Cheyenne and the Movies

Everyone who has the DVD of the first season of Cheyenne is aware that some of the plots look awfully familiar. The fact that “The Argonauts” was written by “B. Traven” is interesting. B. Traven wrote something else besides “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? And it was an episode of “Cheyenne”? Actually, no. Warner Brothers owned the rights to “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and saw nothing wrong with shoe-horning the plot in to an episode of a TV series they also owned. This would become a common thing in the Warner Brother’s TV series: 77 Sunset Strip later did versions of “Strangers on a train”, (except they were on a plane this time), and “Dial M for Murder”, with Richard Long playing the bad guy in each one. Then Richard got his won show, Bourbon Street Beat and they redid “White Heat” on that one, with Richard playing the good guy this time.

Old movie fans will also realize that “Fury of Rio Hondo” is a redo of “To Have and Have Not”, an Ernest Hemingway story, no less, that was written for the screen by William Faulkner, no less. I’ll bet they didn’t realize they were writing an episode of “Cheyenne”. It made me wonder how many other episodes of this initial season were based on Warner Brother’s movies. Two clues: Does Cheyenne change his clothes from the normal white buckskin short and dark hat, (to match stock footage from the film) and are there two writers credited, one of who wrote the “Screenplay”? Actually, I decided to search the IMDB credits of every writer for each episode to find a similar plot to the Cheyenne episode. I think of the 15 episodes of the first season, fully six of them are based on movies. Some I’m not certain of but here goes:

“Mountain Fortress”, the premiere, looks to be a redo, with some alterations of the 1950 Errol Flynn movie, “Rocky Mountain”:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042899/

“The Argonauts” is obviously “Treasury of the Sierra Madre”, (1948):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040897/


“The Travelers” would seem to be a redo of the 1951 Kirk Douglas western, “Along the Great Divide”:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043276/

“West of the River”, as one reviewer already noted, is based on the first 3D western “The Charge at Feather River”, (1953):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045621/

“Fury at Rio Hondo”, while it’s credited to James Gunn, (although the IMDB notes: “Although the source novel and the script were written by 2 Nobel Prize winners (Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner), most of the dialog was actually improvised by the cast”), is clearly “To Have and Have Not", (1944):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037382/

…which Warner Brothers had already remade as “The Breaking Point” (1952):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042281/

The one I find hard to pin down is the last show of the first season: “The Last Train West”. Cheyenne is wanted for murder. He’s been framed and is out to have a showdown in a small town with the people who did it. He wants to kill them. On a train trip there, the sister of a preacher, (played by James Garner, of all people), tries to get him to show some Christian mercy and not make himself a murderer but it’s hard. To require such moral suasion seems uncharacteristic of the normally highly principle Cheyenne. It seems to me he must be playing a character from a movie. Also, he leaves the train and disarms a pursuing lawman and switches clothes with him for no apparent reason. I assume it’s to match footage from a movie. The closest match I could find from the writer, Jack Dewitt, was “Son of Belle Starr” (1953):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046346/

You will note that the female lead has the same last name as another character. She could be the sister of a preacher. The final confrontation sounds similar to what happens at the end of the Cheyenne episode.

Imagine if a TV show of today based 40% of it's episodes on the plots of movies that have released in the last decade or so- and expected us not to notice! The thing is, in those days, movies were not as available as they are now. Popular ones would be re-relssued perhaps once a decade. Lesser films didn't see the light of day until years later on TV. And the movies shown on TV in the 50's were mostly stuff form the 1930's. So audiences of the time may not have been aware that these episodes were based on recent movies- or that so many of them were, anyway. I'd have to say after watching these shows that they did a pretty good job converting them into epsiodes of a TV series. The quality is just as good as the original episodes.