What a lot of people don't understand today is that during the fifties, sixties, and seventies, very few people could afford to see a lot of movies at the theater, and most had to travel a long way to see the big movies. Drive in theaters were hot and full of mosquitoes, with poor sound quality. Kids loved drive ins. I did. But the adults found them torturous."Cheyenne" was a Western, and one of the TV series in which the format was to show the stories of major films like TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, ALONG THE GREAT DIVIDE, and numerous Randolph Scott films.Classic films would not appear on TV more than once every three years, sometimes once every ten years. Some, like A Christmas CAROL and THE WIZARD OF OZ, made a yearly appearance.The writers must have felt very repressed, if they had any talent at all, because the episodes were pretty much clones of the films. Any changes made were due to budget. They probably didn't have a Mexican bandit in the Madre episode because they didn't have a sombrero. I wouldn't doubt it.All in all, it was a very predictable show, but at least it wasn't annoying. It had a good heart, which makes it better.

How wonderful to see the re-runs now of "Cheyenne". Clint Walker was my mother's favourite western actor. She loved the way he looked and the way he talked and his soft-spokeness. I don't think she would have cared if Mr. Walker could even act because he was so 'gorgeous' to her. Fortunately, he was terrific in his role and we never missed an episode. Those were the days of real television..the 'Golden' days, I think they call them and you can see why. Families could sit down and watch such great shows together and not worry about bad language or overt violence. Since I was growing up in England, I learned a lot about America and the old western days. It was fascinating and gave me the courage to come over and see it,years later. It is still fascinating and thank goodness we can all see these shows again and truly realise how great they were.

Cheyenne was one of the original three (along with Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp) 'adult' westerns to hit TV in the fall of 1955, kicking off a trend that would dominate all three networks for the next five or six years, until the once original concept turned to formula and all the fun went out of the genre owing to overexposure. In truth, there was no one quite like Clint Walker - to say that he was tall in the saddle is to understate the case. Like Fess Parker as Davy Crockett (on the same network, ABC) one year earlier, his huge physical stature but gentle country voice won him instant stardom and, adult western or no, the hero of every kid in America. Actually, Cheyenne wasn't a series in the true sense during its first season, but broadcast one out of every three weeks as part of an anthology called WARNER BROS. PRESENTS. The other two entries were King's Row with Robert Horton and Jack Kelly (soon to reappear on Wagon Train and Maverick) and Casablanca, a take off on the old Bogart movie of that name. Immediately, the ratings for Cheyenne went through the roof while the other two just sat there. By mid-season they were gone and Cheyenne was seen on reruns every week through the summer. Two things about that first season: though the show ran an hour, each episode was not a normal hour length installment (50 mins.) but between five and ten minutes less than that, owing to 'behind the scenes' previews of upcoming WB movies. Also, this was the only season when Cheyenne had a sidekick, played by L.Q. Jones, later a regular in the Sam Peckinpah stock company. One last thing about the opening season - the episodes were far more spectacular than any to follow, as WB actually did mini remakes of big budget western films, using the stock footage from them and simply replacing whoever had starred with Clint. So the feature film Charge at Feather River with Guy Madison became West of the River with Clint. The Indian charge is identical in both. Most of us didn't know anything about stock footage then and were under the impression (for a while) that WB was knocking out a major league western for TV every three weeks. When Cheyenne came back in 1956, it was a full hour, no sidekick, and ran every other week, alternating with CONFLICT, mostly composed of pilots for possible future WB shows. the next year, Conflict was gone and Sugarfoot with Will Hutchins became the rotating item with Cheyenne, this western also quickly becoming a hit. The following year, Cheyenne was on the air but Clint wasn't. He'd left WB in a salary dispute. So the weirdest thing happen - Cheyenne ran with no Cheyenne in sight, rather Ty Hardin as Bronco Lane. When Walker returned the following fall, Cheyenne shifted to Monday (often, it ran weekly now) with Bronco and Sugarfoot rotating on Tuesdays. By this time, the western was playing out, so both Sugarfoot and Bronco were absorbed into Cheyenne, the package now called "The Cheyenne Show," each of the three seen once every three weeks. In one episode, all three were together. Then Sugarfoot was dropped and Cheyenne and Bronco rotated. By this time, the heyday of the western was over. Warner Bros. replaced Cheyenne late in 1963 with another western, Badlands, which lasted less than half a year. And, in truth, during its final two or three seasons, Cheyenne was awfully routine, in terms of scripting, direction, etc. But that first season was a real winner, and the next two or three were strong too. Worth catching again at least those heyday episodes.

If "Cheyenne" is one of the most fondly-remembered shows from TV's "Golden Age of Westerns," it probably isn't due to such factors as writing or direction, since these elements were probably no better than those found on a number of other TV westerns. What set "Cheyenne" apart and a bit above most of its competition lay in the casting of Clint Walker as its title character.While Clint was a good-looking fellow with a 48-inch chest, (which seemed to get bared at least once on every episode), he didn't succeed just on his physical appearance or on his acting ability which, while passable, didn't qualify for any awards. No, what probably made Clint such an enduring icon of the 1950's was his surprisingly quiet, mild-mannered personality which at first seemed at odds with his massive size. This personality gave Clint an approachable, almost vulnerable quality which lent him the aura of a "gentle giant."Even his "beefcake" scenes had a wholesome, non-threatening quality about them as opposed to, say, the sly sexuality of Robert Conrad's frequent bare-chest poses in "The Wild Wild West."Perhaps the episode best reflecting Clint's unique qualities aired on 12-18-56. Titled "The Trap," this episode had Clint unjustly sentenced to work in a silver mine. Having Clint push those loaded mine-cars out of the mine and along a track under a blistering-hot desert sun not only gave ample opportunities to display that hairy chest gleaming with sweat, but the atmosphere of cruelty and bondage effectively played on the notion that audiences like to see the masochistic sufferings of an uncomplaining strongman.