LEGENDARY HEROES #55

MATT DILLON - GUNSMOKE

In the late 1940s CBS chairman William S. Paley, a fan of the "Philip Marlowe" radio series, asked his programming chief Hubell Robinson to develop a hardboiled Western series, sort of a Philip Marlowe in the Old West.  Robinson instructed CBS' West Coast Vice-President Harry Ackerman, who had developed the Marlowe radio show, to take on the task.  Ackerman and writers Mort Fine and David Friedkin created an audition script titled "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye", based on one of their Michael Shayne radio scripts.  Two versions of the play were recorded.  The first, in June 1949, was very much like a hardboiled detective series with Michael Rye as Dillon.  The second version, from July 1949, was a more traditional western with Howard Culver as Dillon.  CBS execs liked the Culver version best and told Ackerman to proceed.  The problem was that Culver was already doing a juvenile western show called "Straight Shooter" and his contract wouldn't allow him to do another Western series.  The project was shelved.  Three years later producer Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston were developing a radio Western series aimed at adults when they came across the older project.  They were looking to create a Western for adults in contrast to to the prevailing juvenile fare like "The Lone Ranger" and "The Cisco Kid".  As pitched to CBS this would be for adult listeners, not a grown-up version of "Hopalong Cassidy".  They changed the lead character's name from Mark to Matt and went to work.

Writer Meston was especially disgusted by the archetypal western hero so often portrayed in popular culture and set out to destroy the character that he loathed.  Meston relished the idea of upending the cherished fictional Western cliches and showing a radio audience just how brutal the Old West was in reality.  In Meston's view Matt Dillon was almost as scarred as the homicidal psychopaths who drifted into Dodge City from all directions.  The role of Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshall assigned to Dodge City, Kansas, had not been cast when William Conrad auditioned for the part.  Conrad's voice projected a larger-than-life presence and was resonantly powerful and distinctive.  He was a well-known character actor in movies and one of radio's busiest actors.  Meston championed Conrad but producer Macdonnell thought Conrad might be overexposed.  Macdonnell was won over during the audition after Conrad read a handful of lines.  William Conrad was to portray Matt Dillon as a lonely, isolated man, toughened by a hard life.  The radio show debuted on CBS on April 26, 1952 and was an instant hit and success.  It ran for 9 years until the last episode on June 18, 1961, an amazing testament to it's popularity that it ran well into the age of television.

Joining William Conrad on the show were Howard McNear as Doc Adams (he was also Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith show), Georgia Ellis as Miss Kitty, and Parley Baer as Dillon's assistant Chester Proudfoot (he would be the mayor of Mayberry on Andy Griffith).  On the radio show Doc Adams was Charles Adams, on the later TV version he was Galen Adams.  Doc's backstory was that he was educated in Philadelphia, spent time as a ship's doctor aboard gambling boats that plied the Mississippi River with some extended time in New Orleans where he made the acquaintance of Mark Twain.  Kitty Russell, or Miss Kitty as she was more popularly referred to, was a saloon girl/prostitute whose profession was hinted at but never explicitly stated.  In a 1953 interview with TIME magazine producer Macdonnell stated "Kitty is just someone that Matt has to visit every once in a while".  That sounded pretty "adult" and the magazine pointed out that Kitty is "obviously not selling chocolate bars".  The radio show was somber in tone and Matt Dillon was quick to anger and respond with violence, yet he struggled internally with the prevalence of violence and needless tragedy in his duties.  The time setting was after Kansas had become a state (1861) and after the railroad had arrived in Dodge (1872).  Wild Bill Hickock is a close personal friend of Dillon and he knows Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid.

The radio announcer would describe the show as "the story of the violence that moved west with young America, and the story of the man who moved with it."  And then Conrad would say, "I'm that man, Matt Dillon, United States Marshall - the first man they look for and the last they want to meet."  In the "Gunsmoke" of radio Matt Dillon did not always win.  He was unable to avoid a lynching.  He had to amputate a dying man's leg and lost the patient anyway.  He saved a girl from brutal rapists but couldn't keep her from turning to a life of prostitution.  The radio show portrayed the West realistically with violent crimes, scalpings, massacres, and opium addicts.  Over the years the show evolved into a warm, humorous celebration of human nature.  The show had no corporate sponsor for the first two seasons, getting it's sole support from CBS, and this suited the producers.  They felt that a sponsor would want to "clean up" the show and they were seeking a sponsor who would keep the show the way it was.  The radio show was so popular that almost immediately there was talk of adapting it to television.  Macdonnell resisted the move as he felt that "Gunsmoke" was perfect for radio.  CBS simply took the show away from Macdonnell and began preparing it for TV.  Meston would be kept on as the main writer and many of the TV scripts were derived from the radio show.  Fans of the radio show felt that the subsequent TV series was a sham and the players were imposters.

