Cisco Kid comic books issue 1 Cisco Kid comic books issue 1 All Issues Near Mint $17.95 Volume 1 - 1st printing. "1951-1953!" Written by Rod Reed. Art by Jose Luis Salinas. Classic Comics Press is pleased to present its newest addition - The Cisco Kid by Jose Luis Salinas and Rod Reed. Based on the Western character created by legendary short story writer O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way," The Cisco Kid starred in a comic strip that ran for fifteen years. Volume One will reprint this classic American comic strip from its beginning on January 15, 1951 to January 31, 1953 with an introduction by Sergio Aragonés, rarely seen Salinas artwork, biographical information, and more! Softcover (Horizontal Format), 11-in. x 8-in., 240 pages, B&W. Cover price $24.95. Issue #1 Fine $1.70 by Jim Duffy & Jerry Decaire A gang of outlaws steal the only thing Cisco's got worth having...

a locket with the picture of the woman who haunts him. Cisco discovers that they sell defenseless Mexican women and children. Hot after these thugs is Pancho, whose family he must free! The two, motivated by very different instincts, form an uneasy truce. MATURE READERS FC, 32pg (1 of 3) $2.95 Cover price $2.95. Issue #1 Fine $2.20 by Chuck Dixon, Kody, Villagran & J. There are two sides to every story, and for the first time Moonstone shows them both, with two different perspectives on the same Wild West story! They called them gunslingers when these mythic men rode the west over a century ago. Movies and dime novels gave them white hats and black hats, but the truth lies somewhere in between. On October 27th, 1880, Wyatt Earp arrested William 'Curly Bill' Brocious for shooting the Tombstone town Marshall. But on the way to trial, some tell of a dangerous encounter with a mysterious outlaw called the Cisco Kid. Did the paths of these two legendary gunslingers cross somewhere in the southwest?

If so, whose side of the story should we believe? Myth meets history in this fanastic Western showdown! Writer Chuck Dixon is joined by artist Enrique Villagran on Wyatt Earp vs. The Cisco Kid, and on The Cisco Kid vs. Wyatt Earp writer Len Kody and artist EricJ join Dixon. Cover price $3.99. Issue #1 Very Fine $1.70 by Chuck Dixon, Kody, Villagran & J. There are two sides to every story, and for the first time Moonstone shows them both, with two different perspectives on the same Wild West story! They called them gunslingers when these mythic men rode the west over a century ago. Movies and dime novels gave them white hats and black hats, but the truth lies somewhere in between. On October 27th, 1880, Wyatt Earp arrested William 'Curly Bill' Brocious for shooting the Tombstone town Marshall. But on the way to trial, some tell of a dangerous encounter with a mysterious outlaw called the Cisco Kid. Did the paths of these two legendary gunslingers cross somewhere in the southwest? If so, whose side of the story should we believe?

Myth meets history in this fanastic Western showdown! Writer Chuck Dixon is joined by artist Enrique Villagran on Wyatt Earp vs. The Cisco Kid, and on The Cisco Kid vs. Wyatt Earp writer Len Kody and artist EricJ join Dixon. Cover price $3.99. Issue #1 Near Mint $8.00 1st prinitng. Collects Cisco Kid (2004 Moonstone) #1-3. Written by Jim Duffy. Art by Jerry DeCaire. O'Henry's tragic anti-hero, The Cisco Kid looks for meaning in a squalid life of crime and violence, as the dark secret he harbors eats away at his soul like a jagged tooth demon. While he's busy drinking his problems away, a gang of outlaws take a sharp dislike to him, and steal the only thing he's got worth having - a locket with the picture of the woman who haunts his every step. Cisco tracks them, and discovers that they're part of a larger outfit that shanghais defenseless Mexican women and children to sell to the highest bidder. Hot after these thugs as well is Pancho, who has family at the kidnappers' compound he must free!

The two, motivated by very different instincts, form an uneasy truce to scrape this band of outlaw scum off the face of the old west! Softcover, 80 pages, B&W. Cover price $10.95. Issue #1-1ST Add to want list This item is not in stock. If you use the "Add to want list" tab to add this issue to your want list, we will email you when it becomes available. Signed by Len Kody and Erique Villagran - 1st printing. Written by Chuck Dixon and Len Kody. Art by Erique Villagran. Both parts of the Wyatt Earp vs. The Cisco Kid storyline are collected in this limited edition flipbook! Get both perspectives on this titanic western from writer Chuck Dixon as history meets myth in the Old West! Harcover, full color. NOTE: Limited to 100 copies. Cover price $39.99.

We Buy Comics "The Cisco Kid" Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb trailers and videos full cast and crew trivia official sites memorable quotes Overview 23 out of 27 people found the following review useful: Kiddie Western, Great Star from Calgary AB Canada 14 November 2003 Before the revolution brought about by the "adult" Westerns or 1955+ (Gunsmoke, Maverick, etc, the one's as a young boy I liked best) there were the kiddie Westerns: Wild Bill Hickock, The Range Rider, Buffalo Bill Jnr, The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. Based (supposedly) on an O. Henry story, there was probably more kinship with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza - and formulaic B-Westerns of the '30s and '40s. One thing set this apart from others of their ilk: I met Duncan Reynaldo! I was a very young boy but I still treasure the memory of this friendly kind gentleman. Was the above review useful to you?

19 out of 20 people found the following review useful: "Hey, Poncho; Hey, Cisco!" from United States 9 April 2007 The cries, "Hey, Poncho! Hey, Cisco" are something none of us who grew up with this TV western will ever get out of heads and why should we? This western, I believe, is the second one I ever recall watching (after "The Range Rider") and the first recall with great fondness and a knowledge that a lot of people also liked this show. They had to, to have it run six years. To be honest, I remember the Cisco Kid's partner, "Pancho" (Leo Carillo) more than I remember him, although Duncan Renaldo is not forgettable. He was a charismatic good guy, a real straight arrow and a great role model for small kids. I was the perfect age (6-12) to enjoy these episodes of a western that was made more for us in mind than adults. Pancho, if I recall, mainly provided comedy relief...and that was fine with us kids. We loved him. You couldn't ask for a more loyal sidekick, even if he wasn't the most brilliant person.

Was the above review useful to you? 14 out of 15 people found the following review useful: O Henry's Famous Robin Hood of the West from Buffalo, New York 30 April 2005 I used to have a television that occasionally got a weak signal station from Fort Erie, Ontario over here in Buffalo. And I got to relive a little childhood seeing episodes of Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger. Unlike the Ranger all of Cisco's stuff was in color. Great foresight because a whole lot of westerns that were done in black and white can't be given away now. Cisco was quite the guy. A gentleman always, a righter of wrongs, and an amazingly tolerant guy to keep Pancho around. Unlike Tonto who was really useful to the Lone Ranger, I think Cisco kept Pancho around for laughs. He was slow on the uptake, but devoted to Cisco, and someone you didn't have to worry about betraying you. I thought and still Cisco was great. Many friends in my age group and slightly older who are of Latino background told me how much Cisco meant to them as a role model. He was such a good guy, I wonder what he did that made him an outlaw in the first place.

