which incarnation of Gunsmoke do you like the best: the half-hour B&W, the one-hour B&W or the one-hour color anthology -type episodes or Festus era or Chester ? They're all different
The bad guy that Matt Dillon shot down every week was Rodd Redwing, stunt man, gunsmith, and real life quick draw champion. He taught numerous Hollywood cowboys how to properly use western guns, how to draw and fire, and designed and built Chuck Conners' rapid fire carbine for The Rifleman.
I believe the guy at the end of the street was Arvo Ojala, a stunt man whose belt and holster designs were used widely in the 50's and 60's. Also, the very first season showed a closeup of a 4-3/4" barrel Colt .45 shooting in different positions with the final scene you were looking down the barrel when it shot at you with smoke coming out of the barrel. This opening scene was later cut for a more politically correct opening. I have tried to find the original opening but it has been removed.
It was actually Bobby Denton! I have the hat and vest worn in this scene along with a signed letter from him, and an old photo of Denton and Arness on location while shooting. My grandfather did all of his gunsmithing for many years, and it was given to him as a gift.
@@bobbysmith5642 That's most interesting. Do you know which town set was used originally? It was certainly not the awful wooden street at Radford Avenue used in the later series.
The show was "murdered" by the FCC and Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s. While he was sending all sorts of people to die fighting in Vietnam, Johnson was convinced that "violence" on television was the root of all social problems. So the classic gunsmoke opening got removed and the show got saddled with violence quotas which made it almost impossible to write good scripts. In the end, it wasn't really the age of the cast that did the show in. It was the inability to continue to produce the sort of episodes that the series was based on.
The older Gunsmoke shows from the 1950's were really good shows. The writing and characters of these shows are in many ways timeless. You see many examples of these characters in these shows including a broad set of personality types. The setting of Gunsmoke is a western but in many ways the situations, plots, conflicts and characters are timeless. You can see the same things reading literature or watching other movies but Gunsmoke did a good job of including many similar situations people see in real life, just with way less shooting. Matt Dillon doesn't want to shoot people unless they desperately need shooting because they are a threat to him and others. I think all cops and sheriffs are this way.
@@gerrydooley951 Same here. Pacing is better in the half hour shows too. The hour long ones just meander a bit too much for my taste, and I honestly can't stand the color episodes anymore as the writing was just bad most of the time, not to mention the acting from most of the guest stars. Also, I find the color way too distracting from the storytelling. Way too green in many shots as well as Dodge looking VERY fake compared to the earlier black and white episodes.
When I was a kid during the late 1950s and early 1960s, The Rifleman was my favorite western. But as the years passed and I got older, Gunsmoke became my very favorite TV western. The greatest TV western of all-time.... GUNSMOKE
Thank you for posting this! I have to say it's a little sad to see how they softened the whole mood of the show from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the early versions, Matt Dillon appears as a somebody who has a serious, sometimes deadly, job to do, and his face really tells the story: he's not "happy" he has to kill somebody. He does what needs to be done to protect his town. It's almost like by the 1970s, they didn't want to show the truth of what it was like to be a lawman or a gunfighter in the old west.
The early TV episodes were carryovers from the radio version, which was hardbitten as hell. But by the 70s, the FCC came down hard on violence on TV (they thought it was too bad of an influence on children), and so Westerns (like cop shows) had to tone down, or even eliminate, the gunplay.
The early years of the show were indeed better. The stories were better written too. After trying to watch a few of the later seasons I just couldn't get into them that much. The stories were dumbed down and frankly everyone, especially Arness, just looked worn out and done with it. Granted 20 years of doing the show can do that but still.
@@WSenator1 What's weird is the opposite happened with movies. In the 50's they were mostly PG and by the 70's partial nudity and sex scenes were common.
Because of the opening, the show was always a target for the FCC and anti-violence political crusaders in Washington. The entire era of the hour-long show involved progressively more constraints on the show. Then they took away the "showdown" ending entirely after season 13. By the late 1960s, there were "violence quotas" for the show that were so strict and so crazy that it was just about impossible to write good episodes anymore. By about 1968, none of the top scripts for the show could ever have been made. The other side of the coin to the crackdown on TV violence was the entertainment industry going all-in with violence in films. The same year the country was going crazy about the evils of gunsmoke, the movie industry produced "bonnie and Clyde". And that probably was not a coincidence.
Gunsmoke was decades before I was born but I just got into it thanks to pluto tv. Random thought I can't believe they expanded to an hour and had to keep that same Saturday night 10pm slot how the hell did they survive? Then switched to color and STILL had it... finally a year later they got a new slot Monday's 7:30
I always liked the _Gunsmoke_ later years intro music. There was actually some pretty good music intros back in the day. There was the music in _Rawhide_ , _Maverick_ , _Bonanza_ , and my two favorites, _Cheyenne_ and the orchestra intro to _Wagon Train_ .
Why am I alone in rating The Dakotas as being in the top three TV westerns? If you've never seen it, or even heard of it, please take a look. JD Smith, as played by Jack Elam, is the toughest, meanest lawman in celluloid history! It was the controversial shoot-out in a church in the episode called Sanctuary at Crystal Springs that stopped the second series going into production.
