SXRd7p8H8OVCt0r4PI5k16A768.jpg' alt='Gunsmoke Full Episodes Season 20' title='Gunsmoke Full Episodes Season 20' />JOHN WAYNE introduced the first episode the sheriff Matt Dillon James Arness. Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around. Premiering on CBS in September 1955 and completing its network run September 1975, Gunsmoke is the longestrunning dramatic series in the history of TV. Two of its. Gunsmoke TV show. Network CBSEpisodes 6. Seasons 2. 0 TV show dates September 1. March 3. 1, 1. 97. Series status Cancelledended Performers include James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Ken Curtis, Glenn Strange, Dennis Weaver, Buck Taylor, Ted Jordan, and James Nusser. Watch Darkworld Online Gorillavid. The tales first delighted audiences via radio which led to it being developed into a popular television series. Galen Doc Adams Milburn Stone, who attends to the many wounds inflicted on Dodge City residents. It holds the record for being American televisions longest running prime time drama, having run 2. Television grew up with Gunsmoke. Club. For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndicationand to profitabilityhas been 1. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. Many were big hits. Some found small cult audiences. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be canceled. In 1. 00 Episodes, we examine shows that made it to that number, considering both how they advanced or reflected the medium and what contributed to their popularity. A few weeks before the premi. My names Wayne. John Waynes involvement in Gunsmoke is the stuff of legendor more likely, Hollywood publicity. He may have begged Western director Charles Marquis Warren not to sell out in TV and he may have gotten star James Arness drunk so hed accept the lead roleboth claims seem ambitiousbut he definitely appeared onscreen calling new Western drama Gunsmoke the best of its kind. And right then, Matt gets it, dropping to the ground as the fugitive gets away. Welcome to the adult Western. Writer John Meston, who received a story by credit for the episode, and associate producer Norman Macdonnell made a list of cowboy clich. Meston was particularly vigilant. In a letter to the New York Herald Tribune, he railed against handsome, spotless crooners like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers ostensibly doling out justice. For better or worse, nobodys going to confuse Matt Dillon for a radio legend. Except in the obvious sense. Like many early Gunsmoke episodes, Matt Gets It began life as a radio script. D Day veteran Macdonnell and well educated ex Army censor Meston met in the late 4. Escape. It was there that they began brainstorming ideas for an adult Western, and it was there that they gathered a stock company of actors John Dehner, Lawrence Dobkin and writers Les Crutchfield, Kathleen Hite who would eventually work on that Western. Meston wrote two Western themed episodes for Macdonnells shows, a 1. Escape called Wild Jack Rhett and a 1. Romance called Pagosa voiced by radio star William Conrad. Throughout these years the duo kept working on their version of an adult Western. They called it Jeff Spain. Meanwhile CBS mastermind William S. Paley came up with the MTV cops of its day. He wanted a Philip Marlowe of the early West. So network vice president Harry Ackerman rounded up his staff, and the brainstorming began. Theres debate over how the name Gunsmoke came up, but Ackerman settled on that evocative title before he determined any other detail of the show. CBS rejected Macdonnell and Mestons Jeff Spain for sounding like the name of a villain more than a hero. Sound was everything. When Macdonnell and Meston approached CBS in 1. Ackerman gave them a week to produce a Gunsmoke episode. They hammered out the details of the show, which had been in development under Ackerman. Meston changed Mark Dillon to Matt. They hired Walter Brown Newman to write it. That was around the time Newman was nominated for an Oscar for co writing Billy Wilders cynical The Big Carnival Ace In The Hole. We laid out no other guidelines, except we told him how Matt Dillon should be written, and the kind of character he was. Mestons character outline suggests a man on edge His names Matt Dillon, and his hair is probably red, if hes got any left. Hed be handsomer than he is if he had better manners but life and his enemies have left him looking a little beat up, and I suppose having seen his mother back about 1. Newman wrote a