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

by Sandra K. Sagala

  In July 1971, the episode “A Fistful of Diamonds” was the subject of a BBC Audience Research Report. The audience for Alias Smith and Jones had grown since the broadcast of the pilot three months earlier; the show now pulled in 22.5% of television viewers while BBC1's audience had dropped to 6.3% and ITV’s audience averaged 8.7%. Viewers were asked to rate this episode on a five point scale of four dimensions defined by pairs of descriptive phrases: Thoroughly Entertaining/Very Boring; Very Easy To Understand/Very Difficult To Understand; Excellent Plot/Poor Plot; Definitely Out of the Ordinary/Just Ordinary. Seventy percent of the respondents rated the episode “thoroughly entertaining” while only two percent found it “very boring.” Fifty-one percent of the audience gave the episode the highest ranking of “definitely out of the ordinary” while another twenty-five percent put it on the second highest point on the scale for that category. The BBC found that “A Fistful of Diamonds” was “a highly enjoyable episode of a series which has consistently given much pleasure.” It was very much to the audience’s taste with its two delightful heroes, an interesting and entertaining plot, and a nice touch of humor.

  Most of those responding to the survey had been fairly regular viewers of the series and were loud in their praise for this “Western with a difference.” While a minority of viewers, approximately two percent, felt the show was rather childish and that the films were “much of a muchness,” most of the audience recognized Alias Smith and Jones had “an indefinable something that set it apart from the others.” [4] The British audience proved what Frank Price and Roy Huggins already knew and struggled to convince ABC of — Alias Smith and Jones was special. In Britain, Alias Smith and Jones reached its full potential, winning a large, loyal and enthusiastic audience and leaving its competition in the dust. The series was then, and has remained, the most popular American import the BBC ever aired.

  The Alias Smith and Jones audience might not have been numerous enough for ABC, but that was not the only problem. Peter Duel’s death had forever altered the show and, while the ratings did not drop significantly when Roger Davis took over the role, for one very important person the magic was irretrievably gone. That person was Barry Diller, Vice President of Program Development for ABC. When Frank Price went to the network in 1972 and once again pleaded for a new timeslot, this time Diller obliged him. For its third season, Alias Smith and Jones would air on Saturday night at 8:00 p.m., opposite All in the Family, the number one show in America. The implication was clear. Diller had decided to make Alias Smith and Jones the network’s sacrificial lamb on Saturday night. Nothing that had gone up against the sitcom had survived, and the possibility that Alias Smith and Jones would buck the trend was remote. Price laments, “We were ill-fated…first we had Flip, then we had All in the Family and then Peter…we know we’ve got something fabulous but we can’t seem to see daylight somehow. We keep getting crushed.” [5]

  Yet, as of April 1972, production notes indicate that Universal expected to film and deliver a full third season. ABC specifically ordered twelve episodes with an option for eight more. But Diller threw another curve at them. ABC’s new martial-arts show Kung Fu would initially share the Saturday timeslot, pre-empting Alias Smith and Jones every fourth week until mid-season. Then, beginning in January 1973, Alias Smith and Jones would once again be the sole occupant of that timeslot and air every week. [6] This tactic did not bode well for the show.

  As the 1972-73 season approached, ABC did promote the series, sending Ben Murphy and Roger Davis on a promotional tour in early September 1972. They visited major cities across the nation, appearing on local talk shows, doing radio interviews and visiting ABC affiliates to plug the series. Daily Variety was fairly optimistic about the new timeslot, commenting in a review of the new season, “If the young adults continue to fall in with CBS-TV’s All in the Family and the other folks go for Emergency on NBC, Alias Smith and Jones may have found its ideal spot on early Saturday night, filling the vacuum for youngsters.” [7] But this upbeat assessment didn’t take into account the fact that, in most households, parents, not youngsters, were controlling the set. Roger Davis ruefully remembers, “Even my parents watched All in the Family first, and then tuned in to the last half hour of Smith and Jones.” [8]

