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

by Sandra K. Sagala

  Huggins was able to find a believable compromise to resolve the story to the satisfaction of both himself and the network. There’s a point at which a lawyer stops doing things for his client and Simpson could realistically decide not to risk his reputation and his career for a man guilty of murder. With a little help from Lom, Simpson sees this way out. Rosswell is brought to justice and Simpson’s defeat is made believable.

  Only Three to a Bed

  “Heyes, blowin’ safes sure made a sissy out of you.”

  Kid Curry

  STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES

  TELEPLAY: RICHARD MORRIS

  DIRECTOR: JEFFREY HAYDEN

  SHOOTING DATES: UTAH — JULY 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; STUDIO — JULY 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, AUG. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1972

  ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: JANUARY 13, 1973

  ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: JANUARY 7, 1974

  Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry hurry down the street with Bronc, an old cowhand attempting to coerce them into joining him in a horse venture. His plan is to cut out twenty ponies from a herd of wild horses and sell them in Cheyenne. He knows the boys have been staying away from the short arm of the law and need a vacation. If they had any reservations about the proposition, the word vacation dispelled them.

  On the way to Piney Basin, they pass a crude wooden sign advertising a Road Ranch — “Stagecoach stop, baths 50¢, bed 50¢, only three to a bed.” They register at the ranch and request they each have a bed. They also ask owner Sam Haney about renting a corral. Sam charges one dollar per day for that because he expects damages when rancher Mark Tisdale learns the boys plan to round up wild horses he considers his. Piney Basin is open range, public domain; but Tisdale claims it under the rule of customary range. There will be additional charges for nursing if they get shot. The boys wonder what Bronc has gotten them into.

  Next day, the wild horses skitter as Heyes and Curry attempt to lasso them while Bronc shouts encouragement. Heyes lassoes one horse which turns, dragging him out of his saddle and along the ground.

  At the end of the first day, they’re hot, sweaty, and sore and have caught three horses. With six more days of work ahead of them, all Heyes wants is a hot bath and bed. That is, until he spots a beautiful woman on the porch of the ranch house. She is one of the passengers on the recently arrived stagecoach.

  At supper served by Belle, the young daughter of the proprietor, Heyes questions the beautiful Beegee, and learns she’s a performer who is on her way to an audition, hoping to sing at the Palace in Cheyenne. She’s also scouting a husband there. Curry asks Emma Sterling about herself, but her brother squelches his queries as the driver announces it’s time to leave for Sheridan. As soon as the stage departs, Heyes’s aches and pains return and he heads for bed.

  The next day, Heyes and Curry are back at cutting out the horses. Bronc helps some, mostly by shouting support or directions.

  At a rifle shot, the horses stampede and the three men drop to the ground. Heyes and Bronc return fire while Curry heads up a steep hill to circle around behind the shooter. The young man who’s been firing at them is amazed at Curry’s prowess when Curry shoots the rifle from his hand.

  Bronc and the boys escort the young man, Mark Tisdale’s son, back to his father’s ranch. Tisdale stands up for his son, saying he was shooting at thieves. Bronc insists the land is free range, but Tisdale claims the land under Montana’s “courtesy of the range.” He won’t allow even twenty horses to be taken. They’re his even though he’s never branded them.

  When the three partners return to the ranch house, they find the stagecoach passengers have returned because the stage broke down. The driver went on to Sheridan for repairs or a new coach. With all the guests, they will have to double up — Emma Sterling and Beegee to one bed; Heyes, Curry and Bronc to another; and Mr. Sterling to a bed all his own. A dour Puritan, he doesn’t sleep with anyone unless absolutely necessary.

  But there won’t be three to a bed because, with Tisdale riled up, one of them will have to guard the corral. Bronc takes first watch. After supper, Curry dances with Beegee and Heyes with Belle to a tune from a music box. When Sam Haney breaks in on Heyes to dance with his daughter, Heyes asks to dance with Beegee. That leaves Curry to seek out Emma who has been watching the dancing while embroidering. Her brother sits nearby with a book. He sternly intercedes when Curry asks her to dance, claiming his sister finds Curry’s advances offensive. Curry apologizes and Emma flees the room.

  Mark Tisdale watches Bronc through binoculars.