I remember listening to the radio version rebroadcast on American Armed Forces Radio out of Germany in 1965 (my family lived in Brussels at the time and the signal was weak, but audible). When we came back to the States I was so excited to see there was a television version but when I turned it on I was disappointed because I was used to William Conrad's voice ("The first man they look for and the last they want to meet") and James Arness just didn't do it for me.
@@TheLorrephile I can understand the disappointment, not only in the sound of the voices, but also seeing the charactors for the first time was nothing like the image you had in your mind of how they looked
I believe that “Marshal Dillon” intro was used when they started syndicating reruns of the show. Not sure why they did that title change for some shows but not others that were syndicated while still producing first-run episodes.
Correct. That dreadful "Marshal Dillon" theme was never used during the first-run of the CBS shows. The standard opening wasn't abandoned during that period.
Back in the day the syndicated shows would also run in prime time and the network wanted no confusion with its original prime time show that was still running. Similar to how Bonanza was called Ponderosa in syndication.
Actually in a few cases Matt actually drew first....albeit 99% of the time he let them draw their own death. His exceptions are professional gunfighters who are bullying others. In these cases he sometimes draws first blood. Matt Draws First (Confirmed by Doc at 1:07) ruclips.net/video/385cw1BBI3Y/видео.html Matt Bullies A Bully Gunfighter ruclips.net/video/aqyojnM9tlc/видео.html
There's one hour black and white episodes in the early '60s are a pinnacle of the series. There were some really good ones in the color era too. Jude Bonner, Will Mannon, and other bad guys from that era really captured what was going on in the country at that time. Fear of weirdo hippies and bikers etc.
The b&w half hour seasons of Gunsmoke (1-6) were the absolute best. The switch to hour episodes made them drag on too long and by the time the show was in color guest stars got 95% of screen time. How the show survived past season 6 is a mystery to me but it should have ended there because seasons 7-20 are very inferior.
The intro that shows all the cast members was also used along with the first colored intro. The intro would be used then the beginning of the episode would be shown then the intro that features the cast would be shown but with no narration.
Supposedly there was a totally different opening at the very beginning in 1955. I have never seen it. As I understand, it was darkened screen with only guns and hands firing the guns. Then the screen filled with smoke and the familiar intonation “Gunsmoke! Starring James Arness as Matt Dillon.” Apparently this opening is lost to the ages. ☹️
You are absolutely correct. It was a closeup of a Colt .45 shooting all six bullets with the accompanying gun smoke. I can't find that opening anywhere.
There is zero proof of this and the season 1 dvd has the Matt Dillion shootout.... and even the season 1 sponsor spots use the shootout intro proving this Colt 45 intro as a dumb hoax...
As far as the intro with all the cast members, the one from seasons 18 and 19. In fact, that was the very first time I saw Gunsmoke (when Channel 7 replayed it on Saturdays)…that very intro with George Walsh announcing.
Thanks for the retrospective showing the iterations the intro went through. It's clear now that CBS saw the writing on the wall in the very late 60s & removed the gunfight sequence & shootout story lines for the remainder of the series. Shows like Wild Wild West & others didn't survive the cut even though they were bloodless westerns.
Talking about the Marshal Dillon intro, that didn’t actually replace the gunfight open. Marshal Dillon was the title CBS used for reruns of the half-hour episodes airing in the Tuesday night slot between 1961 and 1964.
If you watch the first one very closely you’ll notice that Matt draws first and the bad guy still gets the first shot off which obviously misses and then Matt nails him. It’s also odd that Matt blinks badly when his gun goes off. I still love Gunsmoke.
It cracks me up when a criminal is lying to Matt Dillon and instead of tipping his hand and calling him a liar before he can prove it, Matts' only response is to just stand there and say Ummm humm. Most people use that response to agree with the person they are talking with, but Matt Dillon NEVER uses it that way. He never says umm, humm, to agree with what he has just been told. Viewers always know that and most of the liars probably knew it too. This is probably one of my favorite lines that is frequently repeated in Gunsmoke and I sometimes wonder if this is something James Arness just started doing or was that written into the scripts (?) It drives my wife crazy when I do this to her, which always give me a little chuckle. WRZ 2021-07-11 Delaware County, PA
I just love the B&W episodes of Gunsmoke more than the color episodes because the main characters looked young except for Millburn Stone's Doc Adams, who was a bit older. With the color episodes, the main characters looked older, probably because by this time, James Arness was in his 40's and 50's, and Amanda Blake was in her late 30's to mid-40's. Plus, whatever makeup was used didn't always hide the wrinkles the actors were developing. Nevertheless, I have a greater appreciation for these reruns of Gunsmoke from the 50's to mid-60's, and it's not just the draw in the street intro, either. Classic western series.
I was just thinking the same thing.I'm watching the color episodes for the first time and the first thing I noticed was it looks as though the characters have aged 10 years from season 11 to season 12.
The half hour b&w seasons (1-6) were Gunsmoke in it's prime. The hour format just made the show drag on and by the time it went to color the guest stars got 95% of the screen time. I just wish they had a bigger budget in the half hour era to film in color
@@Sanman95 The half hour episodes are grittier and better written too. I can't stand the later episodes after Season 6 much as they tend to just meander and take forever to get to the point. Also, the color episodes are just awful in so many ways. Writing was bad and too much emphasis on guest stars who frankly were boring for the most part. Once Weaver left is when my interest waned in the show. That being said, Burt Reynolds was surprisingly good during his time on the show later on, and Ken Curtis grew on me somewhat. Still prefer Chester though.
