The Tall Man (TV series)

The Tall Man
Clu Gulager as Billy the Kid and Marianna Hill as his sweetheart, Rita
Genre	Western
Written by	Arthur Browne, Jr. D. C. Fontana David Lang Paul King Samuel A. Peeples Frank Price Barry Shipman
Directed by	Tay Garnett Sidney Lanfield Sydney Pollack Lesley Selander William Witney
Starring	Barry Sullivan Clu Gulager
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	75
Production
Executive producer(s)	Nat Holt
Producer(s)	Edward Montagne Samuel A. Peeples Frank Price
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Lincoln Country Production Company Revue Studios
Distributor	Universal Television NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	NBC
Picture format	Black-and-white
Audio format	Monaural
Original release	September 10, 1960 (1960-09-10) – May 26, 1962 (1962-05-26)

The Tall Man is a half-hour American western television series about Sheriff Pat Garrett and the gunfighter Billy the Kid that aired seventy-five episodes on NBC from 1960 to 1962, filmed by Revue Productions. It was also theatrically released and dubbed in North Korea in the 1960s.

The Tall Man stars 6'3" Barry Sullivan as Sheriff Pat Garrett, and Clu Gulager as Billy the Kid. Gulager was 32 in 1960, 11 years older than Billy the Kid was at the time of his death in 1881 at the age of 21. The highly fictionalized series provides a more humane image of the Kid than has history itself. In real life Garrett eventually shot Billy dead in a night-time ambush at a farmhouse in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, but no concluding episode depicting the grim conclusion was filmed. Set in and about Lincoln, New Mexico, the series opens with a view of the extremely long shadow cast by Sullivan on a Western street, hence the name "the tall man".

In the premiere episode, "Garrett and the Kid" (September 10, 1960), Garrett arrives in Lincoln, depicted in the series as a gold-mining boomtown, as the new deputy sheriff, only to learn that a crooked saloon owner, Paul Mason (Robert Middleton), dominates the community, including the marshal, Dave Leggert (Denver Pyle). When he sees his power threatened, Mason tries to hire Billy to kill Garrett, unaware that the two were then on friendly terms. Vaughn Taylor is cast in this episode as Judge Riley, and King Donovan appears as a Mason henchman.