  Beegee entertains them with a song. When Bronc comes in with word that it’s Thaddeus’s turn on guard, Bronc takes up his fiddle and a lively square dance ensues. At its conclusion, Heyes and Beegee are left alone when the others head to bed. They play poker while Beegee tells about running away from her daddy’s dry goods store. She’s looking for a husband because she’s not that good a singer.

  While Curry’s on guard, Emma approaches to apologize for her rudeness. Curry replies it’s his nature to ride into things and he’s used to being slapped down. Defending her brother, Emma sees no sin in dancing though it’s against their beliefs. Her devout brother watches out for her.

  Inside, Beegee wins every hand of poker. Heyes accuses her ever so politely of distracting a man with her pretty brown eyes while she stacks the deck and crimps the cards. Insulted, she claims to need her beauty sleep and heads for bed. From the window, she watches as Emma leaves the barn after seeing Curry.

  When it’s Heyes’s turn to stand guard, Beegee slips out to see him. She asks him for a cigarette but learns he only smokes cigars. She knows nothing else about him, like why he isn’t married. He never met anyone worth giving up the cowboy life for, he says. Beegee can’t believe he enjoys the life. Surely, he has fond memories of his ma and pa happy at the end of the day sitting by the fire and looking out at the snow? Heyes counters his father hated snow. Beegee has set her sights on Heyes as a possible husband, but Heyes claims he has no land, no ranch. Her prospect with him is as slim as drawing to an inside straight. Still, they enjoy a tender kiss.

  On the third day, after cutting out three more wild horses, Heyes and Curry begin to break them. Bronc is too old to risk breaking his neck when Heyes and Curry are natural showoffs, eager to perform before the ladies. That night, while Bronc is on guard and Heyes and Curry sleep, the horses act skittish and nervous. Bronc draws his gun on a shadow but before he can fire, he is hit on the head. Tisdale’s ranch hands lead away the ponies.

  When Bronc comes to, he sounds the alarm, waking his partners.

  At daylight, Heyes, Curry, and Bronc head out to Tisdale’s ranch. He’s taken back his horses and the sheriff in Billings has deputized some men he’s hired. Tisdale instructs the deputies to put the trio under arrest for horse thieving. Curry calmly refutes him. You can’t steal something that doesn’t belong to anybody and they didn’t see any No Trespassing signs. A deputy gets ready to enforce Tisdale’s order. That is, until Curry outdraws him. Curry then orders the rest of the deputies to throw their guns into the water trough.

  That done, the boys go back to breaking horses. Bronc and Sam Haney cheer them on. Beegee cheers for Curry and when Heyes says he too could use some encouragement, she tells him he is “deaf, dumb and blind” and she’s decided he’s not the one for her. Disgusted, he slams his hat back on and heads for the corral. Even Emma Sterling is laughing at the sight of the boys on the wild horses until her brother reproves her with a frown.

  During the entertainment, the stagecoach driver stops to say the coach couldn’t be fixed and he’s on his way to Billings to get a new one. He’ll be back the next morning.

  That evening, Curry is once again on guard when Emma startles him. She’s come to say goodbye. When they leave tomorrow, she won’t be able to say goodbye the way she wants to because of her brother. He doesn’t understand the cowboys, but she has found knowing Mr. Jones to be a wonderful experience.

  Curry is glad she came because it might have shocke
d her brother when Curry kissed her goodbye. He kisses her tenderly then. Curry was worried Emma’s brother might scare her off from what life is all about but he’s not going to worry any more. He thinks she’ll be all right.

  He watches her go then sits down again to mend a bridle when he’s startled by Beegee’s approach. He thinks he’s going deaf; she could have had him and the horses. She doesn’t want the horses but may be making a play for him. Joshua is too stupid, she thinks. Thaddeus has more sense, more maturity. Mocking Emma, she tells him when she says goodbye in the morning, she won’t be able to say it the way she wants to, so she’s here now. Curry and Beegee kiss long and hard. Spoiling her for all other men, he shows her “how it’s supposed to be.”

  Next morning, Curry watches as Beegee gives Heyes a passionate goodbye kiss. Curry approaches the Sterling siblings and bids a succinct goodbye. He extends his hand to Beegee who thanks him for showing her how it’s supposed to be. Curry smirks at Heyes’s puzzled look.

