by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 13, 2008   Last Updated: February 14, 2008

"Dusty's Trail" was a shameless copy of "Gilligan's Island" that was syndicated for six months in 1973. In this half-hour comedy, Bob Denver returned as a loveable bumbler, this time playing the befuddled sidekick on a 19th -century wagon train.

It's remarkable for its one-to-one correspondence to "Gilligan's Island." Instead of the "Skipper," Denver's character called out for "Mr. Callahan," who's the reliable wagonmaster for a party of lost travelers. He's played by Forrest Tucker, another kind and patient giant of a man enduring the mistakes of Denver's character. And where "Gilligan's Island" included the character of a glamorous movie star, the wagon train includes a glamorous saloon-hall showgirl. In fact, there are exactly seven characters on this lost wagon train, each with an identical counterpart in the previous show - a rich couple, a professor, and a farm girl. (One online commenter even suggested Dusty should simply be viewed as Gilligan's great-great grandfather!)

This should've been sitcom heaven. The cast included two women from "Petticoat Junction," and a comfortably familiar setting in the old American west. But instead the comic intensity seems to dissipate. It had been nine years since "Gilligan's Island" premiered, and 14 years since Denver rose to comic stardom on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." Now 38 years old, it was harder for him to pull off the character of the young but well-meaning klutz. The show re-created the old West with exterior shots, but this realism hurt the comedy rather than helping it. And the setting seemed a little too open-ended, with the wagon party confronting a seemingly endless supply of Indians, rustlers, and outlaws.

The original producer of "Gilligan's Island," Sherwood Schwartz, was unable to sell the show to any networks, and instead distributed it through syndication to local stations around the country. Twenty-six episodes were filmed, but the show didn't attract the same popularity as their original show about island castaways. Its final hurrah came two years later, when four episodes were spliced together into a movie called "The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West."

But the show retains one crucial fan: Bob Denver. Over a decade later, he confided to a radio interviewer that "Dusty's Trail" was always his favorite show.

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