Giving James Arness and all who appeared on the television version the respect they rightly deserve, I prefer the radio version. As Arness is the actor people connect with the visual Matt Dillon, William Conrad is the voice I connect with the character in sight and sound. The radio cast posed in costume for publicity shots and they fit my mind’s pictures of the characters perfectly. The radio theme music sounded more like the Old West to me. Having said that, TV musta done something right. A show that ran twenty seasons did so for a reason.
All of the Gunsmoke were ggreat but Chester made it i loved season three when Chester was dragged i eried it looked so real i missed Dennis Weaver in 1964
Amazing footage, never knew this information. Kitty left the show because her best friend who played the bar tender in long branch saloon died in real life. Amanda Blake couldn't do anymore series. Rest in peace to all the cast.
Actually, Blake had a fight with the producers -- they wanted her to get graped and beaten again in "The Guns of Cibola Blanca" for Season 20, which had happened just two years earlier in the "Hostage" episode. Blake felt it was excessive. So she left in a fired/quit scenario not reported at the time. BTW: "The Wiving", Season 20's highest-rated episode, was originally written for Kitty, but they put in Fran Ryan's "Hannah" in Kitty's place .. Blake later said that she wouldn't have quit had she known the show, with still good ratings, would run only one more year.
I love the classic original shootout opening, however when it changed to the studio version something did change. I remember someone saying how most actors have a tendency to close their eyes when they shoot a gun. Well, when they reshot the opening in the studio, someone must have told Jim and he made sure he wouldn’t do it again.
The double intro in season 5 was due to CBS airing re-runs of the half-hour show in primetime under the title "Marshal Dillon" on Tuesday nights and new hour-long episodes on Saturday nights. FCC regulations at the time would not allow the network to air both shows under the "Gunsmoke" title.
Read that James Arness was a good pratical joker even went so far to film a intro where he lost to the bad guy ,Old Mashal Dillion laying there on his back in the street ,
I don't recall Rex Khoury ever receiving an on-screen credit for composing Gunsmoke's theme. I wonder what the story is behind this omission. His name was certainly mentioned on the radio version.
Part of it was to do with them using a different arrangement by another composer. Fred Steiner was officially the "composer" of the Gunsmoke TV series and he wasn't the type of guy who would share credit with anyone.
I always wondered why Khoury didn't get a credit, because the melancholy, instantly nostalgic "Old Trails" theme was a big part of GUNSMOKE's identity. But these contract issues could get tricky -- apparently, Richard Markowitz composed the theme to WILD WILD WEST yet didn't get a screen credit.
Interesting, unaware the other season 5 intro was used then. Thought it was only used for the 30 minute episode reruns after they went to 1 hour episodes. That one used for the 30 minute reruns is the fav.
I've read that the first duel scene (and the man in black s Arvo Ojala, not Redd Redwing), was not filmed until 1959 but it was later added for showings of the earlier season because people associated it so strongly with the show. The actual original opening featured Matt walking through the graves on boot hill thinking to himself how the people got there. The "Marshal Dillon" opening didn't displace the original gunfight. it was the opening used for the re-broadcast of the half-hour shows once the show shifted to an hour in 1961. The hour version was shown Saturday night, the half hours on Tuesday night. The shot of the street with the thumbnails of the cast was actually used after the intro and a teaser for the episode in the late 60's. There's also a gag shot of Arness crumping to the ground when they filmed the first color duel.
There's some incorrect info here. When Gunsmoke was expanded to an hour in Season 7, it continued to run at 10 PM on Saturdays, but the half-hour episodes were rerun at 7:30 PM on Tuesdays under the title Marshal Dillon. The Marshal Dillon intro was created for those reruns. In Season 14 the gunfight was replaced by Matt riding on his horse because there was a big debate in the United States about whether violence on television had contributed to the killings of RFK and MLK. CBS told its shows to tone down their violence and ordered that Gunsmoke's opening gunfight be scrapped. This enraged John Mantley but he had no choice about it.
I remember that time in the late 1960's very well. In fact - " The Wild Wild West " with Robert Conrad was canceled because of complaints about excessive violence. However - with the later " Gunsmoke " episodes ( 1968. to 1975 ) : the opening gunfight scene was replaced by James Arness riding across the plains - up to about 1973. Moreover - from what I read : William Paley of CBS would not let Gunsmoke be canceled in 1967 - 1968 ( Paley was a HUGE FAN of the show )
@@sexysingerify Gunsmoke's ratings improved after it was moved to Mondays in 1967, but it was going to be canceled again in 1971 as part of the Rural Purge, despite finishing second in the ratings that year. Paley intervened again though and kept the show going. But in 1975 an executive at CBS declared publicly that Gunsmoke had "the worst demographics on television," and Paley signed off on its cancellation.