The network was not interested in bringing William Conrad to the television medium and offered him an audition as a token gesture.  But his weight was a deciding factor.  They did not want an obese Matt Dillon.  The same thing with Raymond Burr who auditioned for the TV role.  Director Charles Warren said of Burr "his voice was fine, but he was too big.  When he stood up, his chair stood with him".  At that time John Wayne had a young actor under contract with his production company who had made four movies with Wayne, and Wayne endorsed this actor for the part.  The actor was James Arness who stood 6'7" and towered imposingly over everyone.  Arness was shy, a trait he attributed to being self-conscious of his height.  "I was the tallest guy in the school - classmates and teachers", said Arness.  Of Norwegian descent he was born James Aurness in Minneapolis on May 26, 1923.  His brother, future actor Peter Graves, was born three years later.  During his freshman year at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Arness was drafted into the Army and assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division that landed at Anzio in Italy.  While walking point on a night patrol he stumbled across a German machine gun nest and his lower right leg was splintered by bullets.  This resulted in his right leg being 5/8" shorter and he had to wear a lift in his shoe thereafter.  The wound would create problems for him the rest of his life.  After the war he ended up in LA and decided to try his hand at acting.  He became an avid surfer and learned to fly in the late 60s so that he could get to remote surf breaks in Baja.  The network had their Matt Dillon.

The television show debuted on Saturday, September 10, 1955 on CBS and was a half-hour program shot in black & white.  It became the longest running primetime live-action TV series with 20 seasons and 635 total episodes.  (This record was beat in 2019 when "Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit" began a 21st season, but they never filmed as many episodes as "Gunsmoke").  The TV show ran on CBS until March 31, 1975.  For the first 12 seasons it aired on Saturday nights.  It became an hour-long show after 1961 and was filmed in color after 1966.  With season 13 the show moved to Mondays.  The name of Dillon's assistant was changed from Chester Proudfoot to Chester Goode and he was given a limp as portrayed by actor Dennis Weaver.  Despite being 6'2" Weaver looked small standing next to Arness.  It was sometimes necessary to have Arness stand in a hole during filming to get him in the scene with other actors.  Dennis Weaver left the show in 1963 to pursue other acting jobs and would eventually become "McCloud" on the NBC Mystery Movie.  Experienced character actor Milburn Stone became Doc Adams and Amanda Blake was Miss Kitty.  By the second season she was half owner of the Long Branch Saloon.  Burt Reynolds joined the show in 1962 as Quint Asper, a "halfbreed" blacksmith who became Dillon's assistant when Weaver left.  Ken Curtis, who provided comic-relief as Festus Haggen, a stubbornly illiterate hillbilly, became a deputy after Burt Reynolds left in 1965.  Ken Curtis was in reality a very handsome man who possessed a wonderful singing voice and had been part of several big bands like Tommy Dorsey, Shep Fields, and the Sons of the Pioneers.

The character of Matt Dillon was just as enigmatic on TV as he was on radio.  It was revealed that he had spent his early years in foster care, that he knew the Bible, he'd been a wayward brawling cowboy who was later mentored by a caring lawman, and he spent some time in the Army.  He and Miss Kitty clearly had a close personal relationship, but they never married.  Arness explained, "If they were man and wife, it would make a lot of difference".  Everyone concerned decided it was better to leave things as they were.  The radio version ended in 1961 and actor William Conrad went on to direct a few of the TV episodes.  He was the narrator of TV's "The Fugitive" (1963-1967) and had two successful shows of his own - "Cannon" (1971-1976) and "Jake and the Fat Man" (1987-1992...guess who played the fat man?).  In 1957 Ballantine published a collection of short stories from the "Gunsmoke" show in paperback.  Whitman published two Big Little Books, one in 1958 and the other in 1969.  Popular and Award publishers each printed paperback books based on the show.  Dell Comics published 27 comic books through 1962, and Gold Key published 6 more from 1969-1970.  In England, where the TV show was also popular, a comic strip appeared in newspapers as "Gun Law".

By the second season "Gunsmoke" was #7 in the ratings and would be #1 for the next four years.  It dropped to #3 the next year then #10 for its' 8th season.  But then it dropped to #20, 27 and 30 over the next three years and CBS decided to cancel the show.  This was met with widespread viewer reaction and behind-the-scenes pressure from Babe Paley, wife of chairman William S. Paley, who was a big fan of the show.  The demise of the series was prevented and the show was moved to a new time slot on Monday nights.  This gave the show a huge spike and they finished in the top ten for the next six seasons.  Even after the 20th season they were still in the top thirty.  And then one day the cast and crew were reading the trade papers and found that they had been cancelled.  (This was a habit of CBS.  They did the same thing to "Lost in Space")  Arness said "We didn't do a final, wrap-up show.  We finished the 20th year, we all expected to go for another season, or two or three."  The whole cast was stunned.  In 1987 CBS produced a reunion TV-movie called "Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge" reuniting Arness and Amanda Blake (she left the show after season 19).  Milburn Stone had died in 1980 and Ken Curtis balked at the salary he was offered.  Amanda Blake died in 1989 of cancer and there were four more "Gunsmoke" TV-movies from 1990-1994, all with James Arness as Marshall Dillon, now retired.

Los Angeles Times columnist wrote about the show after it's demise in 1975, stating "Gunsmoke was the dramatization of the American epic legend of the West.  Our own "Iliad" and "Odyssey", created from standard elements of the dime novel and the pulp western as romanticized by Ned Buntline, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain.  It was ever the stuff of legend"