  After another day on the range, with Tisdale viewing them through binoculars, the boys enter the ranch house to find Beegee back. Heyes and Curry worry they may have said something to raise her hopes. Instead, she says she just likes it there and she’s happy.

  Before supper, the boys and Bronc gaze contently on their small herd of twenty tamed horses. While eating, Curry suggests they sell the horses in Sheridan instead of driving them all the way to Cheyenne. Mark Tisdale’s voice cuts off any reply. He’s come to take back his horses and if they still want the animals, the price is his life. Fools in Washington, D.C., made laws which override public domain. Tisdale is of the old school and is taking back his rightful property.

  Beegee suggests a compromise. Instead of the three men having to drive twenty horses to Cheyenne, during which trip they might possibly lose all the animals, what if Tisdale paid them $20 a head just for the work they put into breaking them? Tisdale considers for a long moment. He finally agrees and, to save face, will send his men for the animals. He’ll be back later to pay them, but insists that nothing be said about the money.

  Heyes, Curry and Bronc kiss Belle goodbye and load the stagecoach with their gear. Beegee won’t be going along because Sam has asked her to stay.

  Curry is surprised at the development, but Heyes is just relieved. Wistfully, Curry adds that she did have a nice little dimple. Heyes remembers he knew a fella once who fell in love with a nice little dimple and made the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

  GUEST CAST

  JOANN PFLUG — BEEGEE

  DANA ELCAR — SAM HANEY

  LAURETTE SPANG — EMMA STERLING

  JOHN KERR — GEORGE STERLING

  DEAN JAGGER — MARK TISDALE

  PAUL FIX — BRONC

  JANET JOHNSON — BELLE HANEY

  MICHAEL RUPERT — TISDALE’S SON

  PEPPER MARTIN — HEAD GUNMAN

  GARY VAN ORMAN — STAGE DRIVER

  “Only Three to a Bed” is one of the few episodes hardly relating to the series’ premise. The only reference to amnesty is Bronc’s acknowledging the boys have been trying to stay away from the law. Curry’s fast draw is in evidence when he outdraws Tisdale’s gunman but Heyes’s silver tongue seems to have disappeared. Curry does most of the talking, attempting to convince Tisdale they have a right to the horses. For someone who didn’t need to be told how to handle himself in the clinches in an early episode, Heyes does a poor job of interacting with Beegee. He needs to prove his superiority by pointing out her card manipulations. Even though she’s been insulted, she visits him when he’s on guard alone but, instead of leveling with her about marriage prospects or using his silver tongue to put her off, he offers lame excuses, joking that if he eats right, he can keep up with the other fellas doing cowboy work. He doesn’t play on her sympathy of his having lost his parents at an early age, but defiles her mental picture of a loving home life. It is amusing to speculate on how the same scene would have played out if Heyes had asked Emma to dance and she later defended her brother to him and Beegee had made a play for Curry as Roy Huggins initially planned the story, particularly considering Huggins’s idea that “neither one of our boys is sentimental. Curry is a little more conceited about women. Heyes is shrewder, maybe even smarter, maybe a little more sensitive.” [63] In the aired episode, these virtues and vices are exchanged.

  In a few instances, however, Alias Smith and Jones canon tenets surface. The Sterlings are from Kansas as Curry and Heyes are. Curry again demonstrates his rapport with children when he bids goodbye to young Belle Haney, saying sincerely that he’ll miss her. Emma Sterling and Sister Grace from Apache Springs have much in common. Both are restricted by the religion they profess but both will be all right in the future after having met the Kid.

  Curry had a right to be worried about Emma. John Calvin, considered the founder of the Puritan ethic, prohibited dancing, drinking, card playing, ribaldry, fashionable clothes and other amusements. Critic H.L. Mencken defined Puritans as people “haunted by the fear that someone somewhere may be happy.” [64] Puritans who came to America emphasized biblical interpretations considering the human body as inherently impure and depraved. The hardships of life in the American wilderness, combined with bizarre aspects of the Puritan philosophy, made life especially difficult for the women of that time. As early feminist Lillie Devereux Blake said in 1892: “The Pilgrim mothers not only had to endure all that the Pilgrim fathers suffered, but had to endure the Pilgrim fathers as well.” [65]

