Episode 352: The Cisco Kid - "False Marriage" (November 28, 1950)
He consents, and she consents, but nobody asked the Cisco Kid
What I watched: Season 1, episode 13 of The Cisco Kid, a Western drama starring Duncan Renaldo as the eponymous Cisco and Leo Carillo as his sidekick Pancho. "Railrod Land Rush" guest starred Gail Davis, Mary Gordon, Robert Livington and Russell Hicks. This episode was written by Betty Burbridge, and was directed by Derwin Abrahams. This episode has an air date of November 28, 1950, although as a syndicated series exactly when it aired would have varied by market, and it is currently available on Tubi.
What happened: Cisco and Pancho ride into an idyllic Western small town. They’re headed to a wedding, and Cisco has bought a baby doll as a present, presumably as a warning about the couple’s future sleepless nights. The actual wedding is a pretty small affair, taking place inside a home, but they do have a very insistent pianist. However, the wedding is interrupted by Cisco, who insists that the bride, Nancy, is actually married to him, and that the doll is their baby. Cisco punches out the groom and takes Nancy away.
Once they get out of the chapel, the woman stops resisting, and correctly surmises that her uncle Jasper (Hicks) put Cisco up to this. The groom, Duke Ralston (Livingston), confronts Jasper about it, and ends up shooting him after learning that he has incriminating evidence. Nancy, having an absolutely terrible day, ends up finding the dead body. She tells the sheriff that Cisco and Pancho killed Jasper, and our two heroes once again end up in jail.
Cisco pulls the old “my cellmate is sick” trick to get out of jail. The carceral system seems frankly pretty easy to evade in the old West. Pancho wants to call the whole thing off, but Cisco insists on honouring their promise to the late Jasper. Ralston proposes to marry Nancy again quickly, but Cisco and Pancho break into her house and eavesdrop. Cisco spanks her for framing him for the murder. Duke comes in, and he and Cisco get in a fistfight, which Cisco wins.
Our heroes kidnap Nancy, and take her to an old Irish woman (Gordon)’s house. The villain, Duke, tracks down the damsel in distress using a dropped handkerchief. When he hears horses approaching, Pancho ties Nancy up and stuffs her in a closet. The old woman passes him off as her ailing 92-year-old grandmother. The music assures us that this is all funny and peaceful. Cisco has found evidence to Duke being Jasper’s killer, namely a cigar butt.
Cisco sets a trap for Duke by asking the old lady to send along Nancy’s message asking for rescue. When he enters the house, Cisco is calmly reading a book. He presents the cigar butt evidence, and then pretends that he wants to make a deal with Duke, with Nancy listening from the other room. Duke acts like he’s amenable to a deal, and Nancy promptly decides that Cisco was right all along. The two men fistfight, while Cisco and Mary cheer them on. Nancy asks Cisco to spank her again, even though she should also think he was trying to get a cut of her inheritance. Whatever.
What I thought: The Cisco Kid is, at least nominally, an outlaw. Like other Western heroes (and superheroes, which eventually took their place), his ability to operate outside the law, and sometimes in opposition to it, allows him to create greater justice. Of course, this is fundamentally a kid’s show, so the hero isn’t supposed to do anything that’s actually that untoward. This episode shows how unpleasant one of these shows can be when the writers get that moral balance wrong.
In this episode the Cisco Kid breaks up a wedding and kidnaps the bride based on her uncle’s word that the groom is no good, physically assaults her, holds her hostage, breaks out of jail, and attempts to ransom her off. The bad guy does do a murder, but for most of the running time Cisco seems like the bigger threat. Cisco’s claim to be her long-lost ex-husband is pretty fun and in line with good-natured roguishness, but the rest of the episode very much isn’t.
I try my best not to turn these articles into lectures on 1950s gender roles, but it’s hard to avoid when an episode like this presents the female character as purely an object to be fought over, and disciplined when she isn’t quite a willing enough conquest. Nancy’s turn towards being horny for Cisco at the end is completely unjustified – at most, she should think that the two men are both assholes.
On top of that, this is just a sloppily-written episode, even by the standards of Western serials. It doesn’t feel like Cisco really has enough evidence to decide that Duke is a bad guy, much less to convince others of the same. The colour is still charming, but the overbearing and misused score drains the life out of the episode. So yeah, while shows like The Lone Ranger and Gene Autry usually land right in the “it’s okay” zone for me, this is the first Western episode that I’ve really disliked.
Coming up next: It’s 4-H Day on Kukla, Fran and Ollie.