Singer/actor and former Mouseketeer Johnny Crawford was cast in the role and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1959 as Best Supporting Actor (Continuing Character) in a Dramatic Series.

[2] Mark McCain was more than just a supporting player in The Rifleman, as the boy's bond with his father was a core element of the show.

Mark meets the spirit of his dead mother (played by Marian Seldes) in The Vision (Season 2, Episode 26, originally aired March 22, 1960) when the boy is suffering from typhoid and in a heavy fever.

Lucas struggles to instill proper values in his young son, and most episodes end on an uplifting note.

[4] In the fifth episode of the series entitled "The Brother-in-Law" (October 28, 1958), Jerome Courtland plays Johnny Gibbs, the brother of Luke's late wife Margaret.

In the story line, Johnny, a former rodeo rider, visits the McCain ranch and asks Lucas for money so that Gibbs can repay creditors.

Though Lucas is initially displeased, he soon finds that Johnny has redeeming qualities though headed to prison when he leaves the McCain ranch.

Peckinpah’s vision, which would later show up in his films, was an “... essentialist, reductionist view of a violent world, one beset by the vile appetites of a new technocracy that was opposed by the hopelessly compromised yet relatively moral few.

began pressuring networks to tone down violence in 1961[13] ), but to elucidate the theme of the introduction of civilization to the West, as Lucas brings Mark up with a respect for the rule of the law and fair play as part of the process of instilling moral values in his son.