  Heyes and Curry struggled against Archie Bunker as the season progressed, but as in their battle against Flip Wilson the year before, they still managed to perform respectably given the circumstances. It wasn’t enough for Barry Diller. Jo Swerling recalls, “He didn’t like the show as well with Roger as he did with Pete and decided that the show had run out of gas, even though the numbers didn’t support that.” Swerling, while acknowledging that Ben and Roger didn’t share the same kind of chemistry as Ben and Peter had, nevertheless feels the audience was accepting the change. “I think it was a bad call to cancel Alias Smith and Jones. I think he should have let it go for at least one more season to see what would happen. [But] he wasn’t interested.” [9] This lack of interest led Diller to abruptly cancel the show in November 1972. Instead of celebrating the mid-season pickup they were expecting, the cast finished shooting and wrapped up the series with a farewell party on Stage 35 on November 3, 1972.

  Beginning January 20, 1973, two new sitcoms — Here We Go Again and A Touch of Grace — would replace Alias Smith and Jones. Ironically, A Touch of Grace was based on the British sitcom For the Love of Ada, one of the shows Alias Smith and Jones routinely outperformed in Britain. These two comedies performed so poorly, they disappeared from ABC’s schedule five months later, not even lasting through the summer rerun season. For the next three years, everything ABC put up against All in the Family was promptly cancelled. Swerling remembers the bittersweet feeling those successive failures brought. “A considerable time passed before they had anything in that timeslot that performed as well as Alias Smith and Jones, so it was a little bit of schadenfreude that we were able to indulge in, but it didn’t bring the show back.” [10]

  Barry Diller might have lost interest in Alias Smith and Jones, but the BBC hadn’t. Roy Huggins recalled Alias Smith and Jones was “tremendously popular in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It was a big, big hit. And it was such a big hit they wanted to pay to have it produced.” [11] In a startling move, when ABC cancelled the series, the BBC began negotiating with Universal to pick up the production costs in an effort to keep the show alive. Frank Price, who personally loved the series, felt the idea was all well and good, but from a business standpoint it was completely impractical. The show was budgeted at approximately $190,000 per episode, money ABC recouped through its advertising rates. The BBC was a non-commercial broadcaster, funded by television license fees paid by taxpayers in Great Britain; there was no way they would be able to afford such a venture. “Therefore that’s the kind of thing I put in the category of ‘that’s very nice’ but nothing we can really do,” Price regrets. [12] The two companies dickered back and forth, offers and counter-offers being considered and rejected one by one.

  At one point, it seemed the BBC might just succeed. Although the production company had been shut down, Roy Huggins gave Roger Davis a heads-up about the imminent resumption of production, urging him not to take any other jobs. “Get packing, we’re going to Spain to shoot.” [13] However, in the end, Price’s assessment was correct: though the two companies came within $50,000 per episode of reaching an agreement, a pittance in Hollywood terms, ultimately the BBC could not afford to produce the show themselves and the deal fell through. The adventures of Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were over.

  Reminiscing about the show thirty years later, Ben Murphy recalls that, although Peter Duel’s death had moved him up to lead, initially he would have rather quit and had the show stop then and there. But when the show went back into production, Ben went to work “because it was always my job, I was under contract.” During the first season and partway through the second, though he was getting three times more fan mail than Peter, he had been paid Screen Actors’ Guild minimu
m. Roy Huggins went to the Black Tower and pled Murphy’s case. Huggins told them it wasn’t fair. “He’s working the same hours and he’s getting one-tenth the pay.” [14] Ben was still not getting rich though he did get the raise after Peter died. But, Ben sadly recalls, “the important issue was Peter was gone and it was going to be changed forever. Period. As far as I was concerned, it was a new show then.” [15]

  Ben appreciated the tough position Roger Davis found himself in, though they often clashed. Roger believes “neither of us ever had the smarts to come together and go, ‘Y’know, we could potentially have a real long run here…’ ” To Ben that was never possible. “The show depended on being a fun-loving show…[and] once someone kills himself, the audience goes, ‘Whoa. Not only do we miss him, but these obviously are not fun-loving guys anymore.’…[Peter] shooting himself casts a pall on the show. Not only the fact that he wasn’t there.” [16]

