The Cisco Kid, Vol. 1

Enjoy twelve half-hour episodes of the Western adventures of the Cisco Kid and his sidekick Pancho from the popular radio series of the 1940s and ’50s.

The Cisco Kid was a popular film, radio, television, and comic-book series based on the fictional Western character created by O. Henry in his short story, “The Caballero’s Way,” published in 1907 in the collection Heart of the West. Films and television depicted the Cisco Kid as a heroic Mexican caballero, a more honorable character than in O. Henry’s original story.

The Cisco Kid came to radio October 2, 1942, with Jackson Beck in the title role and Louis Sorin as Pancho. It was followed by another Mutual series in 1946, starring Jack Mather and Harry Lang, who continued to head the cast in the syndicated radio series of more than 600 episodes.

The radio episodes ended with one or the other of them making a corny joke about the adventure they had just completed. They would laugh, saying, “Oh, Pancho!” “Oh, Cisco!” before galloping off, while laughing.

The twelve episodes included in this collection are “Morbid Jones and the Web of Death” (09/26/1957), “Wheel of Chance” (10/01/1957), “The Vengeance of Laughing Lou” (10/03/1957), “Pancho and the Princess” (10/08/1957), “Flood at Humbug City” (12/31/1957), “Salmon River Rustlers” (01/02/1958), “Stampede in Texas” (01/14/1958), “Jingle Bob’s Last Stand” (01/16/1958), “The Fighting Deputies” (01/21/1958), “The Old Shell Game” (01/23/1958), “The Law’s a Fool” (01/28/1958), and “The Son of Rawhide Cargan” (01/30/58).