When preparations began two years ago
for "Alias Smith and Jones" - I won't call it "The
Two Musketeers" -, the executives of Universal Television,
undeniably the most important American television film production
company, responsible for "The Name of the Game", "Marcus
Welby", and "Ironside", among others, were starting
work on a new triumph - leaving nothing to chance. They studied
each and every one of the factors which would make a series successfully
attract a large audience from the first episode. From the very
beginning, the first 26 scripts were conscienciously revised,
over and over again, until the finesse that is one of the main
attractions of this series was achieved. Secondly, and very importantly,
it was decided that the series would have a much larger budget
than usual, much larger for example, than series such as "Bonanza"
or the vanished "High Chaparral". And finally, more
than 50 hopefuls were tested for the roles of Hannibal Heyes and
Kid Curry, the two likeable and attractive outlaws who try to
go straight and get a pardon for their crimes, and who are known
to the public as Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones, the names behind
which they hide their true identities. Exhaustive tests were done
on the young actors contracted to Universal. In the end the role
of Jones went to Ben Murphy, the attractive actor whose features
are very similar to those of Paul Newman in the 50's, and who
had already impressed female television viewers with his brief
appearances in the series "The Name of the Game". Finding
the right actor to portray Smith was more complicated. As is evident,
he is the central character, around whom the plot revolves, and
whose personal character is also the most difficult. It could
not be portrayed by just any actor, and this made the selection
process all the more difficult. So it was that many gifted actors
lacked the finer physical qualities of the character of Smith,
something upon which the expert Universal executives insisted,
knowing that the majority of the series' fans would be aged no
more than twenty, and that the faces of the actors would be a
very important factor to these viewers, keeping in mind that a
high percentage of this public is female, or at least, so they
expected. The final two candidates for the role of Smith were
two actors of solid training and experience: Pete Duel and Roger
Davis. In the end, Pete Duel was chosen, while Roger Davis was
contracted as the narrator, and in the original version it is
this actor who does the narration, talking about the main characters
over the opening credits. As we will explain later, Roger moved
to the other side of the camera to play, in the end, the role
of Smith in front of the cameras.
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