JamesG
05-22-2018, 10:28 PM
Clint Walker Dies: TV’s "Cheyenne" Star & One of The Dirty Dozen was 90
by Erik Pedersen
May 22, 2018
Clint Walker, the hulking star of TV’s "Cheyenne" who also appeared in such classic films as The Ten Commandments and The Dirty Dozen, died Monday. He was 90.
Walker’s daughter, Valerie, told TMZ that the family believes he died from a heart problem.
Walker was best known for playing Cheyenne Bodie, the strapping, brooding, mean title drifter in the 1955-63 ABC Western "Cheyenne". Roaming from town to town and job to job in the post-Civil War West. The series did a slow build, breaking into the year-end Primetime Top 25 at No. 12 in its third season, where it peaked amid the crush of Western fare.
Around then, a contract beef with producer Warner Bros led Walker to quit the show. The studio replaced him with an unknown actor — Ty Hardin, who would go on to star in "Bronco" — but Walker returned in early 1959 and finished out the series’ seven-season run.
“I think they had all the leading men available in Hollywood to test for Cheyenne two days in a row, and they had me test with them,” Walker said in a 2012 interview with the Archive of American Television.
“The first day I was very, very nervous. I could see all these people that I’d seen in pictures over the years, and I thought, ‘I don’t stand a chance.’ The second day I thought, ‘I’m not going to get the job anyway, so why don’t I just relax and enjoy it.’ Which I did. Then the next thing I heard about four days later was Jack Warner reviewed all the stuff, pointed to me and said, ‘That is Cheyenne.'”
http://deadline.com/2018/05/clint-walker-dead-tvs-cheyenne-star-was-90-1202396121/
by Erik Pedersen
May 22, 2018
Clint Walker, the hulking star of TV’s "Cheyenne" who also appeared in such classic films as The Ten Commandments and The Dirty Dozen, died Monday. He was 90.
Walker’s daughter, Valerie, told TMZ that the family believes he died from a heart problem.
Walker was best known for playing Cheyenne Bodie, the strapping, brooding, mean title drifter in the 1955-63 ABC Western "Cheyenne". Roaming from town to town and job to job in the post-Civil War West. The series did a slow build, breaking into the year-end Primetime Top 25 at No. 12 in its third season, where it peaked amid the crush of Western fare.
Around then, a contract beef with producer Warner Bros led Walker to quit the show. The studio replaced him with an unknown actor — Ty Hardin, who would go on to star in "Bronco" — but Walker returned in early 1959 and finished out the series’ seven-season run.
“I think they had all the leading men available in Hollywood to test for Cheyenne two days in a row, and they had me test with them,” Walker said in a 2012 interview with the Archive of American Television.
“The first day I was very, very nervous. I could see all these people that I’d seen in pictures over the years, and I thought, ‘I don’t stand a chance.’ The second day I thought, ‘I’m not going to get the job anyway, so why don’t I just relax and enjoy it.’ Which I did. Then the next thing I heard about four days later was Jack Warner reviewed all the stuff, pointed to me and said, ‘That is Cheyenne.'”
http://deadline.com/2018/05/clint-walker-dead-tvs-cheyenne-star-was-90-1202396121/