Alias Smith & Jones: The Story of Two Pretty Good Bad Men

by Sandra K. Sagala

  Despite these holes, the pilot film succeeds in its most important duty — convincing the audience to return and watch the series. It accomplishes this because of the remarkable chemistry between Peter Duel and Ben Murphy. Despite the rush into production, the producers struck gold with the casting of these two actors in the lead roles. The connection is apparent from the moment they proudly introduce each other to the train engineer through the infamous “walk off” scene to the moment when Heyes carefully places Curry’s hat back on his head after the explosion at the bank. It’s apparent that these two men are close friends who would do anything for each other. The audience immediately recognized that this bond was something special and it’s what kept them returning week after week to share the adventures of these two pretty good bad men.

  The McCreedy Bust

  “Grudges are for people with bad stomachs. Ours are in good shape.”

  Hannibal Heyes

  STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  TELEPLAY: SY SALKOWITZ

  DIRECTOR: GENE LEVITT

  SHOOTING DATES: DECEMBER 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 1970

  ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: JANUARY 21, 1971

  ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: MAY 10, 1971

  The bartender of the Red Rock saloon serves wealthy rancher Patrick J. “Big Mac” McCreedy and his hired hand Blake, ignoring the thirsty Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. The two former outlaws have trouble dealing with this blatant favoritism. Goaded into a confrontation, Curry shoots the gun out of Blake’s hand, ruining his holster, but impressing McCreedy with his fast draw and accurate aim.

  Humiliated, Blake complains about them to the sheriff who promises to look through his files. Meanwhile, Mac offers the boys a job. All they have to do is retrieve a bust of Caesar that, Mac maintains, was stolen by a Mexican named Armendariz. Mac will pay $10,000 but the deal sounds too good to be true.

  Heyes and Curry waylay Blake and offer to have the holster repaired. They learn from him that Armendariz is the biggest landholder in Mexico and Mac has already offered many men the dangerous job, one of whom is still healing. Armendariz displays the statue during fiestas and keeps it in his safe at other times. Heyes is intrigued at the uncomplicated prospect of stealing it from the safe.

  Armed with this additional information, Heyes and Curry tell Mac they’ll do it for $20,000. He agrees, but only if they’ll sit in on a poker game and give him a sporting chance to win it back.

  After sneaking into Armendariz’s hacienda, Heyes opens the safe by working the tumblers. The temptation to take the jewels and money they find inside is strong but they resist and only remove the bust. Armendariz’s men, alerted to the intruders when Heyes accidentally knocks a flowerpot off the balcony, pursue them.

  At the Saturday night poker game, Heyes fills a straight and bets a large amount on what he assumes will be a winning hand. McCreedy calls him on an obscure Hoyle rule that straights are not played in stud poker unless announced in the beginning. Big Mac, with only a pair of jacks, has won back the $20,000. The boys leave chagrined and penniless.

  The next day, Heyes and Curry petition the banker, Mr. Peterson, to lend them $20,000. At the next poker game, Heyes requests a rematch with Mac, but there are already eight players in the game. Rather than leave, Heyes offers Mac a deal that he can make five pat hands from twenty-five cards with all $20,000 riding on the bet. Mac believes the odds would be a thousand to one, but Heyes does it. The banker laughs, saying the boys proved to him that it works nine times out of ten.

  After celebrating their good fortune at the saloon, a drunken Heyes and Curry step out into the street where they are accosted, hauled out to Armendariz’s ranch, and accused of stealing the Caesar bust. Señor Armendariz explains that the river that is the boundary between their two ranches changed course and Mac ended up with some of his land. When Mac sold the land to another Mexican, Armendariz had to pay $50,000 to get it back. Armendariz stole the bust in exchange. Under coercion, Heyes and Curry admit the crime but Armendariz mercifully frees them because when they opened the safe, they only stole the item they thought belonged to the man who hired them.

  Meanwhile, the sheriff continues to flip through the wanted posters in his files.

  As Heyes and Curry get ready to leave town, Mac grows suspicious of Jones’s quick draw and Smith’s ability to open a safe. Maybe they aren’t who they say they are. He pressures them to stay with threats that he’ll notify the sheriff. Mac wants one more chance to get even.