story about Dillon standing up to a mob with a climactic standoff and an ironic ending an onlooker dazzled by Dillons bullet powered command would grow up to be Billy The Kid. Composer Rex Koury sat down on the morning of the show and took 1. After a week of begging a reluctant network, Macdonnell and Meston finally got their first choice, William Conrad, to play Dillon, and everything was set. The MacdonnellMeston vision of Gunsmoke was born, and the first episode aired in April. At the time, Matts dim but dependable right hand man Chester was simply Townsman. He and crusty Doc Adams were both named by Conrad. The fourth leg, Amanda Blakes saloon girl, Kitty Russell, would join the regulars a few weeks later. Meston became a nearly full time freelance writer for Gunsmokes second season. He produced about 4. Gunsmoke was so popular that it somehow stayed afloat for nine years under Macdonnells supervision, but the decline in radio dramas was obvious from the get go. So Macdonnell and Meston approached CBS about making a TV version. Watch A Day In The Life Online Facebook on this page. They were surprised to learn that CBS was already working on it without them. Charles Marquis Warren had been hired to develop the series as producer director, and Macdonnell had to content himself with associate producer. The radio cast wasnt even being considered for the show until Los Angeles Times reporter Hal Humphries began a daily petition in his column. After token auditions, they were all rejected. At least Kourys theme made the jump. The TV characterizations were a little less rough around the edges than those on radio. Chester gained a drawl and a limp in the casting of Dennis Weaver. Adams crust covered a heart of gold, or at least silver, in Milburn Stone. As a seemingly beaming paragon of virtue, James Arness Matt Dillon stood a head taller than everyone else like a comic book superhero. Matt was perhaps the only patriarchal figure in all of 5. TV who also frequented a whorehouse, though not in so many words. Macdonnell told Time that radio Kitty was a prostitute, plain and simple, but now Kitty was the woman who ran the Long Branch saloon. What she did with her offscreen hours was anyones guess. Still, Gunsmoke was a far sight from the usual TV Western programming. A 1. 94. 9 NBC survey found that kids preferred Westerns to everything else, including programming geared toward children like Milton Berles Texaco Star Theatre. In the early 5. 0s, Westerns tended to be heroic adventure shows, built on broad comedy The Cisco Kid, serial tropes The Lone Ranger, and hummable tunes The Gene Autry Show. They were easy viewing. Then there were transitional Westerns for the whole family in the mid 5. Davy Crockett Indian Fighter, and even serious psychological Westerns like Stories Of The Century. Gunsmoke debuted in the 1. Westerns NBCs hardscrabble, prestigious Frontier, ABCs steely serial The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp, and ABCs Cheyennethe first hour long drama and, with Warner Bros. But ABC Westerns were fairly family friendly with their Boy Scout heroes and worshipful songs. And Frontier, with its female focused anthology of harsh settlement life, has obvious roots in Death Valley Days, a rich, 1. Ruth Woodman based on her earlier radio show that ran for more than 2. When Gunsmoke debuted, there was nothing quite like it on TV. The movies were another thing altogether. The no nonsense naturalism of Charles Marquis Warrens Old West historical dramas Little Big Horn and Seven Angry Men made him just the man for the job of overseeing Gunsmoke. For the TV pilot, he directed a John Meston script called Hack Prine, about a man who once saved Matts life now hired to kill him, but CBS ordered a second pilot, and Matt Gets It kicked off a 2. Two men shoot, but only one visits the cemetery. Gunsmoke is a universe of consequence. Every four days Warren wrangled a new episode, directing the first 2. Morality tales examined the fairness of gunplay, and Warrens sensitive, unfussy style emphasized the family dynamic of the main characters in a corrupting city the Gomorrah of the Plains, Matt calls it. But Macdonnell was an unhappy subordinate, and Warren eventually banned him from the set. You couldnt blame him. The tension caused Warren to move on during the second season. A couple years later, hed shepherd Rawhide for CBS, the first of several Western artists to pass through Dodge, a list that includes Sam Peckinpah The Wild Bunch, Joseph H.