Illinois-born actor Clint Walker, with a 6-foot-6 frame supporting a 235-pound bodybuilder body (with measurements listed at IMDB.Com as 48-32-36) and a classic handsome Hollywood face, worked a number of odd jobs before becoming a rags-to-riches success story via his starring role in ABC-TV's Western "Cheyenne" in the 1950s (the series won the Golden Globe for "Best TV Show" in 1957).

Working as a security officer at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, he encountered a number of celebrities who urged him to "go west, young man" to find fame and fortune in Hollywood.

Cecil B. DeMille

He followed their advice, went to Los Angeles, and was discovered by actor Henry Wilcoxon (whose credits include the role of Sir Lancelot in the Bing Crosby film "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court"), and who was an associate producer for Cecil B. DeMille's film, "The Greatest Show On Earth").

Wilcoxon was at the time the associate producer of another of DeMille's films, "The Ten Commandmants", so Clint Walker got the break of a lifetime and was introduced to DeMille. DeMille liked what he saw and hired Walker to play the captain of the guard in "The Ten Commandments".

Clint Walker's lucky streak continued because an executive at Warner Brothers saw his performance in "The Ten Commandments". This led to producer Hal B. Wallis ("True Grit", "The Sons Of Katie Elder", "The Gunfight At The O. K. Corral", "Casablanca", "Sergeant York") buying Walker's contract and adding Walker to the Warner Brothers' stable of actors.

Warner Brothers and ABC-TV

It was 1955, and the age of the "serious" TV western was just starting. A young ABC-TV network was now on the scene and needed a hit series.

Warner Brothers came up with "Warner Brothers Presents" which was a weekly series that rotated three different shows (each show airing once every three weeks).

ABC-TV wasn't competitive in many markets, but in the limited number of markets where ABC affiliates were in direct competition with CBS-TV and NBC-TV, "Cheyenne" became a Top 10 hit. Later, during the show's eight-year run (1955-63) after the ABC-TV network expanded, "Cheyenne" became a Top 20 national ratings hit.

"Cheyenne"

"Cheyenne" became the first hour-long TV western series. It was filmed and written as well as the best Hollywood motion pictures of the 1950s. It actually stands up better than many film westerns of the decade.

The show had a cool theme song, too, written by William Lava (who later co-wrote the theme to TV's "F Troop") and Stanley Jones (who wrote the classic country and western tune "(Ghost) Riders In The Sky" and the theme song for the John Wayne film "The Searchers"):

"Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight? / lonely man, Cheyenne, will your heart stay free and light? / dream, Cheyenne, of a girl you may never love / move along, Cheyenne, like the tireless cloud up above..."

TV westerns

Though the genre has largely disappeared from modern television, before you write off the TV western it is important to remember how popular this "All-American" genre was in the 1950s and 1960s.

For example, the 1958-59 season had a string of westerns in the Top 25. Among them: "Gunsmoke" at #1, "Wagon Train" at #2, "Have Gun, Will Travel" at #3, "The Rifleman" at #4, "Maverick" at #6, "Tales Of Wells Fargo" at #7 and "The Legend Of Wyatt Earp" at #10.

In fact, the Top 25 that season also featured such other westerns as "Zane Grey Theatre" at #13, "The Texan" at #15, "Wanted: Dead Or Alive" (with Steve McQueen) at #16 and "Sugarfoot" at #21.

Clint Walker and "Cheyenne" ranked at #18 that season (ahead of "Perry Mason" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents").

The 1959-60 TV season saw "Rawhide" (with Clint Eastwood) and "The Lawman" enter the Top 25, and in 1960-61, "Bonanza" entered the Top 20 in its second season.

Born in 1957, I happily remember being sat in front of the TV whenever my dad had shore time from the Navy to watch these shows. I grew to love many of them, including "Cheyenne". Every kid in my neighborhood wanted to be a "fast draw" like Clint Walker drawing a pistol from his holster in "Cheyenne" or dreamed of fanning a repeating rifle like Chuck Connors in "The Rifleman".

"Cheyenne"

The series lasted eight seasons, from to 1955 to 1963, including one season where Clint Walker boycotted the show during the 1958-59 season for most of the episodes in a dispute with Warner Brothers and ABC-TV.

Warner Brothers, which used an unusual six-day-week shooting schedule for "Cheyenne", produced the series as part of an alternating weekly package called "Warner Brothers Presents..." with the westerns "Sugarfoot" (starring Will Hutchins) and "Bronco" (starring Ty Hardin).

This meant that "Cheyenne" (later called "The Cheyenne Show") wasn't on the air every week, and that after eight seasons only 107 episodes of the series had been produced.

Walker had become a film star by series end. Among his films are "The Ten Commandments", "Fort Dobbs", "Send Me No Flowers" (with Doris Day), "The Night Of The Grizzly", "The Dirty Dozen" (with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson), "None But The Brave" (directed by, and starring, Frank Sinatra), "Yuma", "Hysterical" (with The Hudson Brothers and John Larroquette) and most recently a voice part in the film "Small Soldiers" (which featured the voices of several "Dirty Dozen" film actors).

His TV roles include two appearances on "The Lucy Show" (Lucille Ball had everyone from John Wayne to Milton Berle as themselves encountering her fictional TV character on the series), "The Love Boat" and "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" (recreating his Cheyenne character in a 1995 episode).

Walker even recorded a music album for Warner Brothers in 1958 to show off his singing voice. He also wrote the song "Tree Top Tall" for the film "The Night Of The Grizzly".

