Cheyenne | |
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Title screen
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Also known as | ''Warner Brothers Presents ... Cheyenne and Cheyenne: Bronco and The Cheyenne Show: Bronco and Sugarfoot |
Genre | Western |
Developed by | Roy Huggins |
Directed by | Irving J. Moore |
Starring | Clint Walker |
Theme music composer |
William Lava Stanley D. Jones |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 7 (including the first season on Warner Brothers Presents) |
No. of episodes | 108 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | William T. Orr |
Producer(s) |
Roy Huggins |
Location(s) | California |
Running time | 48 mins. |
Release | |
Original network | ABC |
Picture format | Black-and-white |
Audio format | Monaural |
Original release | September 20, 1955 | – December 17, 1962
Chronology | |
Preceded by | Warner Brothers Presents |
Followed by | The Dakotas |
Related shows |
Bronco Maverick Sugarfoot |
Roy Huggins
Arthur W. Silver
Sidney Biddel
Burt Dunne
William L. Stuart
Oren W. Haglund (production manager)
Harry Blackledge (wardrobe)
Cheyenne is an American western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1963. The show was the first hour-long western, and in fact the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season. It was also the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Brothers original series produced by William T. Orr.
The series began as a part of Warner Brothers Presents, a "wheel program" that alternated three different series in rotation. In its first year, Cheyenne traded broadcast weeks with Casablanca and Kings Row. Thereafter, Cheyenne was overhauled by new producer Roy Huggins and left the umbrella of WBP. The show starred Clint Walker, a native of Illinois, as Cheyenne Bodie, a physically large cowboy with a gentle spirit in search of frontier justice who wanders the American West. The first episode, about robbers pretending to be Good Samaritans, is titled "Mountain Fortress" and features James Garner (who had briefly been considered for the role of Cheyenne) as a guest star, but with higher billing given to Ann Robinson as Garner's intended bride. The episode reveals that Bodie's parents were massacred by Indians, the tribe of which is unknown. He was taken by Cheyenne Indians when he was ten years old, who then raised him and he left them by choice when he was 18 years old (Series 1, Episode 10: West of the River). In the series the character Bodie maintains a positive and understanding attitude toward the Native Americans despite the slaughter of his parents.