  Stuntman Monty Laird remembered that during the filming of the horse roundup, Jimmy Nickerson and Sonny Shields were stunt doubling Ben Murphy and Roger Davis. In one scene, when Heyes ropes a horse, his saddle breaks and pulls him off. He’s holding on to the rope and it drags him. The director wanted a close-up scene of Roger being dragged, so Roger went to three of the biggest grips and told them, “’Now when you guys pull me, I want you to really pull me, run just as fast and as hard as you can.’ And the director also said, ‘Now look, Roger, we don’t need you to roll around, just drag straight. That’s all you have to do. Drag straight right past the camera. Beyond it, cut, print, we’ve got it.’ Not Roger. Method actor. Boy, they started dragging him, he started rolling and they drug him right into a light stand…and off to the hospital he goes.” [66]

  Director Alex Singer remembered the mishap from a slightly different perspective. Rocks protruded from a point in the ground. He and Roger talked about it “and the plan was that he would let go a couple of feet before the rocks.” He didn’t. “When they brought him back from the doctor’s, he did the scene again. He was very courageous but…” Singer continued, “We were always half between half-screaming and half-laughing and Roger was also. He was pretty good-humored about it, everything considered, but it would drive Ben crazy.” [67]

  Frank Sinatra, Jr. guest stars as Deputy Wermser in “The Long Chase.” Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Materials Store

  Harry Briscoe, a Bannerman Detective, portrayed by J.D. Cannon.

  Courtesy of Ben Murphy

  Roger Davis, Burl Ives, Ben Murphy in “The McCreedy Feud.”

  Burl Ives starred as Big Mac McCreedy in three episodes.

  Courtesy of Ben Murphy

  Guns made by Monty Laird similar to the ones Kid Curry carried. Sagala/Bagwell collection

  Chapter 10

  Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry Would Cease to Exist

  In the cutthroat world of American network television, Alias Smith and Jones did not fare well. The show was a charming blend of humor and action with occasional flashes of social commentary, but it had trouble reaching a sufficiently large audience to suit ABC. The potential for success was there; tantalizing glimpses of what could be were evident whenever NBC pre-empted The Flip Wilson Show. Roy Huggins, with a philosophic shrug, recalled that the episodes screened at Audience Surveys, Inc. always tested well. “We got huge numbers with Alias Smith and Jones. People loved the show; they just didn’t watch it.” [1] Network executives made many decisio
ns based upon ASI scores and the show’s positive test numbers helped keep it on the air despite its lackluster Nielsen ratings. During the 1971-72 season, based on twenty-five telecasts, the show garnered an overall rating of 16.3% and a 25 share. In other words, 10,120,000 households were watching the adventures of the two lovable outlaws each week. [2] In that season, Alias Smith and Jones ranked fifty-fifth out of seventy-eight programs, yet ABC still appeared to have faith in the show and renewed it for the 1972-73 season.

  Frank Price knew the real problem facing the show was its timeslot. Alias Smith and Jones had been a mid-season replacement show and had inherited its original 7:30 p.m. Thursday timeslot from Matt Lincoln, one of the spate of so-called “relevance” shows which the networks were offering in the hope of attracting a young, hip audience. Matt Lincoln premiered on September 24, 1970, and, like most of the other “relevant” programs, immediately sank into obscurity. By the time Alias Smith and Jones began airing in January 1971, viewers had developed the habit of tuning in to The Flip Wilson Show, and they saw no reason to change.

  Price was frustrated by the situation. He knew that if only the show weren’t opposite the enormously popular comedian, it would be sure to thrive. For proof one had only to look overseas. While the show struggled in America, it soared in Great Britain. Alias Smith and Jones premiered on BBC2 on Monday, April 19, 1971, and was an instant success. Although ratings did not have the same significance for the non-commercial BBC as they did for the US network, the broadcaster was nevertheless pleased with the performance of their new American series. In its 8:00 p.m. timeslot, Alias Smith and Jones decisively trounced its competition on BBC1 and ITV, pulling in 20.4% of the viewing audience. In comparison, BBC1’s well-respected news magazine Panorama attracted only 8.4% of the audience while ITV’s documentary World in Action had to be satisfied with 8.1%, although their ratings grew to 15.6% in the second half-hour with the sitcom For the Love of Ada. Alias Smith and Jones’s rating is even more impressive given that only fifty-six percent of UK households were capable of receiving BBC2 broadcasts in April 1971. [3]