Gunsmoke

Always enjoyed Gunsmoke. Only thing I couldn't understand was where all those mountains came from. Dodge City has a few hills of modest proportions, but no mountains within a few hundred miles, no pine forests to speak of, no desert choked with cactus.

I know, everyone is a critic, right?
 
I always wondered why Dillon had to chase guys to Mexico , Oregon and a lot of other places that took probably 3 weeks to get there on a horse. the show made Dillon look like the only marshal west of the Mississippi River
 
Donn said:
Prefer the older, half hour episodes, but that's me.
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Gunsmoke went downhill after Dennis Weaver left. I understand later episodes were even in color.

Like other '50s TV shows, early Gunsmokes often featured people who later became widely known. Sam Peckinpah directed some of the early shows.

Arness, who had been wounded at Anzio, sometimes had trouble mounting his horse. I like to think Peckinpaw later used this in THE WILD BUNCH scene when Wm Holden's character is ridiculed by Ben Johnson and Warren Oates for having difficulty mounting his horse.
 
I'm 57, but many moons ago I was a bartender in my younger days and a group of us would get together and watch "Gunsmoke" after we got off work at 4am in the morning.
 
El Biblioitecario said:
Gunsmoke went downhill after Dennis Weaver left. I understand later episodes were even in color.

Like other '50s TV shows, early Gunsmokes often featured people who later became widely known. Sam Peckinpah directed some of the early shows.

Arness, who had been wounded at Anzio, sometimes had trouble mounting his horse. I like to think Peckinpaw later used this in THE WILD BUNCH scene when Wm Holden's character is ridiculed by Ben Johnson and Warren Oates for having difficulty mounting his horse.
Click to expand...

Probably true about the years when Chester was in the series. Chester was a very unique character and his niche could never be filled after he left. There were some good episodes with Festus, but Festus often overplayed Festus to the point it took away from the show.
 
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I agree Ken Curtis was a step downward. Dennis Weaver was a realistic, three-dimensional character, appropriate to a show which was more than just a genre western. Curtis's character was just another cookie cutter sidekick, an amiable fool providing comic relief. Fine for kids shows with Andy Devine, Pat Brady, etc, but not for a serious drama. I don't blame Curtis, but the people who gave him his direction.
 
It was a magical period for me in the mid-late 1950s. My friends would always come to our house every Saturday night to play chess, eat potato chips, drink Double Cola, and watch Gunsmoke and Have Gun - Will Travel. We were a little young to have girlfriends yet, so that was a big Saturday Night for us.
 
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