You did a fine job with intros throughout it's history. Impressive. My fav intro was when symphony used i believe it's the 2nd clip. In fact my favorite episodes were the 30 minute version's vs 60 minutes. I liked Burt Reynolds & Dennis Weaver better than Festus, Weaver was also lazy and had no ambition a nice guy who wasn't trusted to open carry, girl's & coffee got him excited. Reynolds took no bs and for a half breed was did very well. Ken Curtis used that same voice in several films was illiterate came from mtn folk and was allergic to razor blades slightly bow legged. Doc always touched his face with disgust usually with Festus. Kitty was in the end for Matt they never kissed. That old Boozehound was pathetic however had good heart and help out, crawled but refused drink one of his best scenes. Great Western Television Series 1955-1975 *******
Sadly, because of pure greed on behalf of the studio or tv channel or whoever, you cannot find this wonderful show streaming anywhere, legally... Why are these old tv shows which made a profit the first time they aired (Because they had to) not in the free public domain? Such a travesty. Just a couple years ago they were here on RUclips for free but lawyers saw to it they were all removed now. No binge watching Gunsmoke. No main character besides Newly is even alive now to claim royalties. It should be illegal. 2-3 years is plenty long enough for Copyright. I don't keep getting paid for work I did decades ago, and my kids won't either.
Complaints about the violent opening in S10 challenged the producers to make changes. S11 & S12 actually got better, until those pestering complainers finally had their way.
I love gunsmoke with all my heart but when It went to color it kind of lost some of its allure & authenticity I love the Black and Whites and the earlier episodes the better
Was the Marshal Dillon intro actually used for the main show or was it used for summer re-runs? The 50's version of Dragnet used to retitle their re-runs as "Badge 714" to differentiate it from the new episodes.
Not summer reruns at first. The show was so popular that when it went to an hour in 1961, CBS aired the half-hour reruns as "Marshal Dillon" on Tuesday night for the entire season!
Gunsmoke was the best show on tv and still is.
which incarnation of Gunsmoke do you like the best: the half-hour B&W, the one-hour B&W or the one-hour color anthology -type episodes or Festus era or Chester ? They're all different
Yes
Couldn’t agree more. Best ever
I agree but the rifleman is best
The intro from 1965-1966 has that edge to it...
The bad guy that Matt Dillon shot down every week was Rodd Redwing, stunt man, gunsmith, and real life quick draw champion. He taught numerous Hollywood cowboys how to properly use western guns, how to draw and fire, and designed and built Chuck Conners' rapid fire carbine for The Rifleman.
However in the re-shot color opening it was Ted Jordan (Burke in the freight office) whom he shot, I read.
I believe the guy at the end of the street was Arvo Ojala, a stunt man whose belt and holster designs were used widely in the 50's and 60's. Also, the very first season showed a closeup of a 4-3/4" barrel Colt .45 shooting in different positions with the final scene you were looking down the barrel when it shot at you with smoke coming out of the barrel. This opening scene was later cut for a more politically correct opening. I have tried to find the original opening but it has been removed.
It was actually Bobby Denton! I have the hat and vest worn in this scene along with a signed letter from him, and an old photo of Denton and Arness on location while shooting. My grandfather did all of his gunsmithing for many years, and it was given to him as a gift.
@@bobbysmith5642 That's most interesting. Do you know which town set was used originally? It was certainly not the awful wooden street at Radford Avenue used in the later series.
@@wildbillharding No I do not. Sorry.
My favorite TV show of all time. BAR NONE!!!
The show was "murdered" by the FCC and Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s. While he was sending all sorts of people to die fighting in Vietnam, Johnson was convinced that "violence" on television was the root of all social problems.
So the classic gunsmoke opening got removed and the show got saddled with violence quotas which made it almost impossible to write good scripts. In the end, it wasn't really the age of the cast that did the show in. It was the inability to continue to produce the sort of episodes that the series was based on.
the two assassinations in 1968 had a lot to do with that
It became more of an anthology based show and would feature guest actors, many times Arness would only be in an episode at the beginning or the end.
windy boothill season 1 intros are the best thing ever.
Gunsmoke was king of all tv Western’s.
I love Gunsmoke. It was off the air way before my time, but I enjoy the reruns on tv when I can.
It's a good show, especially the earlier seasons.
The older Gunsmoke shows from the 1950's were really good shows. The writing and characters of these shows are in many ways timeless. You see many examples of these characters in these shows including a broad set of personality types. The setting of Gunsmoke is a western but in many ways the situations, plots, conflicts and characters are timeless. You can see the same things reading literature or watching other movies but Gunsmoke did a good job of including many similar situations people see in real life, just with way less shooting. Matt Dillon doesn't want to shoot people unless they desperately need shooting because they are a threat to him and others. I think all cops and sheriffs are this way.
@@castletracker Many of the earlier seasons used the same scripts as the radio show.
My preference is the half-hour shows, you get more Matt Dillion which is why I watch the show
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@@gerrydooley951 Same here. Pacing is better in the half hour shows too. The hour long ones just meander a bit too much for my taste, and I honestly can't stand the color episodes anymore as the writing was just bad most of the time, not to mention the acting from most of the guest stars. Also, I find the color way too distracting from the storytelling. Way too green in many shots as well as Dodge looking VERY fake compared to the earlier black and white episodes.
right, thank you for mentioning the green color, tinting, I thought I was going crazy.@@alucard624
When I was a kid during the late 1950s
and early 1960s, The Rifleman was my favorite western.
But as the years passed and I got older, Gunsmoke became my very favorite TV western.
