Alias Smith & Jones
Page 8
GUEST CAST
SUSAN STRASBERG — MARY CUNNINGHAM
SLIM PICKENS — MIKE
MARK LENARD — WILLARD R. SLOANE/JIM PLUMMER
PERNELL ROBERTS — SAM FINROCK
FORD RAINEY — WARREN EPPS
MICHAEL BOW — YOUNG COWBOY
DAN KEMP — AL GORMAN
AMZIE STRICKLAND — GIRL
PAUL KENT — BEN MORRISON
LEW BROWN — FRANK JOHNSON
ROBERT GOODEN — 1ST COWBOY
ROSS SHERMAN — 2ND COWBOY
JOHNNY LEE — TOMMY CUNNINGHAM
JERRY HARPER — 2ND PLAYER
DENNIS MCCARTHY — DEALER
Roy Huggins always developed his stories in meticulous detail, including not only plot points and sample dialogue, but also historical background and other tidbits of useful information before handing them off to the assigned writers. For “Exit from Wickenburg,” the story outline given to writer Robert Hamner was nineteen pages long and included a lengthy description of how “the spread” is done.
In this episode we learn more about Heyes and Curry, who they are and who they want to be. They continue to move away from the two-dimensional caricatures of the pilot and are becoming well-rounded, slightly enigmatic characters capable of sustaining the audience’s interest. Although Heyes was immediately established as the thinker, in this episode we see that while he jealously guards his status as the brains, he listens to Curry and gives serious consideration to his ideas even while teasing him about them. In the first draft script, it’s Curry who does the thinking that ultimately reveals the truth, dragging a grumbling Heyes along with him as he searches for Mr. Sloane. While this scene worked fine, Huggins felt it could be improved, noting “we might play against the fact that Heyes is usually the one who does all the thinking.” [8] So it was rewritten, adding the scene where Curry expresses his opinion that someone other than Mary is behind it all, but not having a clue as to who that someone might be. Heyes was given the task of coming up with a way to solve the riddle, cementing his role as the thinker and self-proclaimed genius.
Huggins, always most concerned with giving the audience a good story, wasn’t averse to sneaking in a moral message now and again, as long as it didn’t interfere with the entertainment. In this episode, eight-year-old Tommy wants to learn how to fast draw. In the outline, the original idea was to have Mary back Tommy up, saying it’s important to know how to use a gun in the West, but Curry is hesitant. Huggins points out, “it would be wrong for him to be showing a small boy how to use a gun without making some concession toward the present attitude toward this kind of thing. Perhaps he extracts from the kid a promise that if he shows him how to use it, the kid will never actually use one.” Hamner went one better and changed Mary’s attitude, having Curry refuse because he realizes Mary does not want her son to learn to shoot. Huggins wanted to infuse Curry, the fastest gun in the West, with a philosophy of non-violence, an unexpected trait for a gunfighter.
In this early episode, the characters of Heyes and Curry are still being defined. Are they outlaws or law-abiding citizens? Will they be able to make a living without resorting to their outlaw ways? Jim Plummer is desperate to get them out of town, scared of what they might do if they discover him. When Al Gorman doesn’t answer their questions to their satisfaction, Heyes and Curry turn to threats of great bodily harm. Gorman responds to this threat, but the audience is left wondering. Would Curry have hit the horse? At this point in the show, we can’t be quite sure. We don’t know them well enough, and with a criminal background, it’s likely they have been violent in the past, even if they never shot anyone. This aura of danger, strangely enough, adds to the appeal of our two heroes. We know, or at least we hope, they’re the good guys, but we can’t be sure of what they’ll do next. The only way to find out is to tune in next week and see if the boys can manage to stay out of trouble once again.
Wrong Train To Brimstone
“Want to tell me your names? Just for the gravestones?”
Harry Briscoe
STORY: STEPHEN KANDEL
TELEPLAY: STEPHEN KANDEL
DIRECTOR: JEFFREY HAYDEN
SHOOTING DATES: DECEMBER 28, 29, 30, 31, 1970, JANUARY (1), 4, 5, 1971
ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: FEBRUARY 4, 1971
ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: MAY 3, 1971
In Bramberg, Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry sell their horses for an $80 poker stake. Five minutes later, after spotting Deputy Wade Sawyer whom they know from Kingsburg, they turn around and attempt to undo the horse trade. The shrewd liveryman refuses to trade back their horses for even money. Their lack of success at horse-trading prompts them to inquire about transportation out of town. The last stagecoach has just left, they learn, and unfortunately, the next train is sold out.
