Cheyenne: the series backstory

(This was going to be one post but it got a bit long so I split it up)

This show was one of those I remember watching with my father when I was a boy and the theme music from “Cheyenne” has always been playing somewhere in the recesses of my mind ever since. Even when I hadn’t seen a show for decades, I could always hum its theme whenever I wanted to.

The show was also one of three that premiered in September, 1955 that changed the face of television. Westerns on TV had previously been of the juvenile variety, such as “Hopalong Cassidy”, “The Cisco Kid” and “The Lone Ranger”. Those shows had been similar to the “B” westerns that dominated the genre in the 30’s and 40’s. Until “Stagecoach” (1939), western movies were either “B”s, with their simplistic characters and plots or they were epics, where the characters often got lost in the scenery and great events. When John Ford returned to westerns, soon to be joined by Howard Hawks, it was established that you could tell a strong dramatic story focusing on the characters and their relationships in the western form. That kind of “adult” western dominated in the 50’s and 60’s and almost every major movie star during that time did westerns, not leaving them to the Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. It was logical that TV would follow the trend and, in one week in 1955, three classic adult westerns debuted and changed everything. “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” premiered on Tuesday, 9/6/55, “Gunsmoke” on Saturday, 9/10/55 and “Cheyenne” on Tuesday, 9/13/55. They ushered in an era where westerns dominated the airwaves and gave us such classic shows as “Wagon Train”, “Have Gun Will Travel”, “Maverick”, “The Rifleman”, “Rawhide”, “Bonanza” and “The Virginian”.

“Cheyenne” was a bit different from the others because it also pioneered something else: it was part of television’s first ‘wheel’, a wheel being a show that featured multiple shows within it, which alternated in the time slot. The advantage of a “wheel” is that it allows for more production time for each episode, (Maverick essentially became a wheel when the second Maverick brother was introduced). The disadvantage is that not all the shows will have the same popularity and the ratings for the overall program will tend to be as strong as its weakest link. Warner Brothers had resisted television for years, thinking that the new medium would hurt movie ticket sales. When they finally decided to take the plunge, the created “Warner Brothers Presents”, a wheel consisting of a TV version of “Casablanca” and of “King’s Row”, two top Warner’s hits of the 1940’s, and “Cheyenne” a western that had no cinematic progenitor. They were surprised to find that “Cheyenne” was the big hit and the only survivor from that first year. “Cheyenne” was paired with an anthology show called “Conflict” for the 1956-57 season. “Conflict” offered, among other things, the pilots for “Sugarfoot”, with Will Hutchins as a Destry-like cowboy studying the law and “77 Sunset Strip”. In its third season, “Cheyenne” alternated with “Sugarfoot”. Clint Walker then rebelled against his low salary and Warner’s created another show, called “Bronco” with Ty Hardin, for the purpose of doing “Cheyenne” scripts without “Cheyenne”. Walker eventually came back and found himself in “The Cheyenne Show”, in a wheel with “Sugarfoot” and “Bronco”. “Sugarfoot” was dropped in 1962 and “Cheyenne” alternated with “Bronco”. Only for the final season was Cheyenne truly a “lonely man”, with the time slot all to his own.

The success of Cheyenne and the subsequent Warner Brother’s Western and detective series produced another development: the success of the American Broadcasting Company. ABC had begun as one of two radio networks owned by RCA, called NBC “Red” and NBC “Blue”. The FCC said a corporation could own only one network and RCA sold off the “Blue” network, which became the American Broadcasting Company in 1943. ABC tentatively went into television in 1948 but ran fourth to CBS, NBC and the DuMont network. Most of the stations were owned by their more established competitors. DuMont eventually lost the competitive battle and had no radio network to back it up. They went out of business in 1955. Meanwhile, Leonard Goldenson, the ABC President lined up production deals with the Hollywood studios but most especially with Warner Brothers, who eventually gave them 10 hours of programming a week. This helped the fledgling network to become a real competitor with CBS and NBC.