The greatest TV western of all-time....
GUNSMOKE
Thank you for posting this! I have to say it's a little sad to see how they softened the whole mood of the show from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the early versions, Matt Dillon appears as a somebody who has a serious, sometimes deadly, job to do, and his face really tells the story: he's not "happy" he has to kill somebody. He does what needs to be done to protect his town. It's almost like by the 1970s, they didn't want to show the truth of what it was like to be a lawman or a gunfighter in the old west.
You can also see by the time in the color and Matt is older that he shows regret in taking a life.
The early TV episodes were carryovers from the radio version, which was hardbitten as hell. But by the 70s, the FCC came down hard on violence on TV (they thought it was too bad of an influence on children), and so Westerns (like cop shows) had to tone down, or even eliminate, the gunplay.
The early years of the show were indeed better. The stories were better written too. After trying to watch a few of the later seasons I just couldn't get into them that much. The stories were dumbed down and frankly everyone, especially Arness, just looked worn out and done with it. Granted 20 years of doing the show can do that but still.
@@WSenator1 What's weird is the opposite happened with movies. In the 50's they were mostly PG and by the 70's partial nudity and sex scenes were common.
Because of the opening, the show was always a target for the FCC and anti-violence political crusaders in Washington. The entire era of the hour-long show involved progressively more constraints on the show. Then they took away the "showdown" ending entirely after season 13.
By the late 1960s, there were "violence quotas" for the show that were so strict and so crazy that it was just about impossible to write good episodes anymore. By about 1968, none of the top scripts for the show could ever have been made.
The other side of the coin to the crackdown on TV violence was the entertainment industry going all-in with violence in films. The same year the country was going crazy about the evils of gunsmoke, the movie industry produced "bonnie and Clyde". And that probably was not a coincidence.
My cousins absolutely loved this Saturday lineup (Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel). You just STFU and absorbed it with the rest of the family.
Gunsmoke was decades before I was born but I just got into it thanks to pluto tv. Random thought I can't believe they expanded to an hour and had to keep that same Saturday night 10pm slot how the hell did they survive? Then switched to color and STILL had it... finally a year later they got a new slot Monday's 7:30
I always liked the _Gunsmoke_ later years intro music. There was actually some pretty good music intros back in the day. There was the music in _Rawhide_ , _Maverick_ , _Bonanza_ , and my two favorites, _Cheyenne_ and the orchestra intro to _Wagon Train_ .
The Brilliance of Martin Teboski Cimarron Strip ( 1967-1968 CBS ) had a great music intro, too !
The Virginian had great intro music.
Why am I alone in rating The Dakotas as being in the top three TV westerns? If you've never seen it, or even heard of it, please take a look. JD Smith, as played by Jack Elam, is the toughest, meanest lawman in celluloid history! It was the controversial shoot-out in a church in the episode called Sanctuary at Crystal Springs that stopped the second series going into production.
The theme to the Virginian was an amazing piece of music.
I am so old! I used to visit my blind great grandfather and we would listen to Gunsmoke on the radio.
I remember listening to the radio version rebroadcast on American Armed Forces Radio out of Germany in 1965 (my family lived in Brussels at the time and the signal was weak, but audible). When we came back to the States I was so excited to see there was a television version but when I turned it on I was disappointed because I was used to William Conrad's voice ("The first man they look for and the last they want to meet") and James Arness just didn't do it for me.
@@TheLorrephile I can understand the disappointment, not only in the sound of the voices, but also seeing the charactors for the first time was nothing like the image you had in your mind of how they looked
@@mdavis4930 Exactly!
I believe that “Marshal Dillon” intro was used when they started syndicating reruns of the show. Not sure why they did that title change for some shows but not others that were syndicated while still producing first-run episodes.
Correct. That dreadful "Marshal Dillon" theme was never used during the first-run of the CBS shows. The standard opening wasn't abandoned during that period.
Back in the day the syndicated shows would also run in prime time and the network wanted no confusion with its original prime time show that was still running. Similar to how Bonanza was called Ponderosa in syndication.
@@forrestsmith2732 I was a grown man before I realized the show I knew growing up as "Trailmaster" was actually old "Wagon Train" shows repackaged!
My aunt and uncle still watch it every day.
On the first intro, there are two shots heard, Matt fired last.
I like that Dillon almost always drew second and won.
Me too.
@tony john Plus he was more smarter.
Actually in a few cases Matt actually drew first....albeit 99% of the time he let them draw their own death. His exceptions are professional gunfighters who are bullying others. In these cases he sometimes draws first blood.
Matt Draws First (Confirmed by Doc at 1:07)
ruclips.net/video/385cw1BBI3Y/видео.html
Matt Bullies A Bully Gunfighter
ruclips.net/video/aqyojnM9tlc/видео.html
Here is one time he lost! A spoof he and the other gunman played on the director!ruclips.net/video/Ncgs7JfW_7k/видео.html
@@MrSocialchange lol yeah I've seen that one. thanks for sharing tho.
Anyone else remember an intro where the camera doesn't change angles and the bad guy drops over dead?
There's one hour black and white episodes in the early '60s are a pinnacle of the series. There were some really good ones in the color era too. Jude Bonner, Will Mannon, and other bad guys from that era really captured what was going on in the country at that time. Fear of weirdo hippies and bikers etc.