Carl Grant and Fred Gaines arrive at the depot and are handed tickets because they had reservations. In the washroom, Heyes offers to buy their tickets from them. The men refuse and Gaines gets suspicious and pulls a gun. Heyes and Curry overpower them, tie them up, and board the train under their names. Shortly after departing the station, the “lady” passengers remove wigs and light cigars. Before Heyes and Curry can do more than wonder at the sight, Special Agent Harry Briscoe of the Bannerman Detective Agency calls for the attention of the passengers, every one of them also a Bannerman agent.
He informs them that the train they’re on has picked up over a quarter of a million dollars in gold bars from the Wash Valley Consolidated Mining Company and is on its way to the Denver mint. The train and its cargo are bait for the Devil’s Hole Gang and in particular, for Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry.
Sara Blaine, the one real woman on board, alleges that she can identify Heyes and Curry. When the boys ask her how she knows them, she claims to have been a passenger on a train they robbed. Her cohort, agent Jeremiah Daley, is worried. He knows the two men who just boarded are not Grant and Gaines and confronts the boys as imposters. Heyes identifies himself and his partner as Heyes and Curry. Daley disregards the introduction as a jest as Heyes suspected he would, but Daley decides he won’t tell Briscoe about them, whoever they are, so he can rely on their help later.
At the Brimstone station, Heyes and Curry intercept a telegram that the real Grant and Gaines have sent to Briscoe. Re-boarding, they’re assigned guard duty over the gold shipment. They plot how, and if, to warn Wheat and the gang and face one of their first challenges in going straight — what to do about former gang-members. The dilemma is a difficult one for Hannibal Heyes. If they warn the gang about the ambush, they endanger their newly-declared bid for amnesty. Curry has no qualms. They cannot let friends die when they could prevent the slaughter that will surely be their fate. He would give up amnesty to spare the gang. Briscoe arrives in the storage car with rifles for them and holds the door for three men hauling a gatling gun. The sight of all the weaponry settles it for Heyes and he comes up with a plan to save both their amnesty and the Devil’s Hole Gang, eliciting an enthusiastic acknowledgement from Curry. “You’re the genius you think you are!”
In the morning, when the train stops for water, Heyes and Curry jump off and ride away to caution their former partners. The Devil’s Hole Gang has already begun to tear up the tracks so the train has to stop. At warning shots from Heyes and Curry, the gang retreats with Bannerman agents firing on them, killing two.
Upon their return to the train, Heyes and Curry are held in the baggage car by a dispirited and angry Briscoe. One of the agents enters, hoping for some of the whiskey on board, a consolation for the letdown of losing Heyes and Curry. Briscoe sends him away with a tirade and proceeds to interrogate the boys. Heyes confesses they are not Bannerman detectives and identifies themselves as Smith and Jones. Meanwhile, Sara Blaine arrives to check out the bodies of the murdered gang members. Briscoe is thrilled when she identifies one corpse as Kid Curry and now allows the men to break out the whiskey in celebration. But Smith informs Briscoe that he knows Heyes and Curry from when he an
d Jones were wounded, in trouble and taken in by the Devil’s Hole Gang. They got to know them real well, he says, and found Heyes and Curry to be “two of the kindest men on God’s earth.” That’s why they got off the train to warn the gang. He also knows the dead gang member and identifies him as Henry Maxwell Jenkins, not Kid Curry. It can be proven by the initialed ring on Jenkins’s finger.
Briscoe is deflated until Heyes tells him of their plan to make him a friend and a hero. Crooked Agent Daley and Sara Blaine, who arranged for the liquor to be on board, planned to have their gang rob the train when the detectives are drunk from celebrating. Briscoe allows Smith to confront Daley who implicates himself and Sara. Briscoe orders them tied up, so they can only watch helplessly as their gang attacks the train and are fired on by the now sober agents.
