Gunsmoke (and Surfing)

 

by Pa Rock

TV Junkie

Our family only had one television when I was growing up, and there were just two reliable channels that we could pick up on that television.  One was a CBS affiliate and the other was NBC.  There were four people in our household, and somehow we generally always managed to agree on what programs to watch, but on Saturday nights there was no discussion.  Saturday nights belonged to my father, an ardent fan of westerns.   On Saturday nights we watched "Have Gun Will Travel" and then "Gunsmoke."

"Gunsmoke," starring a relatively unknown actor from Minnesota by the name of James Arness, premiered sixty-seven years ago tonight on CBS and ran for twenty seasons - 635 episodes - all of which featured Arness as the central character, Marshall Matt Dillion of Dodge City, Kansas.  The first episode on September 10, 1955, was introduced by American film legend John Wayne.  

Our home in extreme southwest Missouri was about as remote from Hollywood as you could get, yet two people in the "Gunsmoke" cast had roots there.  Dennis Weaver who played the deputy, Chester, in the first 222 episodes of the show (1955-1964) was from Joplin - two counties north of where we lived, and Dabbs Greer, a Hollywood character actor who grew up in Anderson, Missouri, where he occasionally worked at his parents' drug store along with my mother, played a couple of minor roles on the show including a shopkeeper named Mr. Jonas.

Other regular characters who appeared throughout most of the show's twenty-year run included Amanda Blake as the saloonkeeper, Miss Kitty, for 569 episodes and finally retired the year before the show was taken out of production, and Milburn Stone who was Doc Adams throughout the show's entire run and appeared in 605 episodes.

Here are a few interesting facts about the star of "Gunsmoke:"  Corporal James Arness received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in World War II for serious wounds which he received at the Battle of Anzio Beach in Italy.  Because of his height, 6'7", he was the first soldier ordered off of the landing craft in Italy - in order to test the depth of the water.  He was subsequently in several brutal fire fights.  Arness was an older brother to television actor Peter Graves ("Fury," "Mission Impossible") - their family name was actually "Aurness" - and James Arness was the father to 1970 world surfing champion Rolf Aurness.  James Arness was also a talented surfer, and during his youth reportedly preferred surfing to working.

"Gunsmoke," the long-running television program, was preceded by "Gunsmoke," the radio program which ran from 1952 until 1961 (480 episodes) and starred William Conrad as Marshall Dillion.

But the television version, which starred an extremely tall surfer dude, began on this date in 1955, went on to become a significant part of the American cultural experience - and was certainly representative of a portion of the milieu from which our society has evolved.  (Of course, the same can be said for surfing!)