O Henry spent much time in border towns on the American side and in old Mexico himself. In writing The Caballero's Way and introducing us to Cisco, he gave us another universal hero. Cisco will be syndication 100 years from now. Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo were a couple of Hollywood veterans with substantial credits. But they will always be known as the Cisco Kid and Pancho. By the way, did Pancho have a last name? Was the above review useful to you? 15 out of 18 people found the following review useful: TV nostalgia from United States 20 February 2005 I remember the TV series fondly. One of the Connecticut TV stations ran reruns in the late 1960s/early 1970s. I enjoyed it as a child. I just picked up a bargain DVD with several episodes. Nothing is the same as an adult as when you first saw something as a child or teenager but these hold up well. Some may see some ethnic stereotyping. Isn't that true for too many things coming out of an earlier era. I would be interested in reading the O. Henry story.

Remember the dime novels of the late 1800s/early 1900s led into the shorts and westerns of the early decades of American films. Was the above review useful to you? 13 out of 15 people found the following review useful: My First and Most Loved Western Heroes from United States 29 September 2005 Fell in love with the show when I was four years old, and never stopped loving it. I always felt that Cisco and Pancho were the ideal men--caring, brave, and gallant, protecting defenseless victims, sending their rewards to mission orphans, etc. The early shows mentioned O. Henry, as in "O. Henry's Cisco Kid"--I have always wanted to know the name of the book or short story that contained the Cisco Kid. The story is not in any of my O. Henry collections, so maybe it went out of print. Also, it would be nice to know who wrote the lovely theme music, and if it's currently available. The show was also notable, to me, for not using women characters only as victims--often, women were just as devious, villainous, and able as the men with whom they were associated.

Was the above review useful to you? 11 out of 12 people found the following review useful: Cisco and Pancho should be proud from Canada 26 December 2006 Who can forget these two cavalier Mexican heroes, The Cisco Kid, played by the dashingly handsome Duncan Renaldo and Pancho, his loyal sidekick, played wonderfully by Leo Carillo. When I was a boy, the "Cisco Kid" was a weekly series and I never missed it. Both of these actors are long buried and mostly forgotten. The message they delivered to their young audiences each week was the same message delivered by so many other oater serials of the day; always stand up for the rights of the underdog. If your friends and neighbors need help, it's up to you and other good people to come to their assistance. After all, it's the honorable thing to do. Although Renaldo and Carillo faded into relative obscurity in the years following their T.V. series, I'm sure they went to their final rewards feeling a large measure of satisfaction for the positive affect that their little t.v. program had on the lives of so many youngsters during their formative years. Was the above review useful to you?

8 out of 8 people found the following review useful: "O'Henry's famous Robin Hood of The Old West" from United States 5 November 2005 I enjoyed the Cisco Kid TV series very much when I was a kid.I frankly don't see why anyone could take offense at either of the leads. Unlike most comic reliefs,Pancho was very formidable when the chips were down. As far as O'Henry's original story,it is easily found.There was a set of books published between l900 and l9l0 with his collected stories which was printed in vast numbers which has everything he ever wrote;any large library should have it.However,the character in the story has absolutely nothing to do with the movie and TV character.He was an Anglo,not a Latino. Far more important, the character of the story was a depraved homicidal maniac,as well as an outlaw."It was the Kid's pastime to shoot Mexicans for the pleasure of watching them kick".That is as near as I can get from memory.I was pretty surprised when I first read this.

As Kenneth MacGowan said in "Behind the Screen" about the movie character vs O'Henry's original creation "how this degenerate sadist" was turned into the familiar hero is anybody's guess.Some unknown scriptwriter apparently. The movie and TV figure is certainly a "Robin Hood of the Old West",but not O'Henry's. I believe that the story is to be found in the volume "The Heart of the West", but it might be in one of the others. Was the above review useful to you? 8 out of 10 people found the following review useful: Excellent Western For It's Day from Duncannon, Pennsylvania 17 August 2001 I remember when I was little that I was just glued to this show. One of the 1st westerns that I remember seeing, and I've seen just about all of them. I haven't seen this show for years and it would be nice to see it again sometime. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Oh, Cisco! Oh, Pancho!

from Van Buren, Arkansas 16 December 2007 When I was about eight years old, my parents worked at a tomato processing plant in Indiana. We lived in "company" housing that was mainly comprised of Mexican workers. During that late summer and early fall, many of my playmates were Mexican. Cowboy stars were all the rage. Their favorite western character was the Cisco Kid. Both the Cisco Kid and his partner, Pancho, were played by true Mexican Americans. Often they would even converse in Spanish. One episode in particular, "The Phony Sheriff," has one of the rustlers telling Cisco and Pancho to speak English. Cisco retorts, "What's the matter? You don't like Spanish?" Even the comical sidekick, Pancho, was not really the Mexican stereotype usually seen in Hollywood movies and on TV at the time. So the Cisco Kid series was a real boost for positive Mexican-Anglo relationships. Loosely based on a character created by famed short-story writer, O. Henry, Cisco became "The Robin Hood Of The Old West" for the movies and this long-running TV series. Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo were veteran Hollywood actors who gave life to the character each played.

There was the usual assortment of reliable character actors to add to the enjoyment of watching the show. And the scripts were usually first-rate for a TV shoot-'em-up aimed at all the small fries plopped down in front of the tube. Highly recommended for those old enough to remember the early days of TV and passable entertainment for those not yet born when the series ran on television. Color is an added bonus, since most of the TV westerns of the day, including The Roy Rogers Show, were filmed in black and white. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Cisco y Pancho! from United States 15 November 2006 Here's "O. Henry's famous Robin Hood of the Old West!" Duncan Renaldo, The Cisco Kid of TV was a much more stand-up, stalwart hero than the short story character. Righting wrongs and doing good with his pal, Pancho Miguel Fernando Gonzalez de Conejo(Leo Carillo), Cisco was a model of right for a generation of wee cowpokes. Great low-budget nostalgic, formulaic kiddie western fun!

And it's all in color, indicative of the foresight of the production company when TV was in it's infancy and a color set couldn't be had as yet! MPI Video has compiled four DVD collections of 20 episodes each. That's just over half of the 156 episodes! Where are the rest, I wanna know?!? The color and quality are superb given the age of these shows, with great menus and all the stirring theme music and narration adding to the action and comic fun. Highly recommended! Was the above review useful to you? Page 1 of 2: O. Henry - IMDb IMDb Writer O. Henry was an American writer whose short stories are known for wit, wordplay and clever twist endings. He wrote nearly 600 stories about life in America. He was born William Sidney Porter on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a medical doctor. When William was three his mother died and he ... See full bio » Born: a list of 5188 people created 11 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of O.