All’s well that ends well. Before Smith and Jones go on their way, they happily supply Briscoe with updated descriptions of Heyes and Curry. Heyes, he learns, has a long scar on his chin and a gold tooth while Curry is skinny and holds his left shoulder low. The Bannerman Agency finally has really “accurate” descriptions of the outlaws.
GUEST CAST
J.D. CANNON — HARRY BRISCOE
BETH BICKELL — SARA BLAINE
WILLIAM WINDOM — JEREMIAH DALEY
J. PAT O’MALLEY — H.T. MCDUFF
HARRY HICKOX — STROTHERS
WILLIAM MIMS — GRADY
CHARLES GRAY — CARL GRANT
WILLIAM BRYANT — FRED GAINES
ROBERT GIBBONS — DEPOT CLERK
WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER — TELEGRAPHER
JON LORMER — FARMER
The original title, “The Greater Train Robbery,” leads to the conclusion that saving the gold from theft, the Devil’s Hole Gang from slaughter, and their own hides from an angry Bannerman man credit Heyes and Curry with more success than they enjoyed in the pilot. Between Stephen Kandel’s first story outline and the aired program, more changed than just the title. Kandel referred to Heyes and Curry’s former partners as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, straight out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Huggins noted that it would be known as the Curry-Heyes Gang. In a later revision, it became the Devil’s Gorge Gang until the name Devil’s Hole Gang was finally settled on. Harry Briscoe began life as Ewart Briscoe. Deputy Wade Hollister became Wade Sawyer, Jeremiah Bronson turned into Jeremiah Bailey, then Daley. The more famous Pinkerton agency regressed to become the less historical, more fictional, Bannerman detectives.
Even Smith and Jones took on new aliases, pretending to be agents Grant and Gaines, but it so confused them they could not remember who was who. In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain proposes that his party of steamboatmen disguise themselves with fictitious names.
The idea was certainly good, but it bred infinite bother; for although Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy names to remember when there is no occasion to remember them, it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted. How do criminals manage to keep a brand-new ALIAS in mind? This is a great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my hand on my new name when it was needed; and it seemed to me that if I had had a crime on my conscience to further confuse me, I could never have kept the name by me at all. [9]
Heyes and Curry managed to keep their original aliases straight, but taking on two more proved too much!
In the scene where the corpses of two Devil’s Hole Gang members are slid into the baggage car, Heyes and Curry hop in after them. Ben Murphy and Peter Duel stood with their backs to the open door of the railroad car and hoisted themselves in in perfect synchronicity. Such simultaneous actions occurred in other episodes as well. In “Jailbreak at Junction City,” they dismount in exact harmony at the sheriff ’s offer of $100 pay. When Banker Binford in “A Fistful of Diamonds” meets them on the hotel porch, the boys raise their cigars in greeting, put them back in their mouths and rock forward, then backward in their chairs to allow Binford to pass. In Lom’s office in the pilot, they begin to exit, then turn in unison. As they sit, they cross their legs, and remove their hats in exactly the same manner when introduced to Miss Porter. When asked if movements like these were rehearsed or spontaneous, Ben said he and Peter would probably try to do things differently, not alike, so the rare exception when they did things simultaneously was not planned. Their chemistry was such that they each knew how the other was going to act, so they almost never talked about what they were going to do. [10] The effect, however, was a visual representation of that harmony.
For this first appearance of Harry Briscoe, the Bannerman detective who, in later episodes, turns out to be somewhat inept, Roy Huggins expected the character to be “a smart, tough man.” The Bannerman men were not “klutz heavies,” but tough guys. [11] Huggins and Jo Swerling came up with the idea of hiring J.D. Cannon to play Briscoe. They had done a pilot called Sam Hill with Ernest Borgnine and had searched for an actor to play a Mississippi gambler as villain of the piece. They found it difficult to cast the role because it called for a humorous scoundrel. Director Fielder Cook suggested Cannon. Having their doubts but going with Cook’s instincts, Huggins and Swerling hired him and he turned out to be hysterically funny in the part. At the time he came aboard Alias Smith and Jones to play the Bannerman man, Cannon was a regular on McCloud, playing a New York detective saddled with a southwestern cowboy cop. Cannon found the role boring, so he jumped at the chance to turn Briscoe into a sort of western Inspector Clouseau. Cannon told Swerling he always waited eagerly for the next Alias Smith and Jones job to come along because it was so much fun to play.
