Ty Hardin (1930-2017)
Ty Hardin came on the scene rather suddenly in the late 1950s as part of a tag team of westerns produced for television by Warner Brothers, the venerable Hollywood movie studio. In what ultimately became a very valuable, if somewhat improbable, profit center in the early days of the small screen, they single-handedly kept ABC afloat against the much older and prestigious CBS and NBC networks. People my age can remember two big television producers from the mid-fifties through late sixties. One was Desilu, the love child born of the successful and iconic "I Love Lucy" which produced a string of hits for CBS; the other was Warner Brothers whose trademark was a sweeping aerial view of its sound stages shortly before the program's opening title.
The Warner Brothers shows all began with one simple trick: get kids to sing the words of a catchy opening theme song. Some sixty years later, my older brother and I can still recall a few swatches from "Maverick" ("Fare thee well, New Orleans, Livin' on Jacks an Queens, Luck was the lady that he loved the best..."), "Cheyenne" ("Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where are you roaming tonight?"...), "77 Sunset Strip" ("You'll meet the high-brow and the hipster, the starlet and the jipster; the most exciting people pass you by, including a private eye!")
Ty Hardin's character, Bronco Layne, was introduced as a one-shot plot device toward the end of the highly successful run of "Cheyenne". Unbeknownst to most of us, the show's star, the incomparable, Clint Walker, had walked out of his contract over a salary dispute. The show, which was already sharing a rotating time-slot with, "Sugarfoot", another popular western, starring the fledgling star, Will Hutchins, soon became part of a trio with the debut of "Bronco", earning Hardin his own theme song ("Bronco, Bronco, born on a horse when he got his name. Bronco, Bronco -- Bronco Layne!")
I'm not sure what finally killed off the tv western. I suspect that the prepubescent boys of the 1950s who were its biggest fans, soon grew into the highly hormonal teen-agers of the 1960s and those simple story lines involving six-guns and horses just could not compete with girls and rock and roll. It's too bad. To this day, I think I still prefer horses.
The Warner Brothers shows all began with one simple trick: get kids to sing the words of a catchy opening theme song. Some sixty years later, my older brother and I can still recall a few swatches from "Maverick" ("Fare thee well, New Orleans, Livin' on Jacks an Queens, Luck was the lady that he loved the best..."), "Cheyenne" ("Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where are you roaming tonight?"...), "77 Sunset Strip" ("You'll meet the high-brow and the hipster, the starlet and the jipster; the most exciting people pass you by, including a private eye!")
Ty Hardin's character, Bronco Layne, was introduced as a one-shot plot device toward the end of the highly successful run of "Cheyenne". Unbeknownst to most of us, the show's star, the incomparable, Clint Walker, had walked out of his contract over a salary dispute. The show, which was already sharing a rotating time-slot with, "Sugarfoot", another popular western, starring the fledgling star, Will Hutchins, soon became part of a trio with the debut of "Bronco", earning Hardin his own theme song ("Bronco, Bronco, born on a horse when he got his name. Bronco, Bronco -- Bronco Layne!")
I'm not sure what finally killed off the tv western. I suspect that the prepubescent boys of the 1950s who were its biggest fans, soon grew into the highly hormonal teen-agers of the 1960s and those simple story lines involving six-guns and horses just could not compete with girls and rock and roll. It's too bad. To this day, I think I still prefer horses.