Henry's work have you seen? User Polls 2017 Twenty Years (Short) (short story) 2016/I Henry (Short) (written by) 2015 The Green Door (Short) (short story) 2014 Blue Butterfly (Short) (adapted from the story) 2013/I Lootera (short story "The Last Leaf") 2004 The Last Leaf (Video short) (written by) 2004 Raincoat (adapted from the story "Gift of Magi") 1986 Princese un puma (Short) (story) 1986 Ruthless People (story "The Ransom of Red Chief") 1985 Jimmy Valentine (TV Short) (story "A Retrieved Reformation") 1983 The Last Leaf (Short) (story) 1983 Trest, kotoryy lopnul (TV Mini-Series) (book "A noble swindler" - 3 episodes) - Supruzhestvo kak tochnaya nauka (1983) ...

(book "A noble swindler") - Koridory vlasti (1983) ... (book "A noble swindler") - Porosyachya etika (1983) ... (book "A noble swindler") 1982 CBS Library (TV Series) (story "The Chaparral Prince" - 1 episode) - Robbers, Rooftops and Witches (1982) ...

(story "The Chaparral Prince" - as O'Henry) ABC Weekend Specials (TV Series) (story - 2 episodes, 1977 - 1979) (story "A Retrieved Reformation" - 1 episode, 1977) 1978 Nebusiu gangsteriu, brangioji (TV Movie) (novel) 1978 The Gift of Love (TV Movie) (story "The Gift of the Magi") 1978 A Pink Christmas (TV Short) (short story "The Cop and the Anthem" - as O'Henry) 1977 Dzhentlmeny, kotorym ne povezlo (TV Movie) (story) 1974 Great Mysteries (TV Series) (story - 2 episodes) 1973 Ostatni lisc (TV Movie) (short story - as O'Henry) 1973 Ficciones (TV Series) (1 episode) Alta comedia (TV Series) (based on the short story by - 1 episode, 1971) (story - 1 episode, 19

71) - Único otoño (1971) ...

(based on the short story by - as O'Henry) / (story) 1967 Jim Valentines großer Coup (TV Movie) (short story) 1966 À la belle étoile (TV Movie) (short story "The Cop and the Anthem") 1965 Magnetické vlny lécí (TV Movie) (short story "Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet") 1965 Policajt a chorál (Short) (short story "The Cop and the Anthem") 1965 Úkryt cerného Billa (Short) (short story "The Hiding of Black Bill" - as O'Henry) 1964 Estudio 3 (TV Series) (2 episodes) 1964 Potouchlé skotacinky zivota (Short) (story) 1963 Winterquartier (TV Movie) (novel) 1962 Tri price o Dzefu Pitersu (TV Movie) (novels) 1962 Pakinateatteri (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode) - Kohtalotoverit

 (1962) ...

(writer) 1962 Delovye lyudi (stories "The Roads We Take", "Makes the Whole World Kin" and "The Ransom of Red Chief") 1959 The Ransom of Red Chief (TV Movie) (story) 1959 Gangster Boss (orginal short story "The Ransom of Red Chief") 1959 Servisna stanica (TV Series) (novel - 1 episode) - The Cop and the Anthem (1954) ...

(story "The Cop and the Anthem") 1953 Ponds Theater (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode) 1948 The Valiant Hombre (based on characters by) 1948 Black Eagle (story "The Passing of Black Eagle") 1941 Romance of the Rio Grande (character: The Cisco Kid - as William Sydney Porter) 1940 The Gay Caballero (based on the character The Cisco Kid created by - as William Sydney Porter) 1940 Lucky Cisco Kid (character: The Cisco Kid - as William Sydney Porter) 1940 Viva Cisco Kid (character - as William Sydney Porter) 1939 The Cisco Kid and the Lady (suggested by: the character of the Cisco Kid created by - as William Sidney Porter {O.

Henry}) 1939 The Llano Kid (story "Double Dyed Deceiver") 1938 Dotor Rhythm (story "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon") 1933 Velikiy uteshitel (story "A Retrieved Information") 1930 The Texan (story "The Double-Dyed Deceiver") 1929 Tokkan kozô (Short) (story "The Ransom of Red Chief") A beginner’s guide to classic TV Westerns · Primer · The A.V. Club Share Tweet Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This installment: Classic TV Westerns. In 1949 the television Western was born. In 1959 it dominated the airwaves. And in 1969, it slouched in its saddle off toward the sunset. In the long view there has always been a Western—or at least a lookalike—on the air, but Gunsmoke’s cancellation in 1975 was a closing of the frontier.

In the four decades since, television has grown up. At least that’s what they say. But in 1955, Marshal Matt Dillon stumbled upon the hanged bodies of two would-be (but not quite) murderous ne’er-do-wells, done in by Matt’s friends and neighbors the night before. Matt doesn’t know what to do about this vigilante justice. He can’t very well arrest the whole town. Instead, our black-and-white ’50s hero washes his hands of the dilemma and walks away, leaving justice undone. Television didn’t grow up all at once. In fact, many roots of modern television run back to the classic Western, a formative influence on David Milch and Vince Gilligan, a training ground for Gene Roddenberry and Frank Pierson, moral grist for Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah. The Western is often dismissed as good guys versus bad guys, patriarchal lessons for the Eisenhower family, a landscape of men swinging their guns around with no acknowledgment of women or minorities. That’s true in parts. But the horizon is vast. The Western isn’t just the story of the sheriff keeping the peace.

It’s about cowboys riding from town to town on a season-long drive, women pioneers settling the frontier in vignettes, and a Native American U.S. Marshal. It’s a cop show, a historical adventure, a small town dramedy, a legal procedural, a spy-fi hybrid, and sometimes an art drama without the prestige. It’s an overwhelming bounty, not least because so many hits and sidekicks are available on DVD. But no need to dig. The perfect introduction is sitting right there on top. Classic TV Westerns 101: The legends 1959 was the year the Western broke. On the big screen John Wayne roused his friends in defense of Rio Bravo, and on the small screen network schedules were clogged with more than 30 Westerns. The rise over the ’50s had been steady, and the sudden drop-off in the ’60s was just around the corner. Coming off Gunsmoke’s win for Best Dramatic Series in 1958, the Emmys created a new category for Best Western. America couldn’t get enough.

Seven of the top 10 series of the 1958-59 season were Westerns, including the top four: Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, and The Rifleman. CBS’ Gunsmoke was in the middle of a four-year reign as television’s most watched program in 1959. Begun as a radio show and slightly reimagined for television, creators Norman Macdonnell and John Meston envisioned Gunsmoke as an adult Western , a realistic corrective to consequence-free children’s shows like The Lone Ranger. It’s the story of Dodge City, Kansas, at the time considered the Gomorrah of the West, a frontier hub that attracted all manner of unsavory sorts. The only thing standing between chaos and civilization was Marshal Matt Dillon, played by James Arness. The series was more plainspoken than that, but it was always reaching for elemental drama.

