It's probably my favorite TV series now.  They made 635 episodes as well as five Gunsmoke movies.  It ran for 20 years.  All with the same main characters.  They play on 3 different channels here in the warehouse; sometimes two or three episodes in row.  I don't watch that many every day though.

This afternoon they played the very first episode.  John Wayne introduced the first episode.  The main characters were the same ones that played all through the series.  Matt Dillon was younger looking and he lost his first quick draw gunfight.  But he recovered and killed the guy in their second gunfight.  Doc Adams didn't look old enough to draw Social Security yet and wasn't as stooped.  Kitty didn't have the mole on her right cheek yet and seemed a bit skinnier in the face than she was later on.  And Chester seemed much the same.

The acting was stilted and the lines didn't flow.  I guess it takes a while for the actors to get comfortable in their parts and start relating to each other more naturally.

Anyway I think it's the best Western series I've ever seen.  It sure went on to become one of the most popular.  In the later episodes the characters really meshed and were so natural with each other as if they were family.

James Arness (Mat Dillon) died at 88 in 2011

Milburn Stone (Doc Adams) died at age 76 in 1980

Kitty Russel (Amanda Blake) died at age 60 in1989

Chester Goode (Dennis Weaver) died at age 81 in 2006

In the UK the Series ran as Gun Law

BTW...James Arness played the monster in the 1951 sci-fi film The Thing From Outer Space.

Noel

 

Edited January 24, 20242 yr by birdguy

Gunsmoke was a radio drama for 6 years before being adapted to TV.  The radio cast did not make the transition to TV.

1 hour ago, stans said:

Gunsmoke was a radio drama for 6 years before being adapted to TV.  The radio cast did not make the transition to TV.

William Conrad, who played Matt Dillon on radio, was probably too heavy to play the role on TV, though his weight was no impediment in his later role as private detective Frank Cannon.

Doc was played by Howard McNear, better known as “Floyd the Barber” on the “Andy Griffith Show”

Sirius XM plays a lot of the old Gunsmoke radio episodes on their “Radio Classics” channel. I enjoy listening to them.

 

Remember very fondly watching "How the West Was Won" with my parents as a kid. Zeb Macahan (James Arness) was our favourite character and me reading the name in @birdguy's post sure woke the memories!

Loved the intro theme music as a kid. Kind of still do.😅

6 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

Remember very fondly watching "How the West Was Won" with my parents as a kid.

Whenever that movie was broadcast on TV here in the U.S., It took three entire nights to show the entire movie. I'd love to watch it again! I could easily imagine how it was for my ancestors as they spread across the entire continent. There are many living in Ohio, but the rest are mostly in Oregon and Washington.

The Rifleman, Bonanza, Paladin, Wanted, Dead or Alive. All great. Love Doc Stone.

Kitty looked different in the first episode because Amanda Blake was not the actress who played Kitty until the 2nd season.

 

1953. Before Gunsmoke.

 

A couple years ago, we bought a DVD set of all the black and white Gunsmoke years. Later on it went to an hour long and in color. We don't have those. We were surprised that Kitty wasn't Amanda Blake until year 2 episodes.

9 hours ago, Fielder said:

A couple years ago, we bought a DVD set of all the black and white Gunsmoke years. Later on it went to an hour long and in color.

Among my late father's stuff, I found a complete collection of Gunsmoke both B&W and color...

...all on antique VHS tape. I'm just glad it wasn't in Betamax! 🤣

Good ol' Ken Curtis joined the cast in 1959 as Festus!!!  I was just a young'un (8) when he came to perform at a local rodeo, and my dad, who was a local news anchor back then, took me with him when he went to interview him.  It was basically a press conference in a conference room at the local Holiday Inn, and he took me in and sat me in a chair at the back of the room and told me to sit still and keep quiet.  As the press conference went on, I kept scooting my chair up a few inches every couple of minutes, and by the time the news conference was finishing up I was practically sitting next to Festus.  When he stood up he came right over to me and said "that was some good moves with that there chair, ya little squirt!".....I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and my dad just couldn't get mad at me!!!

Great memories!!!

In the 50's,  Kitty, Chester, and Doc made extra money traveling around together at fairs as a musical trio. But not Matt, no way.

 

On 1/24/2024 at 2:54 PM, n4gix said:

There are many living in Ohio, but the rest are mostly in Oregon and Washington

I watch a lot of Wagon Train too.  It was a big sacrifice and a lot of hardship to endure to make that wagon trip west.  A lot of people were buried along the way.

When I lived in Douglas Wyoming and they were making the highway between Douglas and Casper four lane they dug up quite a few bones from those pioneers who were traveling west on wagon trains.  They buried them in a special section of the Casper cemetery.

Noel

Seems I read somewhere that James Arness saw a lot of combat in Italy in WWII and received a leg wound which gave him a lot of trouble. I,m sure Gunsmoke was a very physically demanding role and he began to suffer with arthritis. You can tell a few years into the show he seemed to run kind of slow comparatively and would make a pretty big target in reality. I forget the exact numbers but I googled a couple years ago how many times he was shot, stabbed, knocked unconscious and even drugged and his number of career kills would fill a 747 to capacity. 
I am always amused by those old shows how a gun shot was considered nothing as long as it was an arm, shoulder, or leg. Or a man could be knocked unconscious and wake up a while later and shake it off with no sign of concussion. But that’s one of the things that makes watching those old shows fun. 
One more thing about gunsmoke is that theme music at the end of the show. Gunsmoke came on on Saturday night and even now I hear that end of episode music I can almost audibly hear my Mother say” alright, time to turn that thing off and go to bed”. ☺️💕 God bless you Mom.

One other thing, ole Doc with his stethoscope had diagnostic skills superior to Doctors today with their millions of dollars worth of space age machines and gadgets.

3 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

One other thing, ole Doc with his stethoscope had diagnostic skills superior to Doctors today with their millions of dollars worth of space age machines and gadgets.

Hm, that might actually be realistic.  Medicine was less political in those days.

Hook