Fury at Rio Hondo

Warner Brothers owned the property (the screenplay of "To Have and Have Not") and if Roy Huggins wanted to make a western version of that, he, and the studio, were free to do so. They were also free to use archive footage from other Warner Bros. feature films (which they did many, many times in this TV series) and a lot of footage from "Juarez"is used in this "Cheyenne" episode. And for what it is worth, regrading the reviewer who thinks Hoagy Carmichael played the piano player in this episode, the piano player called 'Professor" was played by Tim Grahame.Yes, the 'Star Dust' man did play the piano in "To Have and Have Not."

Some have pointed out that Warners controlled the rights to the film To Have and To Have Not. That may or may not be true--it depends on the contracts/agreements of the various parties, including Hemingway and Faulkner. But if Warners did control the rights, that means that its use of the material is not copyright infringement. By definition, plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as one's own. There is one writer credited for this episode of Cheyenne, and neither of them is Jules Furthman or William Faulkner, who wrote the screenplay for To Have and to Have Not. The teleplay takes the basic situation of the movie, which was created by Ernest Hemingway and reworked by Furthman and Faulkner, only transferred from WWII Martinque, where the movie is set, to 1860s Mexico. The teleplay even borrows dialogue from the movie--He couldn't sign checks any faster than he could duck--without crediting the movie's writers. That is plagiarism.

The Cheyenne episode "Fury at Rio Hondo" does something I have not seen before. It has been suggested the it is an homage or retelling of the Bogart/Bacall movie "To Have and Have Not." I would say it is something less than that as the dialog is almost identical to the earlier movie. It's OK for what it is and Peggie Castle plays her role quite well and does her own singing (unlike Bacall). But it seems that there is an issue of plagiarism involved here; as it is almost 60 years after the fact it probably doesn't matter very much. I was just shocked at the precision of the "rip off" as no attempt was made to change the dialog at all unless the plot demanded it.

How do writers get away with this?

This is a virtual verbatim remake of 1944's Bogart and Bacall classic To Have and Have Not. Written by Hemingway and taking place in 1940 Martinique, with the Vichy French and the Nazis instead of the French and Mexicans. Bogart uses a boat to Cheyennes wagons but right down to the line I don't know what kind of war you guys are fighting, dragging your wives along is again a verbatim clip from the movie. Notable was the fact that that movie was Bogart and Bacalls initial film together. Walter Brennen played the drunken sidekick who was always asking Have you ever been bitten by a dead bee? A good performance by Hoagy Carmichael as the piano player only adds to the atmosphere. Anyway, a great movie and if you get a chance to see it, you will have seen this episode of Cheyenne as well. You may enjoy both of these, I did, particularly the movie.

As several mentioned above this is a retelling of "To Have and Have Not" in a western format. The screenplay for that Hemingway story was actually written by William Faulkner, who also wrote the script for this episode. As the studio also owned the rights to both, there is no issue of plagiarism here.