The b&w half hour seasons of Gunsmoke (1-6) were the absolute best. The switch to hour episodes made them drag on too long and by the time the show was in color guest stars got 95% of screen time. How the show survived past season 6 is a mystery to me but it should have ended there because seasons 7-20 are very inferior.
That lowdown sidewinder keeps coming back for more.
It's 2021 and this is my favorite show.
Me too
Same here. I always watch it with family
The intro that shows all the cast members was also used along with the first colored intro. The intro would be used then the beginning of the episode would be shown then the intro that features the cast would be shown but with no narration.
That’s a great recap….i love this show ….now I like Bonanza too. Guess that’s what happens when you’re laid up for a year
Supposedly there was a totally different opening at the very beginning in 1955. I have never seen it. As I understand, it was darkened screen with only guns and hands firing the guns. Then the screen filled with smoke and the familiar intonation “Gunsmoke! Starring James Arness as Matt Dillon.” Apparently this opening is lost to the ages. ☹️
You are absolutely correct. It was a closeup of a Colt .45 shooting all six bullets with the accompanying gun smoke. I can't find that opening anywhere.
There is zero proof of this and the season 1 dvd has the Matt Dillion shootout.... and even the season 1 sponsor spots use the shootout intro proving this Colt 45 intro as a dumb hoax...
As far as the intro with all the cast members, the one from seasons 18 and 19. In fact, that was the very first time I saw Gunsmoke (when Channel 7 replayed it on Saturdays)…that very intro with George Walsh announcing.
Thanks for the retrospective showing the iterations the intro went through. It's clear now that CBS saw the writing on the wall in the very late 60s & removed the gunfight sequence & shootout story lines for the remainder of the series. Shows like Wild Wild West & others didn't survive the cut even though they were bloodless westerns.
Talking about the Marshal Dillon intro, that didn’t actually replace the gunfight open. Marshal Dillon was the title CBS used for reruns of the half-hour episodes airing in the Tuesday night slot between 1961 and 1964.
The 20th season opening had to be changed so the loss of Kitty wouldn't be so obvious...they had to 'make more' of the remaining characters in it.
1966-1968 = GOAT 😤
Nicely done. Thanks for sharing.
I still watch it kn 2020
If you watch the first one very closely you’ll notice that Matt draws first and the bad guy still gets the first shot off which obviously misses and then Matt nails him. It’s also odd that Matt blinks badly when his gun goes off. I still love Gunsmoke.
It cracks me up when a criminal is lying to Matt Dillon and instead of tipping his hand
and calling him a liar before he can prove it, Matts' only response is to just stand there
and say Ummm humm. Most people use that response to agree with the person they are
talking with, but Matt Dillon NEVER uses it that way. He never says umm, humm, to agree
with what he has just been told. Viewers always know that
and most of the liars probably knew it too. This is probably one of my favorite lines
that is frequently repeated in Gunsmoke and I sometimes wonder if this is something
James Arness just started doing or was that written into the scripts (?)
It drives my wife crazy when I do this to her, which always give me a little chuckle.
WRZ 2021-07-11
Delaware County, PA
I remember I used to watch Gunsmoke on TVLand in the 90s when I was a kid, the color episodes are what I’m familiar with
There were additional syndication variations for the opening. The 1966 opening (with musical variations) was put on episodes from later in the series.
The "Marshal Dillon" opening was only used on syndicated prints of the 30-minute episodes, as well as prime time reruns on CBS from 1961-64.
I just love the B&W episodes of Gunsmoke more than the color episodes because the main characters looked young except for Millburn Stone's Doc Adams, who was a bit older. With the color episodes, the main characters looked older, probably because by this time, James Arness was in his 40's and 50's, and Amanda Blake was in her late 30's to mid-40's. Plus, whatever makeup was used didn't always hide the wrinkles the actors were developing. Nevertheless, I have a greater appreciation for these reruns of Gunsmoke from the 50's to mid-60's, and it's not just the draw in the street intro, either. Classic western series.
I was just thinking the same thing.I'm watching the color episodes for the first time and the first thing I noticed was it looks as though the characters have aged 10 years from season 11 to season 12.
The half hour b&w seasons (1-6) were Gunsmoke in it's prime. The hour format just made the show drag on and by the time it went to color the guest stars got 95% of the screen time. I just wish they had a bigger budget in the half hour era to film in color
And I agree with you about color making them look older. By season 12 they looked old. They should have ended the show after the 6 half hour seasons
@@Sanman95 The half hour episodes are grittier and better written too. I can't stand the later episodes after Season 6 much as they tend to just meander and take forever to get to the point. Also, the color episodes are just awful in so many ways. Writing was bad and too much emphasis on guest stars who frankly were boring for the most part. Once Weaver left is when my interest waned in the show. That being said, Burt Reynolds was surprisingly good during his time on the show later on, and Ken Curtis grew on me somewhat. Still prefer Chester though.
"GUNSMOKE"
With Millburn Stone as Doc.
Amanda Blake as Kitty.
Ken Curtis as Festus.
Buck Taylor as Newly.
And Starring,
James Arness as Matt Dillon!
The "descriptions" are naive and adorable.
The theme was originally written for the old radio program by Rex Koury.
