Hi! Would you consider registering your vote to help ensure the survival of a very special television program?
Here's the situation:
As a child I loved watching The High Chaparral on television. Many things made that program special: the actors and actresses, the camaraderie of the cast, the beautiful Arizona desert, the cross cultural insights into the Anglo, Hispanic and Indian peoples. I remember watching a scene during production near Tucson in 1969. Leif Erickson (Big John Cannon) came over to the people watching (no doubt after a long, hard, hot and dusty day filming!). He took the time to hand out empty bullet casings and talk to the crowd. One of the people that received a bullet casing and an answer to his questions was a 9-year-old boy named Lyndon Watson. I have that casing to this day and many fond memories of Leif Erickson and those wonderful episodes on television.
Here's what The High Chaparral website has to say about the program:
One of the most successful and highly acclaimed Westerns on television was
The High Chaparral, the name of the ranch owned by the Cannon family in the Arizona Territory during the 1870's. Stubborn, determined, 50-year-old John Cannon is the patriarch of the family with ambitions to establish a cattle empire while finding a way to co-exist with the Apaches and the Mexicans just across the border. To help him, he has his younger brother Buck, who can out-drink, out-shoot, out-fight, and when motivated, out-work any man alive. He also has his son, Billy Blue, a young man in his early 20's, whose mother is killed in the first episode. In an arranged marriage intended to keep peace with the neighbors, John then marries an aristocratic Mexican beauty, Victoria Montoya, daughter of Don Sebastian Montoya, a wealthy Sonoran rancher. Her brother, Manolito, accompanies Victoria to the Cannon ranch as her guardian, staying on as a member of the household even after the arranged marriage turns to one of substance and trust.
Created and produced by David Dortort, the genius behind Bonanza, the writing was superb with plenty of action and biting dialog. The series strove for realism...the sweat, the dirt, the heat, the desert...even the Apaches who worked on the set as extras were all real. And it explored cross-cultural conflicts among white Americans, Mexicans, and various Indian tribes at a level not attempted before or since by any television Western.
While it aired, The High Chaparral remained in the Top 20 of the Neilson Ratings. It was Number One in Europe, and is still shown in syndication.
In order for the series to survive it needs to be transferred to DVD disk. The powers that be will be presented with a petition on the 17 August 2005 in California in order to demonstrate that there is public interest in the purchase of those DVD disks. Please! Please! Please! Help us ensure that this important series is preserved for future generations. Little time remains for you to register your support for The High Chaparral on DVD. A link is included below where you can sign the petitition and also read more about this important program:
http://www.thehighchaparral.com/dvdlobby.htm
In addition, please take the time to copy this email and send it to as many people as possible.
Thanks for taking the time to read my email. I've never made a request like this before but I rarely feel this kind of connection with a television program.
Yours sincerely,
Lyndon Watson
Napier, New Zealand