They Retired with their Boots ON

An article from the Sacramento Bee circa: 1992. Clint was only getting 150 a week for appearing in Cheyenne. I knew Warners to be tightfisted.. but dang it...that figure is even worse then I imagined.

June 28, 1992

THEY RETIRED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON THE LONG HOLLYWOOD TRAIL LED TO GRASS VALLEY FOR THE STARS OF "CHEYENNE' AND BRONCO'


WALKER HARDIN BIOGRAPHY TELEVISION HISTORY

Article Text:

Clint Walker and Ty Hardin were cowboy stars when cowboy stars were cool. Things were different then. EVERYTHING was different then. Consider:

* As the strong silent star of Cheyenne, so many people died in Walker's arms that he finally asked if the victim of the week couldn't expire elsewhere for a change.

If you don't mind, Walker remembers telling a director, I'll just sorta stand over here and look sad.

* The first step in the metamorphosis by Orson Whipple Hungerford II into Bronco star Ty Hardin came when he strolled into the Paramount costume department to naively inquire if he could borrow an outfit for a Halloween party and walked out with a seven-year contract.

They are imposing, though friendly, men. Before the 6-foot, 6-inch, 250-pound Walker who can be spotted rooted into the background of The 10 Commandments as one of the pharaoh's bodyguards became an actor, his knockabout life included stints as a merch! ant marine seaman, bouncer and deputy sheriff in Las Vegas.

Hardin, a 6-foot, 2-inch, 200-pound defensive lineman for Texas A&M when the Aggies were coached by the legendary Paul Bear Bryant, broke in to the business with low-budget cheezoids like I Married a Monster From Outer Space in 1958. He was billed then as Ty Hungerford.

Cheyenne (ABC, 1955-62) was one of the most popular Westerns at a time when the Western drove prime-time TV. Based on a 1947 movie starring Dennis Morgan that was later renamed The Wyoming Kid, it told the story of Cheyenne Bodie, a laconic drifter who roamed the West, doing good deeds and pummeling bad guys.

Though never the series that Cheyenne was, Bronco (ABC, 1958-62) was about yet another itinerant do-gooder an ex-Confederate captain named Bronco Layne who roamed the West doing good deeds and pummeling bad guys.

As you can see, the differences were subtle. One guy was named Cheyenne, the other Bronco.

At the! time, so many of these characters rode high, wide and handsom! e on TV that home on the range was a traffic jam in the sagebrush. Cowboy stars like Will Hutchins (Sugarfoot), James Garner and Jack Kelly (Maverick) and Wayde Preston (Colt .45) drifted here, drifted there, drifted everywhere.

It's amazing that there were enough bad guys left to keep all the good guys working.

But Cheyenne was a cut above most, and a lot of it had to do with timing.

When Cheyenne, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp and Gun- smoke premiered in 1955, the TV Western galloped away from grinning good guys like Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers into the era of the brooding hero who had problems of his own.

At their best, they stressed character development over riding and shooting and kissing the horse. Adults could watch and not feel silly.

Good or bad, many of these series came from Warner Bros., the first of the major movie studios to enter TV production. Warners cranked out so many Westerns and detective shows including 77 Sunset Strip, H! awaiian Eye and Surfside Six it was as if it had a quota to meet.

At the top of the empire resided the irascible Jack Warner, an old-time movie mogul who, as the saying goes, threw nickels around like manhole covers.

Jack Warner and I did some hollerin' at each other on more than one occasion, says Walker, who eventually became one of Warner's Walkouts, a not-very-exclusive club that included Garner and Preston, actors who, in effect, had to go on strike to get the deal they deserved all along.

And that is how Hardin got a chance to ride Bronco, which in turn is what led to Walker and Hardin living within a few miles of each other in Grass Valley, a long trail of coincidence that ends with the two of them practically side by side.

Warners recently released a few of these golden-age Westerns on video to pique the baby boomers who spent so much of their childhood in thrall to them.

One tape has two episodes from Maverick, a second has two episod! es from Cheyenne, and a third two from Bronco. The guest stars! include Dennis Hopper, Michael Landon and James Coburn. The suggested sales price is $14.98.

Warners is not alone. The Columbia House Video Library has released Rawhide: The Collector's Edition, a two-episodes-per-tape series that starts with the Rawhide premiere on Jan. 9, 1959, plus a later episode.

The initial release costs $4.95 plus shipping and handling. To order, call (800) 638-2922. More tapes will be sent every six weeks for $19.95 each, unless the customer stops the order.

The hard-driving Rawhide theme by Frankie Laine is a TV classic, but the series is best known for introducing a rawboned young actor named Clint Eastwood as cowpoke Rowdy Yates, who rode for trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming) on the cattle drive that never ended.

Finally, CBS-Fox has released a three-in-one collector's set of its own, with the premiere episodes of Rawhide, The Wild, Wild West and Gunsmoke, including the original introduction by John Wayne, who turned down the pa! rt of Matt Dillon and suggested a young friend named James Arness instead. The set goes for $39.98. Individually, they're $14.98 each.

But we've ridden out well ahead of our story, which begins with Walker back in his law enforcement days in Las Vegas, where he patrolled the Sands hotel and casino, not exactly the toughest duty he ever had.

I met a lot of stars there, said Walker, who, at 65, is three years Hardin's senior. They all seemed to ask if I'd ever thought about acting and how I should really try it sometime.

Well, he reasoned, why not? Using his Las Vegas contacts Van Johnson was a special pal within 18 months Walker wheedled his way into a deal with Warner Bros. The studio apparently figured that it couldn't have too many strong silent types who were firm of jaw and pure of heart.

