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Zorro (1957 TV series)

American action-adventure western drama series

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ1061843
Source-derived summary

Zorro (also known as Disney's Zorro) is an American action-adventure Spanish Western television series produced by Walt Disney Productions and starring Guy Williams. Based on the Zorro character created by Johnston McCulley in his 1919 novella, the series premiered on October 10, 1957, on ABC. The final network broadcast was July 2, 1959. Seventy-eight episodes were produced, and four hour-long specials were aired on the Walt Disney anthology series between October 30, 1960, and April 2, 1961.

The series is set in Los Angeles of 1820, when it was still part of Spanish California and before Mexican independence. Zorro aids Hispanic settlers and indigenous peoples oppressed by the local rulers. A remastering, in which color was added, was released in 1992.

Plot

For most of its run, Zorro's episodes were part of continuing story arcs, each about thirteen episodes long. It had a structure similar to a serial. The first of these chronicles the emergence of Zorro/Diego to California in 1820, having returned from studying in Spain at the behest of his father, Don Alejandro, to help depose the greedy and cruel local Comandante, Captain Enrique Sánchez Monastario. After Monastario's final defeat, in the second storyline, Zorro must uncover and counter Magistrado Carlos Galindo, who is part of a conspiracy to take over rule of California.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Zorro (1957 TV series)” is american action-adventure western drama series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Zorro, series and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 1957, 1959, 1960—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Zorro, series and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american action-adventure western drama series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1061843. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1957, 1959 and 1960.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Zorro (1957 TV series) primary sources, Zorro (1957 TV series) archive and Zorro research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Zorro (1957 TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.