The Virginian (later renamed The Men from Shiloh in its final year) is an American Western television series starring James Drury in the title role, along with Doug McClure, Lee J. Cobb, and others. It originally aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971, for a total of 249 episodes. Drury had played the same role in 1958, in an unsuccessful pilot that became an episode of the NBC summer series Decision. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute Western series (75 minutes excluding commercial breaks). Cobb left the series after four seasons, and was replaced over the years by mature character actors John Dehner, Charles Bickford, John McIntire, and Stewart Granger, all portraying different characters. It was set before Wyoming became a state in 1890, as mentioned several times as Wyoming Territory, although other references set it later, around 1898. The series was loosely based on The Virginian: Horseman of the Plains, a 1902 Western novel by Owen Wister that Hollywood had previously adapted for movies. Percy Faith composed the show's original theme. The series ran for nine seasons, making it network television's third-longest running Western, behind Bonanza at 14 seasons and 430 episodes, and Gunsmoke at 20 seasons and 635 episodes. Production When Revue Productions' hour long series Wagon Train moved from the NBC network to ABC, The Virginian was proposed to replace it. From the beginning, the 90-minute series was filmed in Technicolor on 35 mm movie film. The half-hour pilot in 1958 was filmed in black-and-white. Synopsis Pilot The half-hour black and white pilot titled The Virginian aired in 1958 as part of the series Decision, which in other weeks aired pilots for three other series. In the pilot, unlike in the later series, the Virginian had a noticeable Southern accent and wore a belt buckle marked "CSA", indicating service in the Confederate army. The portrayal of him as a young Civil War veteran would indicate that the time period of the pilot was decades earlier than that of the series. He arrived by invitation at the ranch of Judge Henry (Robert Burton) to be an accountant and manager. He soon becomes involved in unraveling a plot to destroy the judge's efforts to create a new town in the surrounding region. Other actors in the pilot, some of whom appeared in the series years later, included Andrew Duggan, Jeanette Nolan, and Dan Blocker (in a