For the trivia buffs: a 1960 episode of "Maverick" (which starred James Garner) called "Hadley's Hunters" had a guest appearance by Clint Walker as Cheyenne! This was pretty common among TV westerns in the 1950s and early 1960s as TV characters from one show would appear on other TV shows.

In the future: Cheyenne, who seems to be good at everything and never has a specific job, later scouts for the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn in 1876 in a two-part episode from 1960 called "Gold, Glory And Custer" (not yet released on video, but worth watching for). The episode is interesting because it guest stars Lorne Greene (as a cavalry officer), even though Greene was already starring as Ben Cartwright on "Bonanza" at the time.

This DVD

Warner Brothers Home Video has created a series of inexpensive DVDs called "Television Favorites" which sell for under $10 (Best Buys has been selling them at a regular retail price of $6.99 for several months now, but they are also carried at online retailers like Amazon.Com). The DVDs in the collection include "Maverick" (a 3-episode set of the hour-long series) and "F Troop" (a 6-episode set of the half-hour series).

This "Cheyenne" collection is part of the "Television Favorites" series. The single DVD contains three episodes from the hour-long series (minus the original TV commercials, which aren't on this disc, the episodes never were an hour-long as filmed, which means the three episodes have a combined total running time of 142 minutes on the DVD).

The black-and-white DVD picture quality is superb and is presented with its original television screen aspect ratio, with state-of-the-art Dolby sound reproduction. The effect means this DVD is probably producing better picture and sound quality than when originally broadcast on TVs with no better reception than rabbit ear antennas.

The pleasing DVD box has photos from the show and the briefest of episode descriptions on the back of the box. There is no booklet or biographical info on Clint Walker in this collection, but I'm not complaining; the price is right and the DVD is fun to watch.

Recommendation

Pardner, strap on your six gun and sit back for three fun tales from the Old West. Arm-chair historians will tell you that the Old West was nothing like this in reality, but, heck, I like a good yarn and it's fun to imagine settling one's differences with a little six-gun justice (you know, "How dare you rate this review as only 'helpful'. Draw or die, pilgrim!").

The three episodes on this DVD

"Cheyenne" features three episodes from the series' eight-year TV run. You get one episode from Season One, one from Season Two, and one from Season Six, so you get a nice introduction to the entire series at a cheap price.

Clint Walker dominates the screen as Cheyenne and he's also a very good actor. The guest stars in these episodes are largely unknown today, but they also put in fine performances. These episodes have the look of feature films shot outdoors, which makes them far more interesting to watch than many TV westerns that were shot on the most fake-looking studio sets.

The episodes are:

"The Storm Riders" (from Season One): While trying to organize a group of small ranch owners to take on a cruel rancher boss named Storm, Cheyenne finds himself the object of affection of both a rancher's wife and her daughter. Since Cheyenne would rather kiss his horse than do anything improper, one can imagine what a woman denied might do to win his affection.

Guest stars include Lane Bradford, Barton McLane and Beverly Michaels. Directed by Richard L. Bare (who won the 1959 "Outstanding Directorial Achievement Award" from the Directors Guild Of America for his work on "77 Sunset Strip").

"The Trap" (from Season Two): Cheyenne ignores a warning sign posted outside the town of Stagge City ("pop. 407") and finds himself charged with vagrancy, which means working off one's 90-day sentence with other "convicts" in the Stagge Silver Mine.

Thing is, they keep finding ways to extend the sentence in this corrupt town, and Cheyenne isn't the kind of guy you push around. Guest stars include Larry Johns, George Barrows and Kenneth MacDonald. Directed by Walter Doniger (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his screenplay for the 1949 film "Rope Of Sand" and who later directed TV's "Baa Baa Black Sheep").

"The Young Fugitives" (from Season Six): Cheyenne (ever the John Wayne-style good guy) helps a young man, falsely accused of murder, and his girlfriend escape a lynch party.

There's some nice plot twists in this one. Guest stars include Lane Chandler, Richard Evans and Anne Whitfield. Directed by James P. Yarbrough (who also directed episodes of "Bonanza" and "Rawhide").

Side note

The DVD I've reviewed here is a nice, inexpensive, multi-season introduction to the series.

However, this DVD has done so well that Warner Brothers now plans to release "Cheyenne - The Complete First Season" as a 5-DVD set in June of 2006. That set will retail for around $40 and includes interviews with the star. So, if you're a die-hard fan, you may want to buy the inevitable season-by-season "complete collections."

On the web

The official Clint Walker site (run by Clint and his wife Susan): http://www.clintwalker.com

A photo of Clint Walker as "Cheyenne": http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/cheyenne/cheyenneIMAGE/cheyenne.jpg

An episode guide to "Cheyenne": http://www.tv.com/cheyenne/show/4349/episode_guide.html

A history of the "Cheyenne" series: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/cheyenne/cheyenne.htm

Top 25 rated TV shows of the 1950s-70s listed by year: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv-ratings.htm

Classic TV westerns: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/western.htm

"Cheyenne" entry on the Internet Movie Database: http://imdb.com/title/tt0047720/

Other "TV Favorites" collections

"Maverick", starring James Garner and Jack Kelly: http://www.epinions.com/content_229500751492

"F Troop", starring Ken Berry, Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch and Melody Patterson, features 6 episodes of the classic series with guests including Don Rickles, Harvey Korman and Paul Lynde: http://www.epinions.com/content_229856743044

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older