Cheyenne is a western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1962. The show was the first hour-long western, the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Brothers original series produced by William T. Orr.

The series strength was its charismatic star and TV western icon, Clint Walker, who dominated the screen with his powerful physique. Off the set, Walker battled the studio over his contract, making Cheyenne one of the more tempestuous productions in the history of television.

Series history

The series began as a part of Warner Brothers Presents, a program that alternated three different series in rotation. In its first year, Cheyenne traded broadcast weeks with Casablanca and King's Row. Thereafter, Cheyenne was overhauled by outgoing producer Roy Huggins and left the umbrella of WBP. The show starred Clint Walker as Cheyenne Bodie, a physically huge cowboy wandering the Old West. The show ran from 1955 to 1963, except for a hiatus when Walker went on strike for higher pay (1958-1959). The interim saw the introduction of a virtual Bodie-clone called Bronco Layne, played by Ty Hardin. Hardin was featured as the quasi main character during Bodie's absence. When Warners renegotiated Walker's contract and the actor returned to the show in 1959, Bronco was spunoff as a show in its own right and became independently successful.

The two series alternated in the same time slot from 1958 to 1962, with Bronco as the junior partner (only a snippet of his theme song was heard in the opening credits, as a kind of aural footnote to Cheyenne's). Occasionally both Cheyenne and Bronco appeared together in the same episode, both deadly serious as they worked together.

At the conclusion of the sixth season, a special episode was aired. Called "A Man Named Ragan", it was a pilot for a program called The Dakotas that would replace Cheyenne in the middle of the next season. However, because Cheyenne Bodie never appeared in "Ragan", the two programs are only tenuously linked.

Walker reprised the Cheyenne Bodie character in 1991 for the TV-movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw and also played Cheyenne in an episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues in 1995.

Production

Filming

For the 1957-58 season, ABC offered to purchase a full season of thirty-nine episodes of Cheyenne. Warner Brothers declined, however, since each hour-long episode took six working days for principal photography alone. The studio couldn't supply a new episode each week. Because Walker appeared in virtually every scene, it was also impossible to shoot more than one episode at a time.

Plot

Cheyenne Bodie, a former frontier scout, is the heroic loner who drifts without any particular motivation or purpose through the old West after the Civil War taking temporary jobs on ranches, wagon trains, or cattle drives. Sometimes he works for the federal government or finds himself deputized by local lawmen. He often meddles in the affairs of others, settling conflicts with his fists and guns rather than with his wits, mediation, conciliation, or persuasion. Producers changed Bodie's circumstances at will in order to insert him into any dramatic conflict. Several Cheyenne episodes were remakes of earlier Warner Brothers movies like To Have and Have Not (1944) and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) with Cheyenne Bodie simply inserted into the original plot.

Characters and cast

Clint Walker as main character Cheyenne Bodie is the only series regular. L. Q. Jones appears as Cheyenne's sidekick Smitty in three first-season episodes. Thereafter, no recurring characters make appearances as Cheynne's circumstances change with every episode and he relocates as his drifter tastes and lifestyle dictate. Diane Brewster first appears as Samantha Crawford, the swindler with a fake southern accent, in an episode called "Dark Rider" before the character migrates to Maverick to become the Maverick brothers' most celebrated nemesis.

Media information

Broadcast history

ABC televised the show from 1955 to 1962: September 1955-September 1959 Tuesday 7:30-8:30 P.M.; September 1959-December 1962, Monday 7:30-8:30 P.M.; April 1963-September 1963, Friday 7:30-8:30 P.M..

Merchandise

Dell Comics produced a comic book based on the series. After 3 issues in their Four Color Comics series, it got its own title for issues #4-25 from (1957-1962). All issues had photo covers. Milton Bradley published a Cheyenne board game for children based on the series. Golden Books published an illustrated storybook for very young children while Whitman Publishing printed a novel called The Lost Gold of Lion Park for older children.

Reception

Ratings

Cheyenne was a principal reason for ABC's ratings ascent during the mid-1950s. ABC had fewer national affiliates than CBS and NBC, but in markets with affiliates of all three networks, Cheyenne immediately entered the top ten; by 1957, it had become the number one program in those markets. Cheyenne finished the 1957-58 season as the second highest-rated series on ABC.

Awards

Cheyenne was a co-winner of the 1957 Golden Globe Award for Television Achievement.

External links

• Roy Huggins' Archive of American Television Interview

References