Set in a single location, Gunsmoke was unusually populated for those days, with a supporting cast of three (eventually four) Dodgers: Amanda Blake’s passionate saloon girl Kitty, Milburn Stone’s ornery Doc Adams, and Dennis Weaver’s dim Deputy Chester, later replaced by Ken Curtis’ hayseed Festus. After the series added a fifth regular, Burt Reynolds played a half-Native American blacksmith for a spell. Source Running for 635 episodes over 20 years, Gunsmoke is a monolith. It’s the center of the television Western canon, the massive body around which all else orbits. In 1955 it debuted as a straight-shooting half-hour black-and-white adventure tracking mud everywhere. In 1975 it bowed out as an hour-long color social issues drama. A three-episode survey might be Sam Peckinpah’s “Poor Pearl,” which ends with a man stewing in his own moral filth; “Seven Hours To Dawn,” an exciting action piece with the town held hostage; and “The Good Samaritans,” which has Brock Peters and Rex Ingram playing ex-slaves debating whether or not to help a wounded Matt.

Through it all runs a preoccupation with violence: law and order, revenge, the Civil War, the plight of the Native American, scars physical and psychological. To Meston, Dodge was an arena for gladiators unleashed in the Civil War. Indeed, violence is what the Western is all about, from The Lone Ranger’s heroics to Deadwood’s brutality. Strip it down to its component parts and the Western is a man with a gun somewhere between the state of nature and government. No Western understands that so thoroughly as Gunsmoke. Wagon Train makes Gunsmoke look like Deadwood. Based on John Ford’s masterful melting pot Wagon Master, NBC’s Wagon Train is a 1957 semi-anthology series about a wagon train crew leading all kinds of settlers west through the wilderness. Each hour-long episode is one guest actor’s moral tale, the West a crucible testing the fiber of its people. Gunsmoke may have a traditional façade, but Wagon Train is square to the bone with its corny comedy and “do the right thing” drama, preaching good, old-fashioned values like personal responsibility, obedience, and honor in certain kinds of violence.

“Sometimes, in spite of how a man tries to stay out of a fight, he ends up with crossed swords,” Major Adams patiently explains in a static close-up, the better to soak up the wisdom. Where Matt Dillon hardens with every bullet, Adams is untroubled. All of Wagon Train is contained in his grandfatherly smile. Played by John Ford regular Ward Bond, Adams led the wagon train for the first half of the series until Bond’s death, when Anthony Mann regular John McIntire took over. The show was designed around the guest stars anyway. Ernest Borgnine, fresh off an Oscar win for Marty, anchors the pilot as a drunk tested by battle. Executive producer Richard Lewis was as proud of the acting talents Wagon Train wrangled—like Sessue Hayakawa and Bette Davis—as of the writers he brought aboard, like E. Jack Neuman and Aaron Spelling (who would go on to co-create The Guns Of Will Sonnett starring Walter Brennan). When the show hit number one in 1962, ABC outbid NBC and the series jumped ship.

But even with a season of 90-minute color episodes , Wagon Train never regained its ratings, and it rolled to a stop in 1965. From 1958 to 1961, the top three shows in the country, in this order, were Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Have Gun – Will Travel. Unlike the other two, Have Gun’s vision of the West was mythic. Where Gunsmoke is stuck to its hub and Wagon Train is stuck to its formula, Have Gun travels all over the country, getting tangled up in land disputes, murder mysteries, camel races—you name it. The Old West was an epic poem, and here was its knight-errant. For six seasons of romantic black-and-white half hours shot in all kinds of country, Emmy-nominated Richard Boone played Paladin, a private detective/bounty hunter with equal parts brains and grit who operates out of a ritzy hotel in San Francisco. The series was named for the text of his business card. He’s packing, and he’ll be there soon. Most heroes of the adult Western aim to solve problems without violence, but few were as intellectual as Paladin.

Push often comes to shove on Have Gun – Will Travel, and Paladin’s as good a shot as any other hero, but there were times, like Gene Roddenberry’s “ The Hanging Cross ,” when the show’s peace prevails. Sam Peckinpah had a wearier vision of the Old West. After honing his craft on some of Gunsmoke’s steeliest scripts, Peckinpah wrote a pilot about a marksman bullied into throwing a shooting contest and then leaving town in shame. Producing team Jules V. Levy, Arthur Gardner, and Arnold Laven balanced Peckinpah’s pessimism with a more commercial approach, and they successfully sold The Rifleman. A version of that story with a happy ending aired first as an episode of anthology series Zane Grey Theatre and then as the first episode of ABC’s 1958 series about Chuck Connors’ upright rancher Lucas McCain trying to raise his son in the West. Peckinpah’s stamp is all over the first season with its focus on masculinity and subversive cynicism, but he would soon leave over creative differences.

In his absence The Rifleman would become more wholesome, as much a paternal ’50s sitcom as a rip-roaring Western, but no less savage and beautiful. Even in spring of 1963, when the show finally dropped out of the Nielsen Top 30 and was canceled, B-movie stylist and The Rifleman’s secret weapon Joseph H. Lewis was churning out action spectaculars replete with splash-page composition and newsprint chiaroscuro. Source Not simply the most popular programs in America, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, and The Rifleman were also nominated for Best Western that year. Together they read like a syllabus. Two are black-and-white half-hours and two are mostly hour-longs with seasons in color. Two are stationary semi-serials, and two are nomadic semi-anthologies, and they cover all three networks. Their heroes can be plotted on a spectrum of very relative compromise: a righteous wagon master, a stalwart rancher, a clenched town sheriff, and a freer radical.

But all four were beaten for the Emmy by the fifth-highest rated Western (in the number six position behind The Danny Thomas Show), Roy Huggins’ sly, slick Maverick. Roy Huggins, writer of Raoul Walsh’s Gun Fury, was fresh off a year on Warner Western Cheyenne, but the unfailing virtue of the hero was driving him crazy. So he set out to write a series about “a hero with humor, who gambled for a living, who was not concerned with the troubles of others, and who was, in fact, a kind of ‘gentle grafter.’” Huggins made a Western about an antihero. Maverick began in 1957 with James Garner playing gambler Bret Maverick, a more self-interested Western hero than the others and a prototype for his ’70s P.I., Jim Rockford. He drifted from saloon to riverboat looking for a score until trouble found him. Often he’d encounter some swindler and embark on an episode-long plan to get his money back, but other times he’d reluctantly come to help a woman who catches his eye or an underdog in town so long as there was something in it for him.

Maverick was a side-eye take on the Western, with capers, adventures, and even outright parodies rather than stern moral tales, but Bret was ultimately as dependable as Lucas McCain. Even before Budd Boetticher shot the pilot, Warner planned to set up a second unit with another actor to minimize the danger of falling behind schedule. So Jack Kelly came in as Bret’s brother Bart, and from episode eight on, the Maverick brothers would alternate episodes and occasionally team up. In one of the more memorable outings, “Shady Deal At Sunny Acres,” five different recurring characters join the Maverick brothers in a heist to get Bret’s money back while he just sits on his porch whittling , sure that his money will return. In one of the contract disputes that plagued the Warner Westerns, Garner left the series after its third season, so Roger Moore came on as cousin Beau, only lasting a year out of unhappiness with his scripts. For the final shortened season, Bart was the solo lead, but by 1962, the Western was already falling out of fashion, and Maverick was canceled. Intermediate Studies: The open range Before Gunsmoke and company blazed a trail for the adult Western, the genre was for kids.

