11/21/2025
Before there was a TV cowboy, there had to be a first. And in 1955, that cowboy was Cheyenne Bodie—played by a 6'6" Illinois man named Clint Walker who looked like he'd been carved out of the American West itself.
Cheyenne was television's first hour-long Western series. Before it, Westerns were half-hour affairs. Cheyenne changed the game, giving the genre room to breathe, to tell bigger stories, to create characters audiences could truly invest in.
And at the center of it was Walker—a towering presence with chiseled features, a quiet strength, and a moral code that audiences believed because it seemed to radiate from the man himself.
Born Norman Eugene Walker on May 30, 1927, in Hartford, Illinois, Walker hadn't planned on Hollywood. He'd worked as a sheet metal worker, a deputy sheriff, a bouncer, and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II. His path to acting came through a series of odd jobs that eventually led him to Las Vegas, where his striking appearance caught the attention of talent scouts.
When Cheyenne premiered, Walker became an instant star. For eight seasons, he portrayed the wandering cowboy—a man of few words but unmistakable integrity. The show made him a household name and established the template for every hour-long Western that followed.
But Walker wanted to be more than a TV cowboy.
He appeared in films throughout his career, including The Dirty Dozen (1967), where he played the gentle giant Samson Posey alongside Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson. In Send Me No Flowers (1964), he proved he could handle comedy, holding his own with Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
His range surprised people who expected only stoic cowboys. Walker could be funny, vulnerable, charming—while never losing the physical presence that made him impossible to ignore.
Then came 1971.
Walker was skiing at Mammoth Mountain in California when a freak accident sent a ski pole through his chest. It pierced his heart.
Let that sink in. A ski pole. Through his heart.
Doctors pronounced him dead.
But Clint Walker—the man who'd played unkillable cowboys, who'd fought N***s in The Dirty Dozen, who'd faced down outlaws in a hundred episodes of Cheyenne—wasn't done.
Against all medical odds, he survived. He recovered. He went back to work.
It was as if the toughness he'd projected on screen wasn't acting at all.
Off-screen, Walker was known for the same qualities that defined his characters: humility, integrity, dedication to family. He wasn't a Hollywood personality who lived for the spotlight. He was a working actor who happened to be extraordinarily good at playing honorable men—probably because he was one.
He continued working in film and television through the 1970s and 1980s, appearing in movies like The White Buffalo (1977) and TV projects that let him revisit the Western genre he'd helped define.
Clint Walker passed away on May 21, 2018, just nine days before his 91st birthday.
He'd been pronounced dead once before, and came back. This time, at 90 years old, having lived a full life and left an indelible mark on American television, he was ready.
Cheyenne ran for 108 episodes. It proved that Westerns could sustain longer, deeper storytelling on television. Every hour-long drama that followed—Western or otherwise—owes something to the show that proved it could be done.
And Clint Walker proved that you could be a genuine leading man in Hollywood—tall, strong, capable—while remaining humble and decent. He proved that the qualities audiences admired in his characters could be real qualities in a real person.
He stood 6'6". He survived a ski pole through his heart. He played cowboys who always did the right thing, and then lived his own life the same way.
That's not acting. That's character.
They don't make them like Clint Walker anymore.
Then again, they barely made them like him even then.
