The Cisco Kid

Fell in love with the show when I was four years old, and never stopped loving it. I always felt that Cisco and Pancho were the ideal men--caring, brave, and gallant, protecting defenseless victims, sending their rewards to mission orphans, etc.

The early shows mentioned O. Henry, as in "O. Henry's Cisco Kid"--I have always wanted to know the name of the book or short story that contained the Cisco Kid. The story is not in any of my O. Henry collections, so maybe it went out of print. Also, it would be nice to know who wrote the lovely theme music, and if it's currently available.

The show was also notable, to me, for not using women characters only as victims--often, women were just as devious, villainous, and able as the men with whom they were associated.

I remember the TV series fondly. One of the Connecticut TV stations ran reruns in the late 1960s/early 1970s. I enjoyed it as a child. I just picked up a bargain DVD with several episodes. Nothing is the same as an adult as when you first saw something as a child or teenager but these hold up well.

Some may see some ethnic stereotyping. Isn't that true for too many things coming out of an earlier era. I would be interested in reading the O. Henry story. Remember the dime novels of the late 1800s/early 1900s led into the shorts and westerns of the early decades of American films.

Here's "O. Henry's famous Robin Hood of the Old West!" Duncan Renaldo, The Cisco Kid of TV was a much more stand-up, stalwart hero than the short story character. Righting wrongs and doing good with his pal, Pancho Miguel Fernando Gonzalez de Conejo(Leo Carillo), Cisco was a model of right for a generation of wee cowpokes. Great low-budget nostalgic, formulaic kiddie western fun! And it's all in color, indicative of the foresight of the production company when TV was in it's infancy and a color set couldn't be had as yet!

MPI Video has compiled four DVD collections of 20 episodes each. That's just over half of the 156 episodes! Where are the rest, I wanna know?!? The color and quality are superb given the age of these shows, with great menus and all the stirring theme music and narration adding to the action and comic fun. Highly recommended!

The Cisco Kid was originally introduced in O. Henry's "The Caballero's Way".

However,in the book he was a dangerous desperado, not the "Robin Hood" type character created in the TV series, etc.

This comment is in answer to a request by another commenter.

He could not find out where the Cisco Kid character came from.

He could not find it in his collection of O. Henry works.

I hope this has been of some help to him.

I find it really difficult to make this simple comment 10 lines.

If you would like to research it yourself, you can do so on-line.

Simply type in O'Henry.

Look up his biography, and short stories.

There you will find "The Caballero's Way" listed.

I enjoyed the Cisco Kid TV series very much when I was a kid.I frankly don't see why anyone could take offense at either of the leads. Unlike most comic reliefs,Pancho was very formidable when the chips were down. As far as O'Henry's original story,it is easily found.There was a set of books published between l900 and l9l0 with his collected stories which was printed in vast numbers which has everything he ever wrote;any large library should have it.However,the character in the story has absolutely nothing to do with the movie and TV character.He was an Anglo,not a Latino. Far more important, the character of the story was a depraved homicidal maniac,as well as an outlaw."It was the Kid's pastime to shoot Mexicans for the pleasure of watching them kick".That is as near as I can get from memory.I was pretty surprised when I first read this. As Kenneth MacGowan said in "Behind the Screen" about the movie character vs O'Henry's original creation "how this degenerate sadist" was turned into the familiar hero is anybody's guess.Some unknown scriptwriter apparently. The movie and TV figure is certainly a "Robin Hood of the Old West",but not O'Henry's. I believe that the story is to be found in the volume "The Heart of the West", but it might be in one of the others.