Warners was on the verge of its move into TV, a bold stroke considering that most studios regarded TV as the enemy. In 1955, it introduced Warner Brothers Pre! sents, an anthology of rotating series based on old movies: Ca! sablanca , with Charles McGraw as Rick Blaine; Kings Row, based on the Ronald Reagan movie, and starring Jack Kelly (Maverick) and Robert Horton (Wagon Train); and Cheyenne, the only one to return the next year.

If Warners had a hit in Cheyenne, it also had an unhappy star in Walker.

Warners had a notorious tradition of signing young actors to one-sided deals that it refused to renegotiate if an actor hit big and made lots of money for the studio. As a result, walking out on cheapskate Warners was a tradition dating back to James Cagney, who took a stroll in the 1930s for just that reason.

Walker worked six days a week to crank out 26 Cheyenne episodes a year. For this, he was paid $150 a week, based on the deal he signed well before Cheyenne took off.

That wasn't bad money for the times though even in the mid-50s, $150 bucks a week was a king's ransom only if you didn't really want the king back but it wasn't much considering the dough Walker was making for! Warners.

My stand-in was making more money than I was, Walker said. Plus he couldn't work anyplace else because he was bound to Warners, which wasn't exactly breaking its back to develop his career outside of Cheyenne. Altogether, I felt like a caged animal.

In 1958, the brooding fighter of the plains decided to right his own wrong and took a walk. 1

Warners responded by finding itself another cowboy in the person of the younger, but equally macho actor named Hungerford who'd been reared around Austin, Texas, and gravitated to California to see what his rugged good looks and Southern charm might turn up.

His Paramount contract hadn't amounted to much other than bit parts in I Married a Monster From Outer Space, Space Child and The Buccaneer, plus the usual singing school, dancing school, and the whole bit studios used to do back then.

Just as he was about to make a movie with Sophia Loren I was really lookin' forward to that, he chuckles whi! ch had the potential to bump his career to the next level, War! ners swo oped in and bought Hardin's Paramount contract. Tab Hunter wound up as Loren's co-star, but the movie That Kind of Woman in 1959 didn't do him much good either.

After asking him to jump on a horse to see if he could handle the cowboy stuff, Warners changed Hungerford to Hardin, then transformed him into Bronco Layne, whose adventures appeared under the Cheyenne title and paid him $250 a week.

Walker ended his walkout the next year with a better but still by no means great deal that topped out at $750 a week, and both series continued until 1962, alternating with each other and with Sugarfoot, a seven-year run for Cheyenne and a three-year run for Bronco.

Both actors were busy through the 1960s, too. From 1964 to 1969, Walker was in Send Me No Flowers, None But the Brave, The Night of the Grizzly, The Dirty Dozen, Sam Whiskey and The Great Bank Robbery, working with everybody from Doris Day and Zero Mostel to Burt Reynolds and Lee Marvin. From 1962 to '6! 5, Hardin's resume includes roles in The Battle of the Bulge, PT 109, Merrill's Marauders, The Chapman Report and Palm Springs Weekend.

Both took another crack at TV, too. Hardin as a charter boat captain in the short-run syndicated series Riptide (1965), and Walker as an Alaska back country lawman in Kodiak (1974).

And both did fairly well in Europe, where memories are longer and Westerns are never out of style. Cheyenne episodes were combined and recut into no less than nine different movies released theatrically in Europe.

In the late '60s, Hardin moved to Spain, grinding out spaghetti Westerns and other films that fell under the often dubious category of international co-productions. He also owned a Western-themed bar and a chain of coin-operated laundries.

They still work occasionally, though Walker spoke for them both when he grumbled that they don't make my kind of movies much anymore, things I'd like my name on, not with all the four-letter w! ords.

Hardin was in a TV remake of the Western classic R! ed River a couple of years back and can be seen in Rescue Me, a low-budget movie coming this summer, starring Michael Dudikoff (of the American Ninja movies) in a coming-of-age, cross-country action-adventure yarn. Walker was in Kenny Rogers' Gambler IV in November and traveled to Israel earlier this year for a Western shot on the shores of the Red Sea.

Walker got to Grass Valley first, about six years ago. He has relations nearby, likes the country and never liked cities much. His five-plus acre parcel sits on a hill with a view of a lake.

Hardin was living in Arizona at the time. Walker knew his longtime friend would like the area, called him and said, You've just got to get up here.

Walker may have the view, but he envies Hardin his green thumb, with more than 170 pear trees on his property.

But there is talk of another move. Oregon is mentioned a lot. So, rather more vaguely, is Costa Rica. The old wanderlust is still there. Who knows?

Like Hardin j! okes, Hell, I can't complain, and nobody'd listen if I did. BOB WISEHART'S TV commentary can be heard at 8:35 a.m. Mondays and Fridays on KRAK (1140 AM). Write him at The Bee, P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento 95852, or call (916) 321-1142. If you would like the letter considered for publication, please include a phone number.

Caption:
Ty Hardin landed in the lead saddle of Bronco in 1958, after Clint Walker walked out on Warner Bros. Hardin today: A few years back, he followed Clint Walker's retirement trail and settled in Grass Valley. Clint Walker roamed the West doing good deeds in Warner Bros.' Cheyenne, starting in 1955. Walker today: Today don't make my kind of movies much anymore, things I'd like my name on, not with all the four-letter words. Clint Eastwood, left, and Eric Fleming are riding the range again, thanks to new video releases of episodes from the Rawhide series.