In the late ’40s and early ’50s, the Western was escapist entertainment, all half-hour black-and-white adventures about good guys and bad guys. Lone Pine was as exotic as the West could look. Everything else was shot within 50 miles of Hollywood. The white hat would triumph over the black hat and then sing a song. He had a broad comic sidekick and his horse had a name. He was always in danger but never really. He was bowling with bumpers. The West in those days was easier. Naming his horse was never a very high priority for Paladin. The originals are NBC’s Hopalong Cassidy and ABC’s The Lone Ranger, both from 1949. Hopalong Cassidy was a B-picture hero debuting on television in 1948 in the form of heavily edited movies. Cassidy was bigger than ever on the small screen, and NBC began airing an original series (also partly comprised of theatrical releases) in June of 1949 with William Boyd’s middle-aged Hoppy and his sidekick, grizzled old Red Connors.

That September, The Lone Ranger began with a three-part movie patterned after ’30s adventure serials wherein the titular, fresh-faced ex-Texas Ranger and his Native American sidekick, Tonto, would find themselves in cliffhanger endings. Hopalong Cassidy burned hot and fast, but The Lone Ranger lasted for more than 200 episodes over eight years, including a season in color. It’s the Gunsmoke of the early Westerns, the key that fits all the other locks. Source A stampede followed. In 1950, The Cisco Kid would bring the format down South with the adventures of the title caballero, “O. Henry’s famous Robin Hood of the Old West,” and his cartoonish sidekick, Pancho. Sold into syndication, Cisco stands out for being shot in color even though it aired in black and white. CBS’ only notable Western in the early ’50s, The Gene Autry Show, distinguished itself with its singing cowboy. Autry and pal Pat were malleable heroes, slotting into whatever occupations the stories required, but they were always reliable for a song or two.

NBC’s The Roy Rogers Show was just as adventurous, but set in one location, which allowed it to have more regulars, like Rogers’ wife Dale Evans as a restaurateur and Harry Harvey Sr. as the town sheriff. The series was also gleefully anachronistic, with telephones and cars when need be. When producers started mining historical figures for kiddie Westerns (like The Adventures Of Wild Bill Hickok and The Adventures Of Kit Carson), Autry produced the first Western centered on a woman, Gail Davis’ tough, playful, pig-tailed markswoman, Annie Oakley. Annie wasn’t a rodeo performer in the show but rather a sort of peace officer. Each week she’d prove herself with her gun and then right the wrongs of the world, often with her baby brother Tagg and the town Deputy Lofty, who was a love interest on the back burner like a male Miss Kitty. Source In the fall of 1955, audiences tuned in to see radio hero Matt Dillon in the flesh. He was shot down halfway through the premiere of Gunsmoke on CBS, and the adult Western was born.

There were Westerns not aimed at kids before 1955, but that was the year the dam broke. NBC offered a short-lived anthology series called Frontier. And ABC introduced future Top-30 regular, The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp. Hugh O’Brian played the legendary lawman and embodied the show: handsome, dependable, and humorless, even when smiling. The show had strong action and some nice episodes, but it claims to be history and reads like a textbook. From its acting to its sets, it was simpler than Gunsmoke in every respect but one: Earp was serialized. The on-going story was light, but Wyatt spent the first season mostly in Wichita, the next three as marshal of Dodge, and the last two in Tombstone, with the final two episodes dealing with the shootout between the Earps and the Clanton gang. By the end, Wyatt was even entangled in a romance with a Clanton girl. The other original adult Western, Cheyenne, also aired on ABC, and it was the first hour-long Western. In the light of Clint Walker’s Cheyenne Bodie, it’s easier to see Matt Dillon’s rage, Paladin’s intellect, Lucas McCain’s tenderness.

Cheyenne Bodie is pure beef, a heroic archetype never fully humanized, but his brand of comic strip adventures has its virtues. Cheyenne is most notable for being the first Western produced by a major studio—in this case Warner Bros. under its first TV executive, William T. Orr. It was Orr who brought on Roy Huggins to try to rework Cheyenne, and after serving his time, Huggins went on to write two 1957 pilots for Warner: Maverick and Colt .45. The latter was about a marshal undercover as a gun salesman with an obvious favorite. Where the kid Westerns had special horses, adult Westerns had special guns: Wyatt Earp’s buntline special, The Rifleman’s Winchester 1892, Yancy Derringer’s fancy derringer. Meanwhile the flagship was in trouble when Clint Walker left over a contract dispute. So Warner brought on a replacement hero, Ty Hardin’s livelier Bronco Layne. When Walker came back in 1958, Orr hit a successful three-show rotation that lasted for three years: Cheyenne, spinoff Bronco, and Sugarfoot .

Sugarfoot was the first of the wheel to go, but its offbeat flavor—a law student drifting through the West trying to solve problems without a gun—makes it the most interesting. Where Orr’s other Westerns are Maverick-style drifters, 1958’s Lawman was in the mold of Gunsmoke, about the marshal of Laramie, Wyoming. Sugarfoot and Cheyenne both fell out of the Top 30 around the turn of the decade, leaving Lawman not just Warner’s, but ABC’s, highest-rated Western in 1961. The last of Orr’s Westerns, 1959’s The Alaskans, was timed to the admission of Alaska as the 49th state that January, but a writer’s strike suffocated it. Star Roger Moore stayed in the family by going on to play Beau Maverick, but characters from Orr’s Westerns also had a habit of popping up on each other’s shows. The Alaskans was the first to go in 1960, but the Western craze was dying anyway.

Cheyenne was the first and outlasted the others, but the Warner Westerns were over by 1963, just eight years after they began. Source NBC had a similar relationship with the studio behind Wagon Train, Revue Productions, which was the television arm of Universal. In addition to Wagon Train, Revue had supplied two other Western hits, The Restless Gun and Tales Of Wells Fargo. Both out-rated Wagon Train at first. Developed by David Dortort, The Restless Gun was about a problem-solving drifter with a reluctant but competent trigger finger. Tales Of Wells Fargo had a higher concept in its company troubleshooter securing safe, long-distance journeys. There were other shows like it (Pony Express, Stagecoach West starring Wayne Rogers, Stories Of The Century about a railroad detective), but none performed as well as Tales, which ran for five seasons. Revue later brought NBC The Deputy, created by Norman Lear and Roland Kibbee. It starred Henry Fonda and Allen Case, trading leads like Maverick. Unfortunately, Revue is better at manufacturing trivia than actual Westerns.