  That Saturday, Mac bets he can cut the Ace of Spades on the first try. Heyes agrees to the proposition and shuffles the deck thoroughly. Mac stabs the deck with a knife, believing he has “cut” the ace, but Heyes has outwitted him and palmed the card. At that moment, Armendariz’s men burst in to retrieve the sculpture. Señor Armendariz takes the $40,000 on the table as well and declares that he and Mac are now even.

  Furious, Mac tries once again to hire the boys to steal it back. He offers them as much as $50,000 but they refuse and ride out of town in a stagecoach.

  The sheriff has finally figured out that the men must be Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. Mac tucks this knowledge away. He informs the sheriff that no, Jones is his nephew, and then wonders aloud at the odds of building five pat hands from twenty-five cards randomly dealt as he and the sheriff head for the saloon.

  GUEST CAST

  BURL IVES — PATRICK J. “BIG MAC” MCCREEDY

  CESAR ROMERO — SEÑOR ERNESTO ARMENDARIZ

  EDWARD ANDREWS — PETERSON

  DUANE GREY — SHERIFF

  MILLS WATSON — BLAKE

  CHARLES WAGENHEIM — BARTENDER

  ORVILLE SHERMAN — HANK

  MICIL MURPHY — DELGADO

  RUDY DIAZ — GUARD

  While the marble bust of Caesar is the immediately recognizable item related to the title, Heyes and Curry’s pulling off the theft was a bust, i.e., a failure. Though Heyes and Curry temporarily procured it for Big Mac, Señor Armendariz ended up with the statue, signaling their inability to end the McCreedy and Armendariz enmity. The episode was the first one Roy Huggins had a hand in and, though as John Thomas James he wrote many of the episodes, this was his favorite. [2] Jo Swerling remembered it as “one of the best episodes of television that I think I ever had anything to do with, where they were getting one up on him all the time.” [3]

  Universal Studios put the episode to a test compiled by Audience Surveys, Inc. ASI employees gathered people of varying demographics, showed them the episode and recorded their reactions based on their turning a dial to indicate happiness or displeasure at what they were watching. “The McCreedy Bust” rated a huge score, helping to explain why McCreedy and Armendariz returned for two more episodes. But Swerling stated, “We would have done that with or without the ASI tests because we thought that they did such a good job.” [4]

  It also was one of the handful of scripts whose title remained unchanged from the initial story concept. In it, Huggins introduced “Big Mac” McCreedy, played by folksinger Burl Ives. Huggins was careful about his character’s names and McCreedy may be a purposeful mispronunciation of McGreedy, which Mac certainly was. By his own admission, he owned most of the town, was a major railroad stockholder and had won the range war. His reluctance to allow the boys to walk away with their $20,000 winnings reinforces his tight-fistedness. His ego, echoed in size by his portly frame, would not allow two unknown cowboys to one-up him.

  When Huggins told the story to writer Sy Salkowitz, he left the caper at the Armendariz ranch up to him, merely urging him to do research and check his facts. In the first draft, Salkowitz sends the boys to a small Mexican farm pretending to buy a guard dog. The animal who greets them is friendly enough, but when they try to leave, it becomes a snarling beast. The farmer explains that Armendariz likes to see his invited guests arrive but they cannot leave until he says so. In the next scene, Curry limps into a doctor’s office and explains that his ankle is injured. He howls in pain as the doctor removes his boot, so Heyes asks for some
ether to knock him out. When the doctor opens the cabinet to get it, Curry pulls his gun and they take the can of anesthetic, his ankle suddenly healed. Back at Armendariz’s hacienda, they encounter the friendly dog and a not-so-friendly guard whom Heyes conks on the head. They drag the unconscious guard to a laundry room with the dog close at their heels. While Heyes heads to the safe in the main room, works the tumblers and retrieves the bust, Curry dresses in Armendariz’s coat. When a second guard, alerted by the dog, approaches the laundry room, Curry brings his pistol down on the man’s head.

