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

by Sandra K. Sagala

  Everything Else You Can Steal

  “Smith and Jones? Y’all couldn’t do any better’n that?”

  Blackjack Jenny

  STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  TELEPLAY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  DIRECTOR: ALEXANDER SINGER

  SHOOTING DATES: OCTOBER 29, NOVEMBER 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1971

  ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: DECEMBER 16, 1971

  ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: JANUARY 24, 1972

  In the dead of night, a well-dressed man pries open the back door of the bank. By match light he deftly dials the combination on the safe, empties the cash into a satchel, and leaves by the same door. A few minutes later, he meets two young cowboys in a deserted area. They’ve done the job he’s asked them to do and he kills them.

  Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry ride into town weary of life in the saddle. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad getting caught; they wouldn’t have to ride a horse for twenty years. Easing himself onto a bench, Curry leans back to relax. Heyes picks up an abandoned newspaper and begins to read the front page. Resignedly he hands the paper to his partner who perks up at the headline. It means they have to climb back into the saddle and ride.

  Reaching the little town of Touchstone, New Mexico, Curry would like a drink, but instead they barge into Sheriff W.D. Coffin’s office, introducing themselves as Smith and Jones, bounty hunters. The sheriff has a low opinion of the profession but Smith jokes there was no other work after they got done killing all the buffalo. Jones tells the lawman they were three hundred miles north on the trail of Heyes and Curry when they heard that the two outlaws had robbed the Touchstone bank. The sheriff, ashamed for not recognizing the crooks whose Wanted posters hang on his wall, says they got drunk and identified themselves to someone in town. The bank is offering a $10,000 reward, making Heyes and Curry worth $30,000.

  Outside, Curry is disgusted. There goes their amnesty and there’s nothing they can do except admit to the sheriff that they are Heyes and Curry. They decide to head for South America, but first that drink…

  Blackjack Jenny sits at a table in the saloon dealing cards. She spots the boys and hurries over. They are glad to see their old friend and before she can blow their cover, Heyes whispers their aliases into her ear.

  That night, Jenny tells them her son Billy and his friend Caleb came to Touchstone a month ago. Billy wrote to his mother that they were into something good, then his frequent letters stopped. When the bank was robbed, the safe wasn’t blown but opened by working the combination, something Billy and Caleb could never have done. Jenny thinks the boys are dead. So she deals blackjack and asks questions, trying to learn what happened to them. Heyes and Curry promise to help.

  The next day, they approach Assistant Bank Manager Kenneth Blake and ask to talk to Mr. Blodgett, the bank’s owner. The overweight, heavy-jowled Blodgett brusquely allows them five minutes of his time.

  Heyes and Curry hold to their false identities of professional bounty hunters. It couldn’t have been those notorious outlaws who robbed the safe because it’s a Pierce & Hamilton ’78. Heyes once spent a night in Denver trying to open one and failed; he finally had to use nitro to blow it. Given that the safe here was opened, with only Blodgett knowing the combination, perhaps he robbed his own bank? Outraged, Blodgett blusters that he is a deacon in the Baptist church, a faithful husband, father of three daughters and a very wealthy man. How dare they accuse him? Because he is all of those things, they know he knows who identified the two men in town as Heyes and Curry. It seems they sincerely want to help get the money back so he reveals that it was Louise Carson, a waitress at the café.

  For supper, the boys order beef stew and when Louise serves them, they invite her to sit and talk. Jones tells her that they are on the trail of the vicious criminals Kid Curry “and that other fella.” Can she tell them anything that could help them? No, she says, they were just nice, pleasant young men. Smith explodes. Hannibal Heyes and what’s-his-name were nice, pleasant young men? Louise explains they were calling themselves Caleb White and Billy Black before they got drunk and admitted who they really were. Then a few nights later the bank was robbed and they left town. But, if Smith and Jones say the two men weren’t Heyes and Curry, she believes them.

  After she returns to her work in the kitchen, the boys figure she may be an innocent who got used but they’d better watch her round the clock until they can be sure.

  Curry loses the coin toss and pulls the first night’s watch. He spends it perched in a tree outside of Louise’s room. Nodding off, he jerks awake at sounds of a cat fight and falls from the tree. In the morning, he limps into their hotel room and drops onto the bed mumbling his report of no action. Heyes stops shaving long enough to pull a quilt over his sleeping friend.

