September 10, 1955: "Gunsmoke" Premieres

 

Back, left to right: Glenn Strange, Ken Curtis, Buck Taylor and Milburn Stone.

Front: James Arness and Amanda Blake.

September 10, 1955, 70 years ago: Gunsmoke premieres. Outlasting every other classic TV Western, it becomes the longest-running fiction show in CBS' history.

It began as a radio show, with William Conrad -- later to star in Cannon, Nero Wolfe and Jake & the Fatman -- as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal for Dodge City, Kansas in the 1870s. (The city was, and remains, real; the character was fictional.) But he was too fat to play the character on TV. So was Raymond Burr, who was also considered, and ended up starring for 9 seasons as the titular lawyer on Perry Mason, and 8 seasons as the titular police commissioner on Ironside.

James Arness, 6-foot-7, solidly built, and looking like someone no desperado would want to mess with, played Dillon on TV for 20 years. Over that time, many men did mess with Dillon: He was shot at 56 times, knocked unconscious 29 times, stabbed 3 times, and poisoned once -- but survived, every time.

The show also starred Amanda Blake as Kathleen Russell, a.k.a. "Miss Kitty," proprietor of the Long Branch Saloon. For those of you who criticize modern entertainment as "woke," know this: No guns were allowed inside the Long Branch. If you wanted to get in, you had to turn your guns over at the door. It was the law. Matt and Kitty were big believers in gun control, "pardner."

But it was more than that: The Saloon was also real, and had that exact rule. As it turned out, the real Dodge City never had more than 2 murders a year. In this way, the "Wild West" was not as wild as we've been led to believe.

Matt and Kitty were clearly fond of each other, but they were never shown getting romantic with each other, and never got married. From the 1950s onward, fans of the show, including those of us who only know it in reruns, have been sure they were fooling around with each other, but this has never been canon.

Dillon had 2 other close allies. Milburn Stone, an actual Kansas native, played Galen Adams, the town doctor, always addressed as "Doc." And Dennis Weaver played Chester B. Goode, who walked with a limp and always said, "Yes, sir, Mr. Dillon!" (Chuck Berry's character Johnny B. Goode was almost certainly named after him.) Chester was never an official Deputy Sheriff, but helped Dillon out as if he were. Weaver left the show in 1964, and was replaced by Ken Curtis as Festus Haggen, a character that debuted 2 years earlier, and did eventually become an official Deputy.

Burt Rumsey played Sam Noonan, the bartender at the Long Branch, until 1959, when Glenn Strange took over the role. From 1962 to 1965, a young Burt Reynolds played a blacksmith named Quint Asper. From 1967 onward, Buck Taylor played Newly Smith, a gunsmith who becomes a Deputy Marshal.

Glenn Strange died in 1973, while the show was still on the air, but he was already 74 years old. As had happened with many other CBS shows in the 1970s, Gunsmoke was canceled without warning, in 1975. The cast learned about it in the trade papers, not through face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or even mail. The last episode aired on March 31, 13 days after M*A*S*H killed off Henry Blake, also on CBS. Milburn Stone died in 1980.

In 1987, CBS aired a reunion movie, Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, with James Arness, Amanda Blake and Buck Taylor reprising their roles. Ken Curtis thought the network was lowballing him on pay for it, and refused to participate. Dennis Weaver also did not appear. No mention was made of the characters of Doc, Chester, Festus or Sam.

Amanda Blake died in 1989, and did not appear in the next reunion movie, the following year: Gunsmoke: The Last Apache. There would be 3 more made-for-TV movies, with Arness the only main character returning: Gunsmoke: To the Last Man, in 1992; Gunsmoke: The Long Ride, in 1993; and Gunsmoke: One Man's Justice, in 1994.

Dennis Weaver, who went on to star in McCloud, died in 2006; Arness, in 2011; and Burt Reynolds, in 2018. Taylor is the only one of these castmembers mentioned who is still alive as of September 10, 2025, age 88.

Arness' younger brother was Peter Graves, who was 6-foot-4, took his mother's family name so he wouldn't be seen as riding his brother's success, and went on to star on Mission: Impossible as IMF team leader Jim Phelps. (The family name is "Aurness.") In spite of their long and successful careers, the brothers never acted together.

I'd like to believe that Jim Phelps is Marshal Dillon's great-grandson. It would make sense, since Dillon and Phelps were both government agents. But that relationship is not canon, either.