  As they attempt to leave, the scent on the coat Curry wears confuses the dog but not for long. Pretending to pet the dog, Curry instead grabs him by the scruff of the neck and holds a wadded cloth doused with ether over his nose. The dog goes down, but the ether is so strong, Curry’s knees buckle. Heyes urges him to his feet and they escape. The next day, Mac, unaware of the lengths they’ve gone to, is happy to see the bust. [5]

  When Huggins read the scenes with red pen in hand, he wrote a big NO on the descriptions of Curry knocking out the guards. Then, on second thought, Huggins X’ed out entire pages and re-wrote the bits about the boys getting into and out of Armendariz’s home. Huggins noted, “Heyes and Curry didn’t share misspent youths for nothing. They have come prepared.” In his new version, Heyes uses a stiletto to open the door enough to allow the dog to poke his head through. Heyes quickly closes it and Curry holds a chloroform-soaked handkerchief over the dog’s nose. Eventually these ideas, too, were scrapped.

  Huggins also gave Heyes and Curry characteristics that would consistently define them throughout the series: Heyes was the skillful poker player with a “silvery” tongue whose talent for manipulating tumblers on a safe served him better at Armendariz’s hacienda than it had in the pilot; Curry was the quick draw whose perfect but compassionate aim foiled an adversary without killing him. He could have seriously wounded McCreedy’s peon Blake instead of merely shooting the gun from his hand but Huggins’s philosophy was one of non-violence. “When there’s action in one of my shows, it’s because it had to be there. There is no other way for the story to go or to be resolved without that action. I don’t ever put action in just to have action for the simple reason that I don’t think I need it!” [6]

  The card trick involving five pat hands randomly dealt from twenty-five cards was one Huggins learned as a boy in military school. He first introduced it to television viewers in a Maverick episode where it was known as Maverick Solitaire. Huggins was amazed to learn that the day after that particular Maverick episode aired, stores all over the country sold out of playing cards. Everyone who had watched the program wanted to try the trick. [7]

  Similarly, the ruse in stud poker wherein a player waits for a competitor’s winning hand featuring a straight, then announces that straights may not be played unless declared before the game begins was also featured first in Maverick. The beautiful con artist Samantha Crawford waits for Bret to declare a straight, then pulls out the Hoyle that she insists governs all plays. She triumphantly points to the rule in Hoyle’s Book of Games and wins with a low pair.

  It seems a recanting, Heyes and Curry’s agreeing to rob a rich man’s safe, when only in the previous episode they had promised to go straight in hopes of obtaining amnesty. That they did it for what they believed was fair play does not mitigate their guilt, nor would it hold up in a court of law. However, it is ironic that their honesty in admitting to Armendariz they were indeed the thieves saved them from life-long sentences in a Mexican prison.

  Exit From Wickenburg

  “You know, I really do like you fellows.”

  Sam Finrock

  STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  TELEPLAY: ROBERT HAMNER

  DIRECTOR: JEANNOT SZWARC

  SHOOTING DATES: DECEMBER 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 1970

  ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: JANUARY 28, 1971

  ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: APRIL 26, 1971

  Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry ride into the pleasant little town of Wickenburg, Arizona. Their first stop is the saloon where they settle down to play some poker. After losing to a pair of card sharps, Ben Morrison and Frank Johnson, who are using a trick called “the spread,” Heyes and Curry search out the saloon’s owner. Entering the office they find an attractive woman named Mary Cunningham, who wryly tells them, “I assure you, you’re not half as surprised as I am” to find her owning and running such an establishment. They wonder if the card sharps they’ve been playing with are working for the house. Learning they’re not, they return to the game, where Heyes exposes Morrison and Johnson’s technique while Curry keeps tempers under control with his steady gun. Heyes reimburses the other players, including a grateful Sam Finrock, from the sharps’ winnings.

  Mary Cunningham inherited the Golconda saloon from her recently deceased husband and has not been doing well as a businesswoman. She hires Heyes and Curry to manage the place for the princely sum of $50 a month each. They rapidly settle in to the job, stopping Mary’s employees from stealing her blind and bringing the saloon back to profitability in only a few days.

