucas realizes that this is the son of a soldier in Gettysburg he killed, he's mortified and all the memory of that fateful day rushes back. Lucas doesn't continue with the idea of accepting a gunfight with Simon; instead, he has to return to a stable to revisit the picture with the soldier's (a spitting image of his father) family, one he has kept since Gettysburg as a reminder. Connors does a swell job of communicating to us just what that first kill felt like and how seeing a face from the past (a ghost if there ever was one considering he looks identical to his father) brings all the "ghosts of Gettysburg" to the surface. I think the key to this episode's success is that monologue. Connors is moving but also key to its power is Fix, as Micah, having to work as a voice of reason and counterbalance to Lucas' shaming and blaming himself for perhaps prematurely killing "an enemy soldier". It is the kind of dialogue that deposits the "there are no winners in war" statement of anti-war sentiment where those that live through it are never the same. Lucas has lived on but to totally forget is impossible. Lucas' decision to end Hank's use of Simon in a gunfight is inspired and works as a type of "righted wrong". If anything, Hank is forced to reveal why he wanted Simon to meet his end, and it does involve the inability to compete with the love for a dead man that has never faded. Lucas facing the wife of the man he killed is a tough task few, if any, would want to deal with. Sterling example of a debt repaid and one man's having to confront that past in order to move on with his future.