Western Drifter Heroes: Cheyenne, Sugarfoot and Bronco
By Guy Belleranti
The 1950’s
and early 1960’s was the heyday of the television
western.
Warner
Brothers Presents featured three of them: Cheyenne, Bronco
and Sugarfoot. All followed the adventures of solitary do-good
drifters in the old west.
The first and
longest running was Cheyenne. Beginning in 1955, each one hour
episode was filmed in black and white and followed the character
Cheyenne Bodie.
Played by
Clint Walker, Bodie was a former army scout who drifted from job to
job, encountering different adventures along the way. Sometimes he
worked on ranches, wagon trains and cattle drives. Other times he was a
government employee or a deputy enforcing the law in a lawless land.
During the
program’s first season Cheyenne had a sidekick named Smitty, played by
L.Q. Jones. However, after that he traveled alone.
A handsome and
big 6’6” hunk, Walker had definite charisma, and his presence made
Cheyenne very popular during its 8 year 107 episode run.
The second
of this trio of Warner Brothers westerns, Sugarfoot, ran for 69
episodes from 1957 to 1961. Starring Will Hutchins as Tom “Sugarfoot”
Brewster, it followed an “aw shucks” easterner who’d come west.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the main character’s creation wasn’t
influenced by the 1939 western movie Destry Rides Again starring
James Stewart, or by the 1954 remake, Destry, starring Audie
Murphy.
Like
Cheyenne, Sugarfoot/Brewster drifted from place to place. Unlike
Cheyenne, however, he was a man pursuing an education (taking
correspondence courses toward a law degree). As such, he preferred to
solve problems with words. Sometimes, of course words weren’t enough,
and fistfights or gunplay became a necessary evil.
The third series, Bronco, ran for 68 episodes from 1958 to 1962.
Originally begun when a contract dispute between Clint Walker and Warner
Brothers put new Cheyenne episodes on hold, the western featured
Ty Hardin as former Confederate Captain Bronco Lane.
Lane was more
in the mold of Cheyenne Bodie. A rugged individual, he could ride a
horse with the best of them and drank water out of his hat.
After
Walker and Warner Brothers finally came to an agreement Bronco
and Sugarfoot stayed on with Cheyenne as alternating
programs. There were even a few crossover episodes where the lead
characters appeared in the other programs.
By 1963
production of all three shows was over, however, the programs still
appeared off and on in reruns for a time. And in the 1990’s Walker
revived his Cheyenne Bodie character, first in the 1991 television movie
The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw, and then again in 1995 in
an episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.