It is also known as Old Trail and Boot Hill.
Gunsmoke was on TV for 20 years. That's not including the years it was on the radio before it became a TV show
Season 11 is the best
Giving James Arness and all who appeared on the television version the respect they rightly deserve, I prefer the radio version. As Arness is the actor people connect with the visual Matt Dillon, William Conrad is the voice I connect with the character in sight and sound. The radio cast posed in costume for publicity shots and they fit my mind’s pictures of the characters perfectly. The radio theme music sounded more like the Old West to me. Having said that, TV musta done something right. A show that ran twenty seasons did so for a reason.
I love it when Matt killed the bad guys and stacks them up at least 4 deep in wagon headed for Boot Hill!
All of the Gunsmoke were ggreat but Chester made it i loved season three when Chester was dragged i eried it looked so real i missed Dennis Weaver in 1964
I thi k it lasted because good eliminated bad. True friendship among them always there for each other. Never expecting something in return.
Amazing footage, never knew this information. Kitty left the show because her best friend who played the bar tender in long branch saloon died in real life. Amanda Blake couldn't do anymore series. Rest in peace to all the cast.
In the reunion movie it was said that Kitty left cause Matt was seriously wounded and nearly died. And she couldn’t bear to see him die.
Kitty left the show cause she got sick and died. She was 60. It was tragic. Her husband was gay, she didn't know it, and she contracted AIDS from him.
@@rony41165 Kitty tragicallt died before the show ended.
@@marjoriegarner5369 kitty left
Actually, Blake had a fight with the producers -- they wanted her to get graped and beaten again in "The Guns of Cibola Blanca" for Season 20, which had happened just two years earlier in the "Hostage" episode. Blake felt it was excessive. So she left in a fired/quit scenario not reported at the time. BTW: "The Wiving", Season 20's highest-rated episode, was originally written for Kitty, but they put in Fran Ryan's "Hannah" in Kitty's place .. Blake later said that she wouldn't have quit had she known the show, with still good ratings, would run only one more year.
I love the classic original shootout opening, however when it changed to the studio version something did change.
I remember someone saying how most actors have a tendency to close their eyes when they shoot a gun.
Well, when they reshot the opening in the studio, someone must have told Jim and he made sure he wouldn’t do it again.
The double intro in season 5 was due to CBS airing re-runs of the half-hour show in primetime under the title "Marshal Dillon" on Tuesday nights and new hour-long episodes on Saturday nights. FCC regulations at the time would not allow the network to air both shows under the "Gunsmoke" title.
I liked the first one best, didn't hear the audio for the fourth season in there, I been watching these on the cbs dvds
By season 10 (1964-65) CBS had moved Gunsmoke from the Paramount lot to the CBS Studio City lot.
Read that James Arness was a good pratical joker even went so far to film a intro where he lost to the bad guy ,Old Mashal Dillion laying there on his back in the street ,
I used to watch this with my dad.
20 years. The record holder for Prime Time Drama until SVU beat it just 2 years ago. Though Grey's Anatomy is closing in.
The original Law & Order was also on the air for 20 seasons, but you're right, SVU topped both of them.
@@mulcahysgirl yes that's right. Original Law and Order tied it. I want to say ER is in 4th place. But not sure.
The horse riding scene was taken from the episode "nitro part II" just a little fun fact.
I don't recall Rex Khoury ever receiving an on-screen credit for composing Gunsmoke's theme. I wonder what the story is behind this omission. His name was certainly mentioned on the radio version.
Part of it was to do with them using a different arrangement by another composer. Fred Steiner was officially the "composer" of the Gunsmoke TV series and he wasn't the type of guy who would share credit with anyone.
I always wondered why Khoury didn't get a credit, because the melancholy, instantly nostalgic "Old Trails" theme was a big part of GUNSMOKE's identity. But these contract issues could get tricky -- apparently, Richard Markowitz composed the theme to WILD WILD WEST yet didn't get a screen credit.
Interesting, unaware the other season 5 intro was used then. Thought it was only used for the 30 minute episode reruns after they went to 1 hour episodes. That one used for the 30 minute reruns is the fav.
I've read that the first duel scene (and the man in black s Arvo Ojala, not Redd Redwing), was not filmed until 1959 but it was later added for showings of the earlier season because people associated it so strongly with the show. The actual original opening featured Matt walking through the graves on boot hill thinking to himself how the people got there. The "Marshal Dillon" opening didn't displace the original gunfight. it was the opening used for the re-broadcast of the half-hour shows once the show shifted to an hour in 1961. The hour version was shown Saturday night, the half hours on Tuesday night. The shot of the street with the thumbnails of the cast was actually used after the intro and a teaser for the episode in the late 60's. There's also a gag shot of Arness crumping to the ground when they filmed the first color duel.
The boot hill opening was used at the opening of the episode . It was not the intro
@@gerrydooley951 But if the opening duel wasn't down until 1959, what was the 1955-58 opening?
Man quality just doesn't exist to this extent anymore
The show Marshal
Dillon was used as the title in the later syndication of the first six half hour seasons.
The bad guy actually beats Dillon to the draw, but he misses. Dillon didn't.
Season 18, at first they had him draw his gun and shoot. I loved that because it was almost a tribute to the Loan Ranger.
Line Ranger, not loan ranger. that's actualy funny.