Warner outpaced it in the popcorn department and its middlebrow cheese can’t compete with the best of the adult Westerns. The studio was great at commercial hits like Wagon Train, but its creative hits wouldn’t come until the turn of the decade. In 1959 CBS had its own Wagon Train in the form of Rawhide, developed by straight-shooting director Charles Marquis Warren, who had previously developed Gunsmoke. If Wagon Train took after John Ford, Rawhide took after Howard Hawks. Instead of moral tales about honor and history, Rawhide presents a rugged portrait of camaraderie and labor. Its heroes are human with little flaws and smiles. Clint Eastwood is the big discovery, but Eric Fleming’s trail boss makes a smart counterpoint to unfailing Major Adams. (In fact Fleming was initially offered the lead role in A Fistful Of Dollars. When he said no, producers didn’t have to look very far.) Rawhide’s drama is muscular and its images classically complicated. It’s more concerned with work than guns, and its stories bite into a piece of meat and don’t let go until the taste’s gone.

Because it’s set outdoors and on the move, not only does it have the genre’s most sumptuous black-and-white nature photography, but it’s the Western that best captures the expanse of the American frontier. Source There were Paladin imitators, too, most notably 1958’s Wanted: Dead Or Alive on CBS. A young Steve McQueen played bounty hunter Josh Randall like milk to Paladin’s vinegar. His breakout led to his role in The Magnificent Seven and then the end of the series after three seasons. NBC’s Bat Masterson was more explicitly a Have Gun rip-off with its upper-crust detective for hire, but it wasn’t exactly an adult Western. It was like a procedural. There was a formula to the plots, Bat was always good for a quip, and the cases were high society things like art forgery and thrown horse races. It was the original White Collar. The ABC standout is The Rebel, directed primarily by Irvin Kershner and starring Nick Adams as ex-Confederate soldier Johnny Yuma. Unlike Paladin, he has adventure thrust upon him as he drifts through the West in the wake of the Civil War, lending the series an air of penance.

Johnny Yuma isn’t trying to save the world out of chivalry. He’s just lost. Adult Westerns like The Rifleman popped up into the ’60s, but few lasted long. The standouts were a beat up pair from 1965 that didn’t make it past 1966. Rod Serling’s The Loner recalls John Meston’s vision of the West. Each episode opens with a Serling special: “In the aftermath of the blood-letting called The Civil War, thousands of rootless, restless, searching men traveled west.” Lloyd Bridges played the Loner for 26 episodes’ worth of Serling’s beautiful, bitter moral tests. Branded at least made it two seasons. In fact, it was the second-highest rated Western for the 1964-65 season. Chuck Connors played the hero, branded a coward and stripped of his rank in the credits that open each episode. The accusations are false, but he keeps silent to prevent the cavalry from going to war with the Apache. By the mid-’60s, even The Rifleman was compromised. But audiences were in the mood for easier fare.

Advanced studies: Settling down America started to move on soon after the rush of ’59. What lasted through the ’60s were Westerns that doubled as small town dramas, exemplified by Gunsmoke’s transition from violence to social issues. The West was moving indoors. Rawhide is the notable exception, lasting through the mid-’60s, but its robust cast and continuing relationships quench similar serial thirsts. Bonanza was the pioneer of the ’60s Western, broadcast in color from the beginning in 1959 on NBC. Developed by David Dortort when The Restless Gun ended, Bonanza was a new kind of Western, focused on a family and set on a ranch, like The Rifleman, but with melodrama. In Bonanza, the Cartwright family—Lorne Greene’s patriarch, his three adult children, and no women—own and operate a Lake Tahoe ranch where they discuss issues like gun violence and bigotry. There was never an issue that the Cartwrights couldn’t talk to death. For most of the ’60s, Bonanza was in the top five, finishing the decade in third behind Gunsmoke.

But true to its Revue roots, Bonanza is that rare prototype outdone by its imitators. Source The best of the ’60s Westerns was Dortort’s follow-up for NBC, The High Chaparral, written by journalist and Hemingway amigo Denne Bart Petitclerc. Also about a family on a lone ranch outside of town, The High Chaparral took the Bonanza formula and tweaked it here and there, transforming the sprawling talkie into a tight little snake. Instead of a woman-less family, Chaparral’s Cannons were a veritable social experiment. Leif Erickson’s patriarch, Big John, is also a widower—his wife is killed in the premiere—but he enters a marriage of convenience with the daughter of a powerful local Mexican rancher, and she and her brother move in. Meanwhile, they’re out in Apache country. Where post-Tonto Native Americans show up regularly in adult Westerns played by guest stars in stories about racism, the Apache are a constant presence in The High Chaparral, neither a sadistic menace nor mere objects for sympathy. Every other episode turns on the Cannons’ failure to understand the Apache or vice versa.

Best of all, instead of a soundstage Sierra Nevada, The High Chaparral makes spectacular use of its Tucson location. With its sand-and-saguaro vistas and flying arrow zooms, it looks like no other Western. Its big blue skies pick up where Rawhide left off. Source The same year Bonanza began, NBC launched Revue’s Laramie, another Western about men living together on a ranch, this one shot in black and white. Laramie is a combination of Gunsmoke’s grit with Bonanza’s soap, a world of continuous characters and hardscrabble living. The show produced some of the black-and-white Western’s most expressionistic cinematography courtesy of Ray Rennahan, making use of stark lighting, curtain shadows, and negative space galore in episodes like “ The Debt ,” but its two color seasons were rarely so vivid. When Laramie ended in 1963, co-star Robert Fuller joined the cast of Wagon Train, now on ABC.

To fill its slot for NBC, Revue came up with another experiment, TV’s first 90-minute Western, The Virginian, which followed James Drury as a ranch foreman who’d get caught up in a different story each week, from lighter fare about a schoolgirl’s crush to more adventurous stuff like temporary blindness in the wilderness. At a B-movie running time, each episode cost about four times as much as one of Monte Hellman’s contemporaneous Westerns, and few had as much psychological meat, let alone visual personality. But the lavish production gave The Virginian the most realistic look of the ’60s Westerns, and it was a commercial hit that ran for nine seasons and spun off Texas Ranger action-comedy Laredo. The Big Valley was ABC’s answer to Bonanza in 1965, a story about a ranch family headed by a widow instead of a widower with a daughter in the mix of children. As matriarch Victoria Barkley, Barbara Stanwyck brought a welcome sense of humor to the stern hero role. Written by noir screenwriter A.I.

Bezzerides and produced by The Rifleman shepherds Levy-Gardner-Laven, The Big Valley is distinguished by a sense of control. Bonanza is full of mugs with a rainbow color palette, the better to sell RCA color TVs. Everything from the acting to the art direction on The Big Valley is more measured, and it lasted four years. One of The Big Valley’s formative writers, Christopher Knopf, went on to create CBS’ stab at the 90-minute Western (in the wake of NBC’s The Virginian and ABC’s color season of Wagon Train), Cimarron Strip. It was slower, dreamier, and darker than the usual ’60s Westerns, as beautiful as The High Chaparral but in a totally different style. Its West was crawling with dirty characters out for themselves, seemingly unconfined by network notes. It’s one of the best of its time, and it lasted only a season. Lancer followed, more in the Bonanza mold, but it didn’t last long either. CBS wanted a series about the end of the West, but it was the end of the Western.

When Gunsmoke ended in 1975, the genre’s transition into family drama was complete with Little House On The Prairie. Opposite the serials were two notable anthology Westerns, Death Valley Days and Zane Grey Theatre, both black-and-white half-hours. Adapted by Ruth Woodman from her radio show, Death Valley Days is a quaint, quiet show that focused more on hardship than violence, a kind of How The West Was Settled. It told all kinds of frontier stories, but especially stories about women, from transplanted society girls to wayward con women. Death Valley Days debuted in syndication in 1952, predating the adult Westerns of 1955, and lasted for 18 years, making it the second longest-running Western behind Gunsmoke. Source Where Death Valley Days would stew, Zane Grey Theatre would boil. The stories had more action, the shots had more drama, the production had more stars. Produced by Dick Powell as part of his Four Star Productions for CBS, Zane Grey Theatre also served as a pilot showcase, spinning off five different Westerns. The Rifleman came first, which in turn spun off Law Of The Plainsman.

Bounty hunter blast Trackdown lasted two years, but before it went, it introduced Josh Randall and spun off Wanted: Dead Or Alive. Finally came a one-season Western for each of the networks: Black Saddle for ABC, Johnny Ringo for CBS, and The Westerner for NBC. After Sam Peckinpah left The Rifleman, Dick Powell asked him to write and direct a pilot for Zane Grey Theatre. Peckinpah wanted to show the West how it was, so he came up with The Westerner, the story of a cowboy drifter, not a gunslinger, who wandered the West with his dog just trying to survive. Downtrodden, lonely, and wry, it was the Terriers of its day. Brian Keith played antihero Dave Blassingame with a hangdog charm. Peckinpah produced every episode, and wrote or directed several. The series premiered in 1960 with a story about a man enjoying a prostitute he knew from childhood. The Westerner was rough and weary enough to get rave reviews and unhappy affiliates. It was canceled after 13 episodes. Source Miscellany: Beyond the gunslinger There were other Westerns that weren’t about do-gooders with guns.

Outlaws is a sharp, ripped-from-the-historical-headlines series that would dramatize the exploits of a different outlaw each week until the recurring marshals caught the villain. The second season was in color and told from the perspective of the marshals. Following Four Star’s Black Saddle about a gunslinger turned lawyer, William T. Orr oversaw a legal Western with Jeffrey Hunter playing judge Temple Houston. The networks also tried their hands at Westerns about Native Americans. CBS’ one-season Brave Eagle followed a Cheyenne tribe. ABC’s Broken Arrow centered on the relationship between an Indian agent and an Apache chief played by Michael Ansara. Ansara would go on to star as an Apache U.S. Marshal in Four Star’s short-lived Law Of The Plainsman for NBC. Source Typically, Westerns are set between the Mississippi and the Pacific between the Civil War and the automobile or so. But there were some Western-style adventures before that time period, like Disney’s Zorro in pre-Mexican War California or Fox’s Daniel Boone. There were also some set later, like 1962 rodeo dramas The Wide Country and Stoney Burke. Four Feather Falls introduced Gerry Anderson’s marionette animation with a kids’ cowboy show.

A couple other interesting international Westerns are Canada’s Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon, marked by its early color photography, and Australia’s Whiplash , marked by its sharp black-and-white photography and kangaroos. While the Western drifted into family drama, it was also popular enough to spawn other hybrids, like The Wild Wild West and William Shatner’s ’70s spy Western, Barbary Coast. McCloud brought a Western-style sheriff to the big city. Most notably there were a handful of Western-flavored sitcoms: cavalry comedy F Troop, cowboy comedy The Rounders, and in 1973, Dusty’s Trail, which was Gilligan’s Island in the Old West, starring Bob Denver. The ’70s are a Western curiosity shop, with the audience drying up but the networks reluctant to abandon the genre altogether. James Garner and Richard Boone both dipped their toes back in while James Arness was still basking in Dodge. Garner played a sheriff with a motorcycle and a slow trigger finger on Nichols, and Boone played a Paladin-like detective on a 90-minute forensics Western called Hec Ramsey. Sara was a quickly canceled show about a frontier schoolteacher starring Brenda Vaccaro.

Together with superproducer Glen A. Larson, Maverick creator Roy Huggins wrote about another pair of swindlers, Alias Smith And Jones, the rare late Western to last three seasons. The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams, about a fugitive who lives in the wilderness, made it two. Finally, David Dortort would close out the ’70s with the story of a family’s westward trek in The Chisholms. More Westerns followed, but when Gunsmoke and Death Valley Days vanished from broadcast schedules in 1975, the classic TV Western was over. From its lush look to its murky morality, the Western is one of TV’s greatest accomplishments. Those looking for a foundation might want to start with 1959’s big five. Those with more particular tastes should pick a vein and start mining. And for those looking for the best of the best, here are five of the highest peaks covering as much terrain as possible. The essentials 1. Have Gun – Will Travel (1957-63) The Western hero. Richard Boone breathed life into the adult Western with his flesh-and-blood detective.

Have Gun – Will Travel roots out the rot in the West with a keen understanding of violence. Co-created by Oscar-nominated writer of The Naked Spur Sam Rolfe, it’s the closest thing to an Anthony Mann TV Western. 2. The Westerner (1960) The revisionist Western. No show looks at the West as clearly as The Westerner. It’s a shame Dave Blassingame isn’t commercially available, but episodes are out there, including his premiere on Zane Grey Theatre, “Trouble At Tres Cruces.” Alternately, the adult Western is still stinging from the splash of water that was Maverick. 3. Rawhide (1959-66) The classical Western. The Westerner and Rawhide offer the realest men in the West. But Rawhide sustained its drama over the better part of eight seasons of hour-long episodes. Its expanse is extraordinary. 4. Zane Grey Theatre (1956-61) The boundless frontier. A covert pick that encompasses The Rifleman, The Westerner, and five other series besides, Zane Grey Theatre is the TV Western’s traveling bard.

Whatever the traditional Western could be, it was and it was beautifully in Zane Grey Theatre. 5. The High Chaparral (1967-71) The late Western. The color era is best represented on DVD by Cimarron Strip, albeit in abbreviated syndicated form, but it’s worth seeking out The High Chaparral for its lush pop art imagery and its serious grappling with the bubbling melting pot of the American West. The Cisco Kid (O. Henryï¿½sï¿½) Comics from Moonstone CKOH ( Moonstone , 2004-2005) ï¿½ and ï¿½ Moonstone What Unforgiven is to Western films, The Cisco Kid is to Western comics. Edgy, deadly, and every bit the peopleï¿½s reluctant hero, The Cisco Kid rides again. With a story that could be considered ï¿½Western noir,ï¿½ Moonstone delivers a dark hero from the past with plenty of modern appeal. Created by O.

