Shark Bytes

Monday nights have never been the same.

It jumped in the later seasons. Most of the episodes were either "Matt gets mortally wounded, but lives" or "Bad guy shows up to kill Matt, Kitty/Doc/Festus/Newly worry about it for most of the episode, Matt shows up in the last 5 min. and kills said bad guy with no real effort". That might have worked better in the 30-min episodes, but definitely not in the hour-long ones.

John Kridner, you are correct. John Wayne was never actually offered the role of Matt Dillon, although he was the one the shows execs wanted originally. Once they learned that Wayne despised the new medium of television, and would not have accepted the part anyway, they held an audition for the role, which both Raymond Burr and Richard Boone tried out for before going with Arness. It wasn't easy to get Arness to accept the role, however. Initially, he was disinterested in it and it was Wayne himself who had to talk him into auditioning for the part.

As much as he hated TV, though, Wayne still agreed to introduce the very first episode of Gunsmoke to the viewing audience.

Contrary to many stories about "Gunsmoke" there will always be a question if it was Willliam Conrad or Raymond Burr who stood up and the chair attempted to go with him during the tryouts for the Dillon role. Also Norman Mcdonald once said there was never an offer to John Wayne because he was to big a star for small picture screen.

Insider, I have noticed that too, you are right. I have never been sure in which season certain episodes were filmed, but there are several shows I have seen that were obviously in the latter seasons in which Matt was conspicuously missing for most of the ep. He seemed to always be either out of town or on his deathbed after being shot or bitten by a rattlesnake or something. I swear, the directors must have had a lot of footage of Dillon lying in bed with a bandage on his head and they used it several times toward the end.

Just the other day, Gunsmoke was on TV Land and right from the get-go, Matt got shot by some bank robbers and I thought, "Oh-oh. Here we go again! Matt Dillon on his deathbed. Gee... I wonder if he'll pull through at the end? The suspense will kill me" (tongue planted firmly in cheek there).

I would suspect that most of us who know anything about Gunsmoke are very aware that John Wayne was the producers' first choice to play Matt Dillon and Wayne, to his credit, recommended Arness (I believe Wayne even introduced the very first episode back in 1955), but after almost 20 years of portraying the Dodge City Marshall, Arness had to have been growing weary of the role. I read where he had decided to retire from the role several times only to be lured back by the promise of more money. I suppose, toward the end, his agent negotiated his contract to include more time off, thus the many episodes Matt being out of town or at death's door.

Peace.

If you look at the last three or four years of Gunsmoke you will notice that Matt seemed to be out-of-town during most of the action and return at the end to have a drink with Kitty or talk with Doc. During the last years James Arness would alone work about a month. He would film his five "starring episodes" then he would film all the fillers. These were episodes already shot with the other cast and they would film all his scenes in a week for the entire year.
Nice being about to work about a month out of the year.

This was a good show that I enjoy very much. I also wonder why TVLand doesn't air the black and white episodes of Gunsmoke. TVLand IMO, has pretty much run into the ground both the Bonanza and Gunsmoke reruns. I know their were many other westerns in the 50's, 60's and early 70's. I wonder why TVLand hasn't aired some of those other shows.

Do you happen to know what the cast members of Gunsmoke earned each episode or year? Thank you

Does anyone know why none of the old black and white episodes are ever shown anymore? I have seen Gunsmoke rerun on several different stations over the years, and every time it's the color version. never the black and white version with Dennis Weaver as Chester. Were these not packaged for syndication for some reason? There may have been some local stations in certain markets that carried the old reruns, but I certainly have never seen them.

Damn, Zach. It's sad when you're trying to call something stupid and you can't even spell "stupid" correctly. Moron.

Gunsmoke never jumped. They got axed at a time when television stations were trying appeal to upscale city dwellers so they got rid of all their shows that appealed to a more rural audience. A lot of really good shows got the axe back then, and in many ways television suffered for it. Shows became more violent and vulgar after that. You could say it was the beginning of the liberalization of the television medium since it was primarily blue (democrat) states that the new shows were meant to appeal to at the expense of shows more popular in red (republican) states.

I agree that the show jumped when they hired Dawn Lyn that filthy Kool-aid stained little hillbilly girl as a guest star. How on earth did that kid ever get on TV? Every time we saw her we changed the channel so fast. Once we were too late and she cracked the screen on our old set. Don't walk out of the room if you see her on an old rerun or you'll be buying a new TV.

I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned episodes written by Clyde Ware. Since, unlike most everything else on television, the writing credits came at the end, you have to guess who wrote the episode you're watching. If the characters are outrageous and the story unique and special, I would always guess that Clyde Ware wrote it and was usually right. He was brilliant and made an extraordinary contribution to one of the best series ever on the air -- whether you were a fan of westerns or not.

I was watching an episode on TVLAND a while back that had Loretta swit how about that Hotlips in dodgecity.Also my brother and I were discussing this show reciently and he said that he could never understand the appeal that Gunsmoke had on the general public also saying that the show had terrible acting oh well my late dad loved this show he followed it like a religion.

THis A studip Show HAAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAA