Cheyenne: The Complete Series (1955-1962) - Warner Archive Collection

You have to love television history. Its earliest days were a fascinating period of trial and error. Could live programming replace the radio stories? Could a produced show be as good as anything coming out on theater screens? These days the hour-long drama series is old hat. Great shows have come and gone for decades leaving hours of amazing content in their wake. But the hour-long television format had to start somewhere. In rides Norman Eugene AKA Clint Walker to headline the first hour-long Western and television drama (In the U.S. at least), Cheyenne. 

As with so many Westerns and series of the era, there really isn’t any kind of continuity for Clint Walker’s Cheyenne Bodie. Even his origin as a white child raised by a tribe of friendly Cheyenne natives would shift. But each episode was an adventure all its own. In its earliest episodes, each story was a stripped-down remake of another feature film produced by Warner Bros. to recycle footage and save costs. Episode 3 The Argonauts is basically a thinned-out version of The Treasure of Sierra Madre but with our range-warry Cheyenne Bodie joining with a pair of gold prospectors played by Rod Taylor and Edward Andrews. The same gold fever distrust settles in for a story that practically plays out the same way, beat for beat, right down to the finale. 

Through it all Clint Walker stands tall as our lead. At 6’6” the man was an imposing larger-than-life presence on the small screen. Walker was hardly a seasoned performer by the time he won the lead role, but he had the looks and the presence of a star, and back in those days, that was more than enough. As the series progressed his dramatic chops improved. With his deep soothing baritone voice and stage presence, he turned out to be a skilled actor and singer. This ran to the point that in the Season 3 episode The Conspirators, Walker also plays a man who looks and sounds just like him but is actually a terrible actor and an even worse singer. 

The series’ earliest episodes all feel like a test run. The show hadn’t found its format so there are a lot of aspects about Cheyenne Bodie and his adventures that hadn’t quite settled. One particularly notable piece was the late great L.Q. Jones as the character Smitty. For three episodes Smitty was something of a sidekick for Cheyenne Bodie, the riding companion that’d clear the trail with our hero and talk as smart as fast as he shoots. It was a fun dynamic and it’s something of a shame that it didn’t keep. I have to say it’s nice that Bodie can come and go as he pleases without anchor, but L.Q. was so much fun it’d been cool to see him turn up for more than the few episodes he appeared. But this series is loaded with some great guest appearances from established and rising stars.

As the series' popularity progressed, Walker wanted to renegotiate his contract with Warner Bros. for a more favorable cut of proceeds and personal appearances. While these negotiations were underway, Warner Bros. took advantage of the downtime to spawn a slew of new Western shows. Sugarfoot, Colt. 45, and Maverick all were drawn up to fill the spot on a rotating basis. But the show Bronco is the direct descendant of the series. Eventually, Cheyenne, Bronco, and Sugarfoot would have one hell of a crossover episode in Season Five, Duel at Judas Basin. For some more fun casting crossover trivia, Colt .45 star Wayde Preston played a gunslinger outlaw in Cheyenne Season Three episode Incident at Indian Springs just a few short weeks before he’d headline his series.

Overall I had a blast with this series. I knew what the show was but hadn’t really seen it until college. I was taking a class in illustration and for the lesson about drawing from real life or photographs, my professor used an image of Clint Walker from Cheyenne as a model for Superman. Thanks to my TV history professor I got to watch a couple of episodes and really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until the series came to DVD that I got to watch it in earnest. Now on Blu-ray, I can fully appreciate the entirety of the series and not just a sporadic episode. But watching it concurrently is a good bit of fun. As I said continuity is pretty loose, for Cheyenne to have gone on as many adventures as he does, he’d have to be well over 100 by the time the series ends! Seven seasons is a hell of a run for any show and for 107 episodes, Clint Walker and a parade of guest stars ensure you enjoy yourself one hour at a time. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Riding the high trail, Warner Archive Collection debuts Cheyenne: The Complete Series on Blu-ray. All seven seasons and 107 episodes are spread over 30 Region-Free BD50 discs. The discs are separated by season, each season gets its own multi-disc case with separate trays for each disc so there’s no stacking. Each disc is numbered and has the episode list. All of the cases are held together with a thin paper slipcase box. The discs load to a basic main menu letting you choose to play every episode or pick one from the list.

Reportedly sourced from new 4K scans of the original camera negatives, the Warner Archive Collection delivers another fantastic classic television series to Blu-ray. Each episode is a 1080p 1.33:1 wonder to behold. As I didn’t have time to watch all 107 episodes front to back, I sampled episodes from each disc. My intention was to watch only one per disc, but I certainly exceeded that! Without any notable defect to mention, these are gorgeous transfers. Details are sharp and clean with nice tightly rendered film grain. The grayscale is excellent for the black-and-white photography. The only shift in quality worth mentioning appears around optical dissolves and the commercial break fade-outs. The show also used a lot of stock footage and footage from other films, especially in the early episodes, so the quality can vary from shot to shot in that regard. Other sequences where some rear projection was used can differ, but those are hardly serious issues to mention. Overall this series is a true testament to whomever it was that saw value in keeping the film elements secured and preserved. They look phenomenal on Blu-ray, often looking as if they were shot just yesterday.

Each episode of Cheyenne comes home with a fine DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono audio mix. Each track is clean, only a couple of episodes have any kind of hiss, and even that is relatively minimal. The dialog is clean and clear for each episode. The soundscape spread is nice and active letting the big action scenes sound large and cinematic. Occasionally there are a few moments where you can quite clearly tell a scene was shot on a soundstage, the echo is that distinct. But that’s more for flavor than a complaint. Music cues are well-appointed and maintain the drama of the moment. Then you get the closing theme song of each episode by William Lava and Stan Jones to guide you out through the credits.

Bonus features aren’t much to speak of for quantity but there is a nice interview with Clint Walker. It’s a lovely little retrospective from the star as he details his career and how he practically stumbled into becoming a star. It’s a very frank discussion and his bemusement that his career worked out is refreshingly genuine. It’s a shame the interview is as short as it is, he had plenty of great stories to share. 

Season One Disc Three

• The Lonely Gunfighter: The Legacy of Cheyenne (SD 13:44)

Riding along the dusty trail of classic Western television series, Cheyenne was a pioneering effort. Clint Walker headlines the series through its long run delivering an iconic performance as a hero everyone on the range can trust who treated every man or woman of any background with mutual respect. Each episode was a well-crafted exciting adventure filled with suspense, humor, and plenty of action. Following a nice run on DVD several years ago, Warner Archive Collection goes back to the well to deliver a fantastic fully-restored Blu-ray set. All seven seasons, 107 episodes arrive on disc with excellent transfers and clean audio. A shame there aren’t any more extras, but that nice interview and having the series looking and sounding this good is reward enough. If you’re a fan of Westerns and classic television series, this is a set to save some shelf space for. Highly Recommended