  Roger Davis doesn’t subscribe to Ben’s theory about the show being doomed after Peter Duel’s suicide. He knows he gave it his best effort in a bad situation in a bad timeslot and says, “I will always be regretful of it not having been a major success. Yet, I don’t know, as Ben said, ‘What could you have done about it?’ What could I have done about it?” [17]

  Three years earlier, when Huggins had come aboard, one of the things he did not care for was the premise that the outlaws had only one year in which to prove themselves. If he had had his way, Huggins would have written it so the governor gave the boys five years to earn amnesty. Even given the malleability of television time, he knew from his work on Run for Your Life, that when a set deadline has come and gone — in that case the man’s death from disease in two years — and the anticipated outcome has not occurred, the audience becomes unwilling to hang on any more and will cease to watch the show. When Paul Klein of NBC notified Huggins the show was about to be cancelled, he didn’t credit Klein’s argument that “people who watch television are very literal and they would not accept Run for Your Life if he’s still alive in a fourth year.” Huggins wondered about Little Orphan Annie. “You know, she never grew an inch for forty years.” Klein acknowledged Huggins’s point but argued that Little Orphan Annie was a comic strip, not a television series, and audience expectations were different. [18]

  One other concept Huggins kept in mind was how Heyes and Curry were on probation. “As long as they stayed out of trouble, they’d be let alone, go right along, but if they got into trouble, [they’d be sent to] prison for life…They were frequently motivated by a fear that if they did something, they would go back to prison…” Knowing he could have sent them to languish in prison or granted them their amnesty, when Huggins was asked what he would have done had he been given the opportunity for a series finale for Alias Smith and Jones, he said, “I think if I’d known, I’d want to do something…I undoubtedly would have ended this show with their freedom.” [19]

  The development of “The Day the Amnesty Came Through” began at the end of July 1972 when Huggins told the story to writer Dick Nelson. The story, with the promised amnesty granted to Heyes and Curry and then snatched away, would have allowed the series to continue for realistic and historical reasons — the change of governors. In it, Huggins echoed the pilot dialogue wherein Sheriff Lom Trevors tells them their attempt for an amnesty must remain a secret. Only they, he, and the governor will know about it. The plot mirrors the pilot in their having to begin again to prove their good intentions, but the episode’s scheduling was another indication Huggins did not see the cancellation coming. After it aired, four more episodes followed. Even if he had no other plan for a final episode (an unlikely scenario given Huggins’s fertile imagination), ending the series with the outlaws being granted amnesty, even if it were rescinded by the new governor, would have made a satisfying closure.

  Instead, the show was abruptly cancelled and, as far as the audience knows, Heyes and Curry are still out there, leading quiet lives of desperation awaiting the governor’s signature on their amnesty papers. The further adventures of Heyes and Curry remain forever a mystery, but for the actors who played them, life went on, however disparate from the last several years.

  When the show was cancelled, Frank Price, who had taken Ben Murphy under his wing, offered Ben his next role as Mike Murdoch, Lorne Greene’s sidekick in the short-lived Griff series, its concept being “old cop, young cop, both originally cowboys.” In late 1974, Ben was back in cowboy costume as Wild Bill Hickok to Matt Clark’s Buffalo Bill and Kim Darby’s Calamity Jane in This Is The West That Was. College students popularized the satirical western drama into a cult movie classic.

  Then, Ben was ready for something new. Always into physical fitness and exercise, one day he tried tennis and immediately fell in love with the game. In between filming movies for TV, like Heat Wave! and Sidecar Racers, and guest-starring in such favorites as Love, American Style and Marcus Welby, he played tennis. Ben enjoyed the breaks between acting gigs, unlike other actors who constantly hustled to get more work. The game rewarded his tenacity, and he gained proficiency at it. At one time, he was touted to be best in California, playing a consistent serve-and-volley game. A commentator once remarked, “He acts like he’s playing Wimbledon.” [20] Exertion expended in the game helped Ben deal with his disappointment when he wanted to try for one of the roles in Starsky and Hutch, but Universal insisted he abide by his exclusive contract with them and he was not loaned out.