  Sitting on the hotel’s front porch, Heyes watches Louise enter the bank. He follows in the pretense of having bank business. Louise then heads for the café. Spotting the sheriff, Heyes detours in the opposite direction.

  That night, Curry again takes his position in the tree.

  Heyes meets Jenny and says if nothing turns up with Louise, they may borrow money from Soapy or Diamond Jim Guffy and head to South America. Jenny won’t give up that easily.

  Long after dark, Louise walks purposefully down the street. Curry climbs out of the tree and follows. Through the window of an abandoned house, Curry spies her and Ken Blake in an embrace. He hears Louise say she is worried about the two men who have asked her about the robbery, but Blake reassures her they probably are bounty hunters as they say. He silences further misgivings with a kiss.

  When Louise and Blake leave, Curry heads back to his bed at the hotel, but he’s awakened when his partner lights a lamp. Heyes has figured out what happened. Curry wonders why they have to talk about it in the middle of the night but Heyes says his best ideas come then and goes on. They know that Blake is married to Blodgett’s oldest daughter, who probably looks like her father. So Blake falls in love with pretty Louise Carson, but he doesn’t want to give up the Blodgett money, so he steals some from the bank and blames it on Heyes and “what’s-his-name.” Even though Blodgett is the only one who knew the combination, Blake could have easily picked up a number here, a number there. Then he shot and killed Billy and Caleb throwing the blame on them. This also means that Louise is party to cold-blooded murder.

  Trying to piece out Louise’s part, they invite her on a picnic.

  That night at another midnight tryst, Heyes and Curry watch as Louise tells Blake about the proposed picnic. He advises her to go ahead with them, but he’ll be watching. She should wear her shawl around her shoulders and, if she feels she’s in danger, she should drop it as a signal to him. If worse comes to worst he’ll get out and meet her in Vera Cruz. They end the evening with a kiss.

  Through a rifle’s telescopic lens, Ken Blake watches as the boys and Louise pick at the picnic food. He can’t hear them inform her that they know about her and Ken. They figured he must have robbed the bank because Hannibal Heyes couldn’t do it by manipulating the tumblers. Only Blodgett or his son-in-law could have stolen the money and it wasn’t Blodgett.

  Blake also killed Billy and Caleb, they insist. Her shocked expression proves that Louise was unaware of this. She didn’t know Ken robbed the bank until he told her to tell the sheriff the story about Billy and Caleb getting drunk and saying they were Heyes and Curry. Ken said he’d given them money and sent them to Mexico.

  Louise is convinced she should go to the sheriff.

  In town, Heyes and Curry confirm Jenny’s suspicions about Caleb and Billy being dead, but won’t tell her who robbed the bank. Jenny guesses it was Blake.

  Blodgett hails Heyes and Curry from the door of his bank. He has found a note under the door jamb signed by Billy and Caleb claiming that the money is in the abandoned house. Heyes and Curry, along with Blodgett and a deputy, search and find a money bag stuffed up the chimney. News of the found money spreads through Touchstone.

  Heyes and Curry ask Louise to step outs
ide the café to talk. She convinced Ken to return the money because she doesn’t believe in killing. Even if Ken did kill Billy and Caleb, she won’t help New Mexico execute him. Heyes threatens to go to the sheriff but Louise doesn’t think he will. She has figured out why they were so desperate to clear the outlaws’ names.

  That afternoon, as the train pulls in, they say goodbye to Louise. She’s going to Yuma to live with her sister and hopefully find a husband. Then Curry spots Jenny headed across the square. Dropping their gear, they race to the bank in time to hear two shots. Jenny has killed Kenneth Blake.

  Heyes and Curry beg Louise to stay and testify on her behalf. No jury will convict her once they hear the story. Blake admitted to Louise that he killed Caleb and Billy and that makes her a firsthand witness.

  On the train, Heyes wonders how much a headstone for Blake would cost. It would be engraved with the words, “The only thing you have to earn in life is love. Everything else you can steal.” Curry is pleased with the original poetry. It’s not his, Heyes confesses. He stole it.

