Wanted: Dead or Alive (TV Series) Death Divided by Three (1960) User Reviews

Corday Is Captivating

[ccthemovieman-1 · 7/10 · 5 January 2010]

Maria Corday as "Lucinda Lorenz" is the undisputed star of this episode. I can't say too much about her character in here without giving up the story. All I'll say is she plays the wife of a man whose picture is on an Arizona wanted poster, a man Josh and Jason are trying to bring in from Texas, with great difficulty. "Lucinda" really complicates the matter.

Can Josh/Jason deliver the guy? Is the guilty to begin with, or being framed? The story has some neat twists and turns.

Corday was 30 years old when she filmed this "Wanted: Dead or Alive" episode in 1960, and she looked fantastic with a pretty face and a eye-opener of a body. Hey, she was Playboy's "Playmate of the Month" in October of 1958," so you know I'm not exaggerating about her appearance.

Maria's resume has a big gap in it when she gave up acting to raise a family, only coming back to be part of four of her friend Clint Eastwood's movies. Her early career - was filled mainly with "B" films and TV guest shots.

Black Widow

[Easygoer10 · 10/10 · 26 September 2020]

This episode clearly shows a side of Steve McQueen that would later became quite well known (and infamous): Mistrust of women. There's a "Black Widow" key to the plot. She is well played by Mara Corday. A must see.

Beautiful Ice Cold Killer

[Johnny_West · 3/10 · 13 June 2020]

Wanted: Dead or Alive had about three episodes in which wives killed their husbands for bounty money. The cold-blooded angel with cash on her mind always leaves Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) shocked.

In this episode, McQueen is paired up with Wright King. King joined the cast as a recurring character for eleven episodes of WDOA. King joined the cast because McQueen wanted to leave the show, but after eleven episodes McQueen got rid of King, and agreed to do a third season at a higher salary. Most of the time, Wright King played back-stabbing weasels, mealy-mouthed lackeys, henchmen, and sidekicks.

In Western TV shows, sidekicks had a long tradition of being well-meaning, but incompetent buffoons. Chester from Gunsmoke is a prime example. The original sidekicks from the 1930s singing Westerns set the tone. They provided laughs by being dumb helpers, misunderstanding orders, falling off their horses, letting captives get loose, punching the wrong guy, etc.

In this episode, Randall asks Jason Nichols (Wright King) to hold on to Lucinda Lorenz (Mara Corday) while he looks for her husband, the fugitive. Corday bites King, and gets away once. Then she starts crying, and plays King into taking her to breakfast, where she gets away again. King is awestruck by the beautiful woman, as Chester often was on Gunsmoke.

McQueen finally tracks down Jake Lorenz (played by Richard Garland in his only appearance on WDOA). McQueen gets the drop on Garland, but then he soundly beats the crud out of McQueen. Kind of pathetic fighting by McQueen in this scene.

The town sheriff (Walter Sande) shows up to help McQueen. King shows up to tell McQueen he fumbled Mara Corday (Mrs. Lorenz). At this point nobody knows that there is a warrant out for her arrest also, as an accomplice to murder along with her husband. So the trio look for Lorenz/Garland, and when they track him down, his wife swoops in to steal the kill.

All three of them looked incredibly shocked when she tells them "He was Wanted, Dead or Alive. I get the $1000.00 reward no matter what."

Another twist follows later in the episode, but the bottom line is that Mara Corday does a great job playing a very manipulative, greedy, vicious, amoral, cold-hearted witch, with zero scruples. In the final scene, she manages to twist the knife even more, and expose herself as a reptile of the first order. With a wife like Mara Corday, nobody needs enemies.