  Around this time, Ben began dating a Pan Am airline stewardess. While he was in Chicago performing in a play, his date introduced him to her friend, Jeanne Davis, also a stewardess. When Ben flew to Australia for the role of Jeff Rayburn in Sidecar Racers, coincidentally Jeanne was an attendant on the flight. The reunion ignited a spark and they began dating.

  In 1976, Frank Price approached Ben and asked for a favor. Michael York was currently doing a pilot for a series called Gemini Man and things were not working out. Price wanted Ben to replace York and finish the pilot in order to fulfill Universal’s commitment to the network. Ben agreed, thinking it was just a movie. He played the role of Sam Casey, a government agent who, after a freak accident, could become invisible by using a specially designed “wristwatch.” When the series sold, however, he found himself in it for the duration, much to his dismay. A take-off on H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, Gemini Man was a tough role for Ben to play because he’s claustrophobic. In one sequence, the script called for him to do an underwater scene wearing an old-fashioned bell-type helmet and diving suit. Having to breathe through a hose and having no control was tough on him. He remembers feeling like the man in the iron mask. “I thought I was going to die…There’s air but, it’s that feeling you can’t take it off…I literally just would sweat bullets and just had to almost cry and beg them to get the shot as fast as they could…” [21]

  In 1978, when his Universal contract expired, Ben devoted more of his energy to tennis, and he married Jeanne Davis. A year later, Ben landed what he considers one of the best, most well-done shows he ever did, The Chisholms, a CBS miniseries. As Will Chisholm, oldest son of the frontier family, his was a major role alongside Robert Preston and Brian Keith. Ben read for the part, earning the job on his own talent, a heady victory for him. Shortly afterwards he bought a house high in the hills of Malibu with a gorgeous view of the ocean.

  By 1980 Ben realized he was “never meant to be married” and he and Jeanne divorced. More guest star roles came his way in Fantasy Island, The Love Boat and Trapper John, MD. In another TV movie, Time Walker, he played a scientist who discovers an alien found inside an ancient mummy. In 1983, he had an important role as Robert Mitchum’s oldest son in The Winds of War, one of the highest rated mini-series of all time. After that, even though he had all kinds of acting credits to his name, when NBC producers were casting The A-Team, they wanted him to audition for the character Face. He said at the time, “I wasn’t used to that and my performance was rotten. As it turned out, the rejection was good for me because it convinced me
it was time I turned my life around.” [22] In an effort to jump-start his career, he went back to acting class. For years he attended a weekly workshop designed to hone his skills. He enjoyed it because it was a place where “a lot of us older actors go and just work out for free with each other, with cameras and so forth.” [23]

  The persistence paid off. Ben won the role of Patrick Sean Flaherty, the dashing Irishman who doled out sweepstakes checks on Lottery! Though he could still pass for a man ten years younger, Ben told a reporter, “This has to be the first show I’ve done in seventeen years where I’m not going to be called Kid.” [24] Ben fondly remembers Lottery! as being the most fun show he’s ever done. From then on, he was constantly busy with guest star roles and an occasional TV movie. In The Cradle Will Fall, a suspense drama in which Ben played a medical examiner, he shared star honors with Lauren Hutton and James Farentino. Then, as a member of the large cast of Berrengers, a nighttime soap opera about the reigning family of a prestigious New York department store, he stood out as the oldest son of the patriarch. The concept, too similar to Dallas, was overdone, however, and the series did not last long. Another disappointment occurred a year later when Ben came close to winning a starring role in Miami Vice. The show’s concept of two south Florida crime-fighters began as a white man paired with a Hispanic. Ben was in the running with Don Johnson. When the producers decided to change the characters to a black man and a white man, they also finalized their decision and cast Johnson.