  GUEST CAST

  PATRICK O’NEAL — KENNETH BLAKE

  ANN SOTHERN — BLACKJACK JENNY

  JESSICA WALTER — LOUISE CARSON

  DAVID CANARY — SHERIFF W. D. COFFIN

  KERMIT MURDOCK — HENRY BLODGETT

  DENNIS RUCKER — BILLY BLACK

  PARKER WEST — CALEB WHITE

  ALLEN JOSEPH — OLD MAN

  ROBERT GODDEN — DEPUTY SHERIFF

  Roy Huggins first told the story to Glen Larson on May 11, 1971. Two days later, he dictated addenda for Dick Baer, giving him an introduction to the whole seeking-amnesty history and a week later, Huggins wrote another story outline. Though Baer submitted a first draft three weeks later, nothing was done with the script until October 4 when Universal received another draft from Huggins who wrote it “over weekend.” [44]

  In Huggins’s original story, the boys have been prospecting in the mountains. After three months, they’ve only got $18.30 worth of gold dust, which works out to their having worked for two cents an hour. While discussing whose “rotten” idea it had been, [45] they come face to face with Lom Trevors. He shows them a newspaper article reporting they’re wanted for a robbery in Touchstone, Colorado. Allegedly Heyes and Curry came to town using the names Billy White and Jesse Black. Lom tells them they’d better do something about it because the governor is “really boiling.” They know they can go to Touchstone because they weren’t there previously and won’t be recognized.

  Heyes and Curry meet with the bank owner, Henry Murchison. His bank uses a “Davis and Newbound” safe but Huggins changed it to a Pierce & Hamilton because “in another story we’re doing, Heyes knows how to open that particular model.” They also contact Louise Baylor, [46] who owns the millinery shop in town. Her having this shop supplies a meeting place for her and Ken Blake. To contact her, Blake goes to the shop to pick up dress material for his wife. Huggins’s idea was for Curry to offer to walk Louise home, then he suggested that Curry meet her at a dance. “Or would this be too expensive to shoot? (Some dance footage is available.)” [47] Louise claims she recognized Heyes because she was once on a stagecoach that was robbed by the Devil’s Hole Gang. When they question her closely about the alleged stage robbery, she fudges and they know she’s lying.

  From this point, the teleplay pretty much follows the final version. However, at the end, Louise talks to Blake. He admits that he killed the two men but insists he did it for her. She says that he must return the money or she’ll turn him in for murder unless he kills her too. The next day the money is found back in the bank’s safe.

  When Jenny kills Blake, many people, including the sheriff, run into the bank and find her standing over his dead body, still holding the gun. In the tag, as the train moves slowly out of town, Heyes and Curry spot a beautiful girl walking on the sidewalk. A man who boarded the train with them identifies her as the banker’s oldest daughter. Huggins thought “the idea may be worth playing with, because it blasts the old cliché — that the banker’s daughter a guy marries for money is always ugly.” [48]

  Opposites abound in this episode. The most obvious, of course, is the Black/White names of the young men who, when drunk, claim to be the notorious outlaws. Heyes and Curry identify themselves as bounty hunters when, in fact, they are the hunted. Louise Carson is portrayed as a sweet, simple woman who made the mistake of falling in love with a married man. Her naiveté belies her intelligence in figuring out why the “bounty hunters” so desperately needed to clear Heyes’s and Curry’s names. The man she loves, Kenneth Blake, is one of Alias Smith and Jones’s most despicable villains, totally lacking in charm or redeeming qualities. Not only is he a cold-blooded murderer, but also an adulterer who robs the bank managed by his trusting father-in-law. In the end, vigilante justice is served instead of lawful retribution. Heyes and Curry planned to leave town with Blake untouched by the consequences of his crimes. Both they, who usually try to rectify wrongs by having the responsible party admit his guilt, and Louise, who forgives Blake because of her opposition to capital punishment, are frightfully lacking in judgment, leaving Jenny to hand down the sentence Blake deserves.

  Jenny is the most uncomplicated of the characters. According to Huggins’s backstory, she deals blackjack “in Montana where she’s very famous and popular…one can always play blackjack with her and knows he’s going to get a square deal…because she’s honest.” [49] Jenny was let down by her old friends, so she took the law into her own hands. Her straightforward motivation in killing Blake is that of a mother seeking justice for her son.

