Ed Murdock is a rodeo star appearing at Madison Square Garden. When the cinch strap on his saddle is cut almost all the way through, Ed is sure that fellow rodeo performer, Bud Lee, did it. Ed calls Diamond to investigate and to act as his bodyguard. At a poker game later that evening, he and Bud have a round of fisticuffs. Bud flaunts a gun he says was given to him by Will Rogers for good luck. Later that evening while Ed and his wife are out taking a walk, an unknown assailant shoots and kills Ed. Yep - he was shot with Will Rogers' gun. The entire cast in this episode was first rate especially Lee Van Cleef as Ed Murdoch. It was cool seeing Dan Blocker as poker player and ex-rodeo performer Cloudy Sims. David Janssen is good as Diamond but the plot to this episode was pretty thin and the culprit was easy to figure out.
2 Reviews
Very similar to "The Chess Player"
planktonrules4 January 2014
Warning: Spoilers
After some looking, I have been able to find a grand total of five episodes of "Richard Diamond, Private Detective"--and the series went on for four seasons. A few episodes are available on cheap DVDs and several more can be downloaded for free from archive.org--making just five shows. However, and this is odd, the plot to "Rodeo" is very, very similar to another one of the existing Diamond episodes, "The Chess Player". While they seem very different through much of the show, the endings turned out to be nearly identical (though a tad better).
The show begins with a hot-headed rodeo star, Ed Murdock (Lee Van Cleef), getting angry and attacking one of his competitors--accusing him of sabotaging his equipment. Well, the equipment was tampered with--but by whom, no one really knows. So, Richard Diamond is brought in to hang around with Murdock to keep him out of trouble and protect him. However, in a really dumb move, at the end of the evening, Murdock tells Diamond he can go home--he's going to bed. It's a bad move because Murdock and his wife change their minds and soon go out--and then someone shoots and kills Murdock. While this sounds like Diamond did a crappy job, he was being set up. Why? This is a reasonably satisfying show that is hampered by me having just seen "The Chess Player" the night before! Still, it's well made and worth seeing--especially to get a glimpse at Van Cleef as well as Dan Blocker in his pre-"Bonanza" days.
The show begins with a hot-headed rodeo star, Ed Murdock (Lee Van Cleef), getting angry and attacking one of his competitors--accusing him of sabotaging his equipment. Well, the equipment was tampered with--but by whom, no one really knows. So, Richard Diamond is brought in to hang around with Murdock to keep him out of trouble and protect him. However, in a really dumb move, at the end of the evening, Murdock tells Diamond he can go home--he's going to bed. It's a bad move because Murdock and his wife change their minds and soon go out--and then someone shoots and kills Murdock. While this sounds like Diamond did a crappy job, he was being set up. Why? This is a reasonably satisfying show that is hampered by me having just seen "The Chess Player" the night before! Still, it's well made and worth seeing--especially to get a glimpse at Van Cleef as well as Dan Blocker in his pre-"Bonanza" days.
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