Henry as a merciless assassin in his short story, ï¿½The Caballeroï¿½s Way,ï¿½ The Cisco Kid was reforged into the misunderstood ï¿½Robin Hood of the Old Westï¿½ through early films and radio shows. When Duncan Renaldo assumed the television role in 1950, Cisco was a good guy aided by his carefree sidekick, Pancho. Writer Jim Duffyï¿½s Cisco is an appealing cross between the O. Henry assassin and the Renaldo hero. Moody, philosophical, and drinking heavily, Cisco begins the story losing a bar fight. Pursuing the bad guys leads Cisco to their camp and a young Pancho, hiding in ambush. The bad guys are stealing local children, including Panchoï¿½s sister, to sell as slaves, and Cisco joins forces with Pancho, fueled by a determination to save the day. Jerry DeCaireï¿½s black-and-white art sets an appropriately dark tone, but there are inconsistencies in Ciscoï¿½s presentation (particularly his face) that distract from the story. With its edgy story and strong pace, The Cisco Kid sets a new standard for modern Western comics.

ï¿½ Karen Oï¿½Brien Jump to issue: AUG110950 - CISCO KID JOSE LUIS SALINAS & ROD REED TP VOL 01 1951-1953 - Previews World CISCO KID JOSE LUIS SALINAS & ROD REED TP VOL 01 1951-1953 CLASSIC COMICS PRESS AUG110950 (W) Rod Reed (A/CA) Jose Luis Salinas Based on the Western character created by legendary short story writer O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way," The Cisco Kid starred in a comic strip that ran for fifteen years. Volume One reprints this classic American comic strip by Rod Reed and Jose Luis Salinas from its beginning on January 15, 1951 to January 31, 1953 with an introduction by Sergio Aragonés, rarely seen Salinas artwork, biographical information, and more!

Volume Two reprints dailies from February 2, 1953 to March 19, 1955 with an introduction by Don McGregor. In Shops: Nov 30, 2011 SRP: $24.95 Do You Remember The Great Old We The Cisco Kid The Cisco Kid is a fictional cowboy character created by author O. Henry in his short story "The Caballero's Way" published in 1907 in the short story collection Heart of the West. Movies and the television series made the Kid a heroic Mexican caballero but in the original story he was a non-Hispanic character and a cruel outlaw who was probably modelled on Billy the Kid . Numerous films were made featuring the Cisco Kid as well as a television series that ran from 1950 to 1956. The TV series was notable for being one of the first filmed in color. With the exception of Jimmy Smits , who portrayed the Cisco Kid in a one-time 1994 made-for-television film, all the actors played the role in a number of films and Duncan Renaldo did it in film and on the television series.

There was also a long-running Old Time Radio series that started Jack Mather as the Cisco Kid. Actors who have portrayed the Cisco Kid character: Picture Credit: whirligig-tv.co.uk ADVERTISEMENT ... This program followed the lonely life of rugged frontiersman Kit Carson and his Mexican friend, ... - 26k - Sky King Sky King was a 1940s and 1950s American radio and television adventure series featuring Arizona rancher and airplane pilot Schuyler or Skyler King. Although it had strong cowboy show elements, King always captured criminals and even spies as well as finding lost hikers using his airplane. The planes he flew were each called the Songbird. He and his niece, Penny (and sometimes Clipper, his nephew) lived on the the Flying Crown Ranch, near the (fictitious) town of Grover City, Arizona. Radio The radio show, the brainchild of Robert Morris Burtt and Wilfred Gibbs Moore, who also created Captain Midnight , first aired in 1946. Several actors played the part of Sky, including Earl Nightingale . The radio show ran until 1954, being aired simultaneously with the television version.

Television The television version starred Kirby Grant as Sky King and Gloria Winters as his teen-aged niece Penny. Other regular characters included his nephew Clipper, played by Ron Hagerthy, and Mitch the sheriff, played by Ewing Mitchell . Mitch was always coming to Sky for help. Like most TV cowboy heroes of the time, Sky never killed the bad guys. Largely a show for kids, although it sometimes aired in primetime, Sky King became an icon in the aviation community. Many pilots (including American astronauts) who grew up watching Sky King name him as an influence. Thought plot lines were often simplistic, Grant (being a pilot) was able to bring a casual, natural treatment of technical details which led to a level of believability not found in other TV series involving aviation or life in the American West. Likewise, villains and other characters were usually shown as intelligent and believable, rather than as two-dimensional. The writing was generally well above the standard for contemporary half-hour programs. The television show was notable for its dramatic opening with and air-to-air shot of the Songbird banking sharply away from the camera and its engines roaring, while the announcer proclaimed "From out of the clear blue of the Western sky . .

.comes Sky King!" The short credit roll which followed was equally dramatic, with the Songbird swooping at the camera across El Mirage dry lake, then pulling up into a steep climb as it went away. The end title featured a musical theme, with the credits superimposed over an air-to-air shot of the Songbird, cruising at altitude for several moments then banking to the left and turning away (similar to the opening shot). Production Notes At the beginning of the television series, Sky flew a Cessna T-50 twin-engine "Bamboo Bomber," actually owned by Grant, who in real life was a pilot. The plane was made of wood and eventually became unsafe to fly. The best-known Songbird was a twin-engine Cessna 310B. There were actually four of these planes, one which crashed (killing the pilot) and three others, one of which had its markings modified for filming so that the numbers would match stock footage. One of the other 310s was used as a camera ship, thus to match the flight characteristics of the plane being filmed as well as providing an additional backup plane, and the other was primarily used for promotional purposes.

Legendary stunt pilot Paul Mantz flew the Songbird in most flying scenes. Grant flew as much as possible, but pressure from the insurance underwriters made it difficult for him to get air time. The show was filmed in black-and-white during three periods as sponsors changed: 1951-52 (Derby Foods), 1955-56 and 1957-62 (Nabisco, though the copyright notices continued to name Derby Foods). It continued in syndication for years afterward. There are 72 episodes still in existence and available for sale on DVD. A vault fire is believed to have destroyed the only prints of 64 episodes. A unique introduction featured the triangular Nabisco logo flying across the screen, accompanied by the sound of the Songbird flying past. Though set in Arizona, the series was filmed in California. The ranch house used for exterior shots of the Flying Crown Ranch is an actual home in Apple Valley, California. Other locations were shot in and around Apple Valley and the nearby San Bernardino Mountains, George Air Force Base and China Lake Naval Air Station. While expensive for a kids' show, most of the budget went into aircraft, vehicles and sets.

This meant that some standard production methods had to be abandoned, giving the series a more realistic look. For instance, in some shots, actors actually did taxi aircraft rather than the more common method of simulating movement by towing or dolly shots. The budget issue also forced the frequent reuse of stock footage, sometimes flipped over to show planes banking the opposite direction, thus sometimes letters and numbers were seen in mirror-image. The black-and-white film masked the actual paint scheme of the Cessna 310 Songbirds, which were done in a rich multi-color pattern of gold, bronze, black and white. Remarkably, Nabisco sold the series to Grant in 1959. In later years, Grant considered bringing back the series and even a "Sky King" theme park, but nothing ever happened on either of these projects. Regular Cast

Question: Which TV 'Western' hero was created by the legendary writer O Henry?
Answer: THE 'CISCO KID'