The Big Valley
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The Big Valley was a television Western which ran on ABC from 1965 through 1969.
It starred Barbara Stanwyck as Victoria Barkley, the widowed matriarch of the Barkley family of Stockton, California. Richard Long played Jarrod Barkley, her eldest son and a respected lawyer. Hot-tempered younger son Nick Barkley, who managed the family ranch, was played by Peter Breck. (Both Long and Breck had been regulars for a short time on another classic Western series, Maverick, although in different seasons.) Linda Evans played Audra, Victoria's only daughter. In the first episode, Lee Majors was introduced as Heath, the youngest, and the illegitimate son of Victoria's late husband; Heath gradually gained acceptance from the rest of the Barkley clan. The regular cast was rounded out by Napoleon Whiting, who played Silas, the Barkleys' majordomo. Guest stars included William Shatner.
One accidental running gag (that also occurred on the TV western Bonanza) is that in every episode in which one of the Barkley sons got seriously involved with a woman, as soon as he got married, she was killed off or died gruesomely in the same episode.
Victoria Barkley also had a younger son named Eugene, who appeared in the pilot and sporadically in the first season. Eugene attended college, which explained why he was away from the ranch for long periods of time. Another victim of the Chuck Cunningham syndrome, he was written out and never referred to again over the remainder of the series' run.