  Miracle at Santa Marta

  “Here you are, trying to get framed for murder — or even killed — in his town. Nobody likes a nuisance.”

  Hannibal Heyes

  STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  TELEPLAY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES AND DICK NELSON

  DIRECTOR: VINCENT SHERMAN

  SHOOTING DATES: NOVEMBER 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 1971

  ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: DECEMBER 30, 1971

  ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: FEBRUARY 7, 1972

  The annual horse race is about to begin when Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry arrive in Yuma. Munching on popcorn, they observe the favorite being saddled by his owner, Sam Bleeker. A well-dressed man introduces himself as Rolf Hanley. If Bleeker doesn’t mind, Hanley will enter his filly in the race. Bleeker agrees. Hanley’s entrance fee will just increase the purse that he plans to win.

  Heyes and Curry follow Hanley as he returns to tell his handler to saddle Hyperia. They’ve recognized the horse as a thoroughbred and place their bets on the filly.

  The race begins. Bleeker’s gray quarter horse takes an early lead, but is eventually passed by the filly, who wins by more than ten lengths. Heyes and Curry happily collect their winnings.

  Accused by Bleeker of using a ringer, Hanley calmly points out that Hyperia is not a ringer, but she is a thoroughbred. Bleeker demands Hanley either get a gun or disqualify his horse from the race. Hanley refuses to do either. By this time Heyes and Curry have joined Hanley, interested in keeping the race results as they are. Curry stands up for Hanley and finds himself in a showdown with Bleeker. Curry wins.

  Hanley offers them a job as bodyguards for his horse. He’ll pay them $500 to accompany him to Mexico in a private coach. After giving it some thought, Heyes decides to stay in Yuma. He’s found poker players who believe the laws of probability should only be obeyed when a sheriff is watching. Curry can do the job alone.

  Curry and Hanley head for Mexico. The coach breaks an axle outside of the resort town of Santa Marta. Leaving Turner, the driver, to await a blacksmith, the two men ride in to town.

  As they dine that evening, Señor Cordoba, the alcalde, stops by to introduce himself and welcome them to Santa Marta. As he leaves, Hanley comments on what a charming man he is, but Curry isn’t fooled. “Mr. Hanley, he was checking us out. But charmingly.”

  The next evening Curry dines alone, having received a
note from Hanley saying he wouldn’t see him at dinner. The alcalde gives him a friendly nod from a neighboring table.

  The next morning there’s a knock on Curry’s door. Expecting Hanley, he invites him to come in. Instead of Rolf Hanley, though, he’s faced with two Mexican policemen giving him orders in Spanish. He responds, “No comprendo” and the policemen pull out their guns. That Curry understands.

  Inspecting Curry’s gun, the alcalde notes it has been recently cleaned. Insulted, Curry explains his gun has always been recently cleaned. The alcalde then questions Curry — where does he come from, who can provide references for him, how long has he known Mr. Hanley? Curry doesn’t know what the alcalde is getting at, a claim the alcalde finds difficult to believe. “Mr. Hanley was shot last night and thrown off the Punta Piedras cliffs.”

  The alcalde explains his suspicions. Curry is the only one in Santa Marta who knew Hanley and could possibly have wished to harm him. The gun that killed him was a .45 caliber, just like Curry’s. Hanley was not robbed and Hyperia is still in her stall. Before locking Curry up, the alcalde allows him to telegraph Heyes. “Am in Santa Marta in jail, charged with murder. Bring money.”

  On board the stagecoach for Santa Marta, Heyes finds his traveling companion is a lovely widow named Meg Parker. He’s puzzled to find her traveling alone to Mexico, but she explains her husband left her some money and she likes doing the unusual.

  Heyes visits Curry in jail, bringing the bad news that Bleeker, the likely suspect, was shot dead the day Curry and Hanley left Yuma. Heyes will have to come up with a miracle to save Curry.

  Meanwhile, the alcalde has learned two new things in the case. First, Turner, Hanley’s driver, has a criminal record and spent ten years in prison for murder.