The Girl in Boxcar #3
“That’s the only kind [of experience] to have — authentic.”
Kid Curry
STORY: GENE RODDENBERRY
TELEPLAY: HOWARD BROWNE
DIRECTOR: LESLIE H. MARTINSON
SHOOTING DATES: JANUARY 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1971
ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: FEBRUARY 11, 1971
ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: JUNE 28, 1971
Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry ride into North Rim, a drab little town suffering from a depression. Under the watchful gaze of some local men, the boys visit Andrew Greer, Attorney at Law. Greer lets them into his office with a furtive air that Heyes and Curry find disconcerting. Greer demands proof they are the men that Colonel Harper sent. A letter of introduction coupled with a description of Harper suffices and Greer relaxes a bit. He tells them the job they’re to do has gotten dangerous. Heyes and Curry aren’t real happy about this, but still agree to transport $50,000 to Kingsburg.
The boys return to Greer’s office in the wee hours to pick up the money. Greer, though nervous, is all business and he has them count the money, pack it in a saddlebag and sign a receipt.
Meanwhile, the local men — Griffin, Stacey, Briggs and Breen — notice the unusual activity in the office across the street and watch with renewed interest.
As Curry and Heyes leave with the money, the men follow. The boys split up, with Heyes leading the men out of town while Curry stays behind and waits for the arrival of a freight train.
The men catch up to Heyes. Griffin, angry at finding he doesn’t have the money with him, backhands him in punctuation to his questions about Curry’s whereabouts. Heyes stalls, first telling Griffin they had another horse stashed in an alley, then that they picked up a horse from a farmer named Johnson. Neither of these tales is believed and the truth soon comes wafting along in the form of a train whistle. Stacey immediately recognizes its significance and the men return to town, leaving Heyes sitting on the ground nursing his sore jaw.
Curry is ready when the train comes by and with the ease of long practice, jumps aboard the slowly passing boxcar. To his surprise it’s already occupied.
The train travels through the night and by morning Curry’s new companion, seventeen-year-old Annabelle, is eagerly telling him a rather improbable story of her life. She claims to be a rich girl, the daughter of a financier, running from marriage to Reginald Vandermeter of the Four Hundr
ed, the premier families of New England. In her search for authentic experience, she’s traveling by boxcar in order to meet the common people.
Griffin and his men are still in pursuit, trying to figure out where the train stops and for how long, while Heyes continues leisurely towards Kingsburg.
When the train stops to take on water and coal, Curry goes in search of food for the two of them while Annabelle stays behind with orders to open the door when she sees Curry return.
He is successful in his search for food, but not so successful at reboarding the train. The brakeman sees him running for the boxcar and kicks him off just as Curry gains hold. From his position in the dust at the side of the tracks, there’s nothing he can do except watch the train steam away, taking Annabelle and the money-filled saddlebag with it.
Curry finds a farmer with a horse to sell — a swayback nag named Princess. He rides along the railroad tracks as dusk falls and eventually meets Annabelle walking toward him, carrying his saddlebag along with her own carpetbag. The first thing he does is check on the money. Annabelle is insulted that Curry seems to be more interested in the saddlebag than he is in her and her temper is not improved when she discovers he has already eaten all the food. Curry apologizes and Annabelle demands he find some more.
Griffin and his men catch up to the train and talk to the brakeman. No one has jumped off the train, but the brakeman did stop one fellow trying to jump on. Griffin and the others continue their pursuit.
Curry and Annabelle find themselves at the home of John and Minerva Lambert. The couple is suspicious at first, given the lateness of the hour, but when Annabelle spins a tale about a broken down buggy, adding that she and Curry are on their honeymoon, the Lamberts welcome them. Over a bowl of hot soup, Annabelle expands her story, sharing their plan for having three children. When Curry observes that the Lamberts’ children must be all grown, John contradicts him saying they’ve been spared the heartache of having children.