  While Heyes goes through Mary’s accounts, Curry practices his fast draw, just to keep his hand in. Mary and her two children, Tommy and Kate, stop by. Mary is pleased by how well the business is doing, but Tommy is more excited by Curry’s shooting. “Can you teach me how to do that?” he asks. Curry could, but he won’t because there’s always someone faster out there. After Mary and the children leave, Heyes marvels at Curry’s change of heart regarding gunplay.

  That night in the saloon, Curry faces down another cheating card player, successfully and non-violently, prompting Heyes to confide, “All right, forget I said anything this afternoon.” Things seem to be going well for the boys.

  The next morning Mary interrupts their breakfast, obviously upset. She takes them into her office and fires them, saying she can manage on her own now and paying them for a month despite their having worked less than a week. Curry’s chivalrous instincts are aroused and leaving town without finding out what’s wrong is not in his nature. The boys find jobs in construction, a field in which they show no talent. The friendly and grateful Sam Finrock joins them at dinner where he politely but firmly tells them to leave town for their own welfare. But the boys decide to stick around.

  The next day Finrock watches as they bash their thumbs with hammers on the building site. That night after supper Heyes and Curry are attacked by three men who take them out of town, leave them on the side of the road with their horses and gear, and urge them to move on to Gila City. The boys debate the wisdom of going to Gila City, but curiosity and stubbornness win out and they return to Wickenburg.

  Mike, the bartender, gives them a name to put with the leader of the gang who beat them up — Al Gorman, foreman of the Bar T Ranch. Heyes and Curry have a little talk with Gorman. When he balks at answering their questions, insisting it was Finrock who hired him to move them along, Heyes loops a rope around Gorman’s ankle while Curry attaches the other end to his saddlehorn. Curry picks up a branch, ready to bring it down on the horse’s flank. At the threat, Gorman caves in with a frantic shout — Finrock hired him and Mary Cunningham hired Finrock.

  Back in town, Heyes and Curry confront Mary. Heyes screams at her, all the pain and frustration of the situation bubbling to the surface. Mary becomes hysterical but still refuses to tell them anything. Heyes gives up.

  Finrock visits them in their hotel room, wanting to know why they didn’t ride on to Gila City. Heyes lies, saying Mary told them everything, but Finrock just laughs. He knows it’s not true. This time Finrock is more blunt with his advice — if they don’t get out of Wickenburg soon, someone will have them killed. And Finrock would hate to see people he likes get themselves killed.

  Much to Heyes’s dismay, Curry has been thinking and he’s sure that Finrock and Gorman were not hired by Mary Cunningham. They decide to get a good night’s sleep and ride on to Gila City in the morning.

  Heyes spends the night
pondering Curry’s idea. As they load their gear on their horses, he comes up with a new thought — W.R. Sloane, the man who owns half the town. They’ve heard his name a lot since coming to Wickenburg, but they’ve never seen him and as Heyes says, “Now a man as important as this Mr. Sloane…all he’d have to do is come walking down the street and all the bowing and scraping would whip up a fair-sized dust storm.” Since their curiosity is still unsatisfied, they go in search of Mr. Sloane.

  After visiting several of his businesses, they finally come to his office. An accommodating secretary opens the door for them and they find an equally accommodating Sloane. Heyes decides his idea — that Sloane was behind the drive to get them out of town — wasn’t one of his better ones. Stymied once again, the boys stop at the saloon before hitting the road. Mr. Sloane hurries past and Heyes comments on it. Mike is confused. The man hurrying past wasn’t Sloane, it was Warren Epps, Sloane’s bookkeeper.

  Heyes and Curry sneak into Sloane’s house that night, certain this time they’re on the right track. Bursting into Sloane’s study, Heyes discovers his idea was right after all. “Look who’s calling himself Willard R. Sloane!” Curry still doesn’t know Sloane, but Heyes recognizes him as Jim Plummer, leader of the first bunch Heyes rode with. He relates for Curry the story of how the gang robbed a train of a $30,000 payroll, but in the ensuing chase by the posse, Plummer disappeared along with the haul. Plummer is desperate to keep his whereabouts secret because he knows the remaining gang members would kill him if they ever found him. Heyes agrees to keep his secret if Sloane buys Mary Cunningham’s saloon — for $30,000. Plummer is sorry to part with that kind of money but grateful to get off so easily.