THE CISCO KID MARATHON
Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
This weekend’s TV marathon from Decades is the rarest one yet: It’s a two-day binge of one of television’s earliest Western series, noteworthy for being devoted to color – in both photography and subject. The series is the syndicated TV version of The Cisco Kid, which launched on the small screen in 1950. That’s only one year after The Lone Ranger began hiho-ing Silver on ABC, and a full five years before Matt Dillon began marshaling his forces on CBS’s Gunsmoke. And The Cisco Kid wasn’t just one of the first TV Westerns. It also was one of the first TV series, period, to have as its protagonist a person of color: The Cisco Kid was a heroic Mexican caballero, roaming the Texas-Mexico border and administering justice, Old West style, along with his loyal sidekick, Pancho. Originally based on a short story by O. Henry, The Cisco Kid galloped through the 20th century with a series of film, radio and TV versions. On film, the variations started in the silent era (1914’s The Caballero’s Way, repositioning O. Henry’s villainous Cisco as a Robin Hood-like hero, was the first), and continued until 1950, with Duncan Renaldo starring as The Cisco Kid in the final five films, and Leo Carrillo as Pancho. The TV version continued the series, with both of the movie stars, Renaldo and Carrillo, reprising their roles for the weekly series. The TV version lasted for six years, and from the start, was filmed in color – the first weekly TV series to do so. That’s plenty of Cisco Kid info before we get to today’s marathon, which is such a rarity, I don’t remember seeing an episode of The Cisco Kid presented on TV, even in reruns, since the 1960s. But as a bonus pop quiz, can you name their horses? (Spoiler Alerts: Cisco rode Diablo. Pancho rode Loco.)