Not Line Ranger, but Lone Ranger.
I love Gunsmoke ❤❤❤
"GUNSMOKE"
Starring James Arness as Matt Dillon!
I LOVE GUNSOMKE 🔫
The final season intro reflects a style that was parodied in the movie “Oddysey Quest.”
There's some incorrect info here. When Gunsmoke was expanded to an hour in Season 7, it continued to run at 10 PM on Saturdays, but the half-hour episodes were rerun at 7:30 PM on Tuesdays under the title Marshal Dillon. The Marshal Dillon intro was created for those reruns. In Season 14 the gunfight was replaced by Matt riding on his horse because there was a big debate in the United States about whether violence on television had contributed to the killings of RFK and MLK. CBS told its shows to tone down their violence and ordered that Gunsmoke's opening gunfight be scrapped. This enraged John Mantley but he had no choice about it.
So what was JWB watching that contributed to the killing of Abe Lincoln?? End of debate😎
I remember that time in the late 1960's very well. In fact - " The Wild Wild West " with Robert Conrad was canceled because of complaints about excessive violence. However - with the later " Gunsmoke " episodes ( 1968. to 1975 ) : the opening gunfight scene was replaced by
James Arness riding across the plains - up to about 1973.
Moreover - from what I read : William Paley of CBS would not let
Gunsmoke be canceled in 1967 - 1968 ( Paley was a HUGE FAN of the show )
@@sexysingerify Gunsmoke's ratings improved after it was moved to Mondays in 1967, but it was going to be canceled again in 1971 as part of the Rural Purge, despite finishing second in the ratings that year. Paley intervened again though and kept the show going. But in 1975 an executive at CBS declared publicly that Gunsmoke had "the worst demographics on television," and Paley signed off on its cancellation.
I am going to guess Marshal Dillon retired in the 1880s and died in the 1920s.
James died in 2011, at age 88.
Gunsmoke #1!
You did a fine job with intros throughout it's history. Impressive. My fav intro was when symphony used i believe it's the 2nd clip. In fact my favorite episodes were the 30 minute version's vs 60 minutes. I liked Burt Reynolds & Dennis Weaver better than Festus, Weaver was also lazy and had no ambition a nice guy who wasn't trusted to open carry, girl's & coffee got him excited. Reynolds took no bs and for a half breed was did very well. Ken Curtis used that same voice in several films was illiterate came from mtn folk and was allergic to razor blades slightly bow legged. Doc always touched his face with disgust usually with Festus. Kitty was in the end for Matt they never kissed. That old Boozehound was pathetic however had good heart and help out, crawled but refused drink one of his best scenes. Great Western Television Series 1955-1975 *******
Love gunsmoke
Sadly, because of pure greed on behalf of the studio or tv channel or whoever, you cannot find this wonderful show streaming anywhere, legally... Why are these old tv shows which made a profit the first time they aired (Because they had to) not in the free public domain? Such a travesty. Just a couple years ago they were here on RUclips for free but lawyers saw to it they were all removed now. No binge watching Gunsmoke. No main character besides Newly is even alive now to claim royalties. It should be illegal. 2-3 years is plenty long enough for Copyright. I don't keep getting paid for work I did decades ago, and my kids won't either.
Could you see an Intro like that to a show in 2020? Guy drawing a gun and shooting a bad guy dead in the street at High Noon?
Complaints about the violent opening in S10 challenged the producers to make changes. S11 & S12 actually got better, until those pestering complainers finally had their way.
one of the best to me is the best
Interesting 👍🏽
In opening scene where Dillion is riding a horse, what are those white objects in the background? There are three of them.
At 2:04 Mr. Redwing shot first; listen closely.
Bounty Law - Starring Rick Dalton
I’m most familiar with the 1959 intro
What episode is the gunsmoke season 5 season intro is in I can’t find it on direct tv
Where can I find the 1965-1966 intro without him saying Gunsmoke? Been trying to hunt that down for years
I love gunsmoke with all my heart but when It went to color it kind of lost some of its allure & authenticity I love the Black and Whites and the earlier episodes the better
Who else as a kid tried to out draw Matt Dillon 😉
me
Me, too ... and I went on to become a deputy sheriff 🤠👮♀️🇨🇱
Aka The show that everyone's grandma watched
Man I love when Matt use that gun. He didn't like killing but he knew put a bad guy 6 feet under
I like season one showdown intro
How come the Marshal Dillion intro isn't on the Season 5 dvd episodes?
3:20 The New Gunsmoke Sound
I like the 1965-66 best
Rip Matt dion
I Like Gunsmoke My Grandparents Watch That
Now, who played Matt Dillon again?!🤣
You don't show the first intros where he is at boot hill,all of these are from years later.
I wonder who would win. Matt or Lucas Mccain in a gunfight.
Answer: Paladin.😃
Was the Marshal Dillon intro actually used for the main show or was it used for summer re-runs? The 50's version of Dragnet used to retitle their re-runs as "Badge 714" to differentiate it from the new episodes.
Not summer reruns at first. The show was so popular that when it went to an hour in 1961, CBS aired the half-hour reruns as "Marshal Dillon" on Tuesday night for the entire season!
Mmm. In season 13 I thought they used the same footage from season 12, but used slightly different music.