A series of Wells Fargo stagecoach robberies are attributed to a mysterious bandit known as 'The Poet.' No one knows who he really is but the sheriff of Cheyenne decides to coerce James Wylie, a gambler wanted by the law in another town, to go undercover and ferret out the robber's identity. That's the basic set-up in Cheyenne (1947), a Western adventure directed by Raoul Walsh and featuring a rather unique cast. It boasts not only a Tony winner, a former opera singer and the one-time highest paid male star at Warner Bros., but also, the wife of a future President. While Cheyenne may not be as well remembered as Walsh's White Heat (1949) or his Westerns (They Died With Their Boots On, 1941), its top notch ensemble cast, realistic locations (filmed in Sedona, Arizona, an area which has provided the backdrop for Westerns from John Wayne's Angel and the Badman (1947) to Firecreek (1968), and stripped-down-to-basics storyline make it an excellent example of a big budget Hollywood Western from the late forties.

Heading up the ensemble cast, and no stranger to the Western genre, is Arthur Kennedy, who despite his penchant for playing macho types (in movies like Bad Men of Missouri (1941) and Air Force (1943), was actually a classically trained actor who began his career bringing Shakespeare to the masses on a Globe Theatre Company tour of the Mid-West. Kennedy's introduction to Hollywood has a mythic quality to it; he made his first screen appearance in the 1940 film City of Conquest, after being hand picked off a L.A. stage by James Cagney. The actor cast Kennedy as his own brother in the film. Arthur Kennedy would rack up five Oscar nominations (with no wins) in his years in Hollywood and appeared in such prestigious projects as Lawrence of Arabia (1962). But his biggest successes were on the stage. In fact, Kennedy's association with playwright Arthur Miller included memorable parts for him as the original John Proctor in The Crucible and Biff in Death of a Salesman, a role that won him a Tony.

Along with Kennedy, veteran character actor Alan Hale figures prominently in Cheyenne. Hale originally had designs on being an opera singer but got his movie break in 1911 as a slapstick comedian. He spent the 1920's playing mostly villains, with the notable exception being his Little John to Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922). It was a role Hale would repeat two more times in his career, again with Errol Flynn in 1938 and finally opposite John Derek in Rogue's of Sherwood Forest (1950). Rogue's of Sherwood Forest proved to be his final film (He died in 1950 while working on the Warner Bros. Western Montana). But movies weren't Alan Hale's only passion. He was also an enthusiastic inventor, who held the patent or helped finance the creation of items from auto brakes to hand held fire extinguishers to greaseless potato chips. And according to Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, Hale also managed to bring his two loves together by inventing the folding theater seat.

Walsh chose Warner Brothers musical star Dennis Morgan to play the flashy gambler in Cheyenne. The actor, who was born Stanley Morner, made his first big Hollywood splash opposite Ginger Rogers in (1940). A contract with Warner would follow, and a series of musical hits like The Desert Song (1943) and Shine On, Harvest Moon (1944) that, for a time, made Dennis Morgan the top paid male star at Warner Bros. In Cheyenne, Morgan falls for another familiar face - Jane Wyman. At the time, Wyman was married to Ronald Reagan, but the couple would be divorced a year later in 1948. Wyman was riding high on critical acclaim during the filming of Cheyenne. She had been nominated for her first Oscar the previous year for The Yearling (1946) and would take home the statuette the following year for her memorable portrayal of a deaf mute in Johnny Belinda (1948).

So, while the impressive talents of the cast and director made Cheyenne only a modest success, the movie enjoyed a longer life on the small screen. A TV series, of the same name, was loosely based on the film and starred Clint Walker and Cheyenne kept riding on ABC from 1955 to 1963.

Producer: Robert Buckner
Director: Raoul Walsh
Screenplay: Alan Le May, Thames Williamson
Art Direction: Ted Smith
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Editing: Christian Nyby
Music: M. K. Jerome, Ted Koehler, Max Steiner
Cast: Dennis Morgan (James Wylie), Arthur Kennedy (The Sundance Kid), Jane Wyman (Ann Kincaid), Janis Paige (Emily Carson), Bruce Bennett (Ed Launders), Alan Hale (Fred Durbin), Barton MacLane (Yancey), Tom Tyler (Pecos), Bob Steele (Bucky), John Alvin (Single Jack), Monte Blue (Timberline) .
BW-99m. Closed captioning.

By Stephanie Thames