Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
QoTD: Matt Dillon’s Burden
Chester: I been thinkin’ lately a whole lot about all this and there’s just somethin’ that you been forgettin’!
Matt Dillon: That so.
Chester: Yeah, that’s so. It’s men like Stanger and Brand, ’cause they got to be stopped! That’s all. They gotta be! I’d do it if I could, but I can’t. I just ain’t good enough. Most men ain’t, but you are. It’s kinda too bad for ya that ya are, but that’s the way it is and there ain’t a thing in the world you can do about it.
In the opening scene of “Bloody Hands”, a second season (1956-7) episode of Gunsmoke, Marshal Matt Dillon guns down three outlaws but is left despairing in the aftermath, knowing there will always be more outlaws, more men he will need to kill, and he is sick of it. Matt resigns as Marshal of Dodge City, with deputy Chester Goode serving in his stead until a new Marshal is appointed.
Matt is relaxing, picnicking with Kitty, outside town, when Chester arrives with news a gunman has killed a bar girl and pleads with Matt to return. Matt refuses and the conversation above ensues. After Chester speaks, Matt does not respond, but puts on his gun belt, mounts his horse, and rides back into Dodge as the show closes. He knows Chester is right and it is his duty to take on the burden, no matter what it costs him.
Gunsmoke ran for 635 episodes over 20 years (1955-75). As a child, I didn’t watch it because for its first 12 seasons it was broadcast at 10 pm on Saturdays, after my bedtime, and by the time it switched in later seasons to an earlier time slot I was a teenager and too cool to watch a stodgy Western.
Over the past few months, I’ve watched perhaps 20 episodes (all black and white, so prior to 1967) and been struck by how good the show was. The scripts are strongly morally focused, but the characters and dialogue are not simple morality plays.
Surprisingly, I also found myself thinking of the similarities between Gunsmoke and Twilight Zone, particularly the black & white hour-long shows between 1961-66, shot in similar black and white style, in the use of close-ups, and with the same intensity in much of the storytelling. And just like Twilight Zone, there have been some unexpected twists near the end of some Gunsmokes.
Gunsmoke is also unsparing in its depiction of the inhabitants of Dodge City and, in particular, of the struggling settlers trying to carve out a living from the prairie, some honestly, some not so much.
The three main characters, Matt, Doc, and Kitty, are strong, honorable, not pushovers and the lessons provided are delivered roughly with no sugar coating. It is striking to compare it to modern TV which seems to know only two modes; providing gentle and trite lessons via one-dimensional characters or cynical, world-weary observations. Gunsmoke, by avoiding both, evokes an America that seems ever more distant in the past, but which might be helpful to revive.
Published in Group Writing
Death Valley Days is also a good old series. Maybe it was not quite as sophisticated as Gunsmoke, but it was at least loosely connected to actual historical events.
My husband watched a couple of these episodes at some point in the past year, and I watched some with him. I agree with everything you’ve written.
Interesting, isn’t it.
Well said, Mark. We need those symbols if we are going to save this country. Thanks.
I remember thinking as a kid, what kind of moron takes on Marshall Dillon? At 6’6″ and mostly muscle one bullet isn’t gonna stop him anyway and he is also faster on the draw than any of the bad guys and he has had lots of practice snuffing out villains. Idiots.
I have always assumed that Doctor McCoy’s character in Star Trek was inspired by Milburn Stone’s Doc in Gunsmoke.
My mother used to joke about the eternal patience of Miss Kitty who was pretty long in the tooth by the time Matt Dillon was ready to settle down.
I haven’t checked but I gotta believe Lileks must have written about the Minnesota roots of James Arness.
It was a different time in America, only shortly after WWII. They understood those sorts of lessons, because it had not been long since a lot of the people involved in the production had faced them. I’m not sure how to bring that sensibility back.
This is the Quote of the Day, an ongoing project to help get more voices on the site. It can be the easiest way to start a conversation on Ricochet. (Some people do put in a lot more effort, of course.) Our sign-up sheet for December is here and waiting for you. We welcome new participants and new members to Ricochet to share their favorite quotations.
Another ongoing project to encourage new voices is our Group Writing Project. December’s theme is ‘Tis the Season. If you’re looking to share your own thoughts rather than those of others and have some ideas about the holiday(s) season we are entering, why not sign up there?
We watched Gunsmoke religiously when I was a kid – we must have lived in time zones within my bedtime. I don’t remember attaching any particular moral lessons to the episodes, and I’m sure my parents didn’t, or if they did they didn’t discuss the shows with me. But perhaps they wormed themselves into my subconscious since any episodes I have seen as an adult fully comport with my own values.
Now go back even farther. The CBS radio show had 480 original stories and that both preceded and ran parallel to the television series. (1952-61)
William Conrad (Cannon, Jake and the Fat Man) was Marshall Dillon and Howard McNear (Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show) was Doc.
Many of the early radio scripts were adapted for the TV run.
But in the opening of the show Marshall Dillon is outdrawn and fires second. Somehow the bad guy always misses but the Marshall’s one shot is deadly. Curious.
True – with a few tweaks and alterations to suit the director or the medium. An early ep in which a young girl seeks out Dillon to help her ailing father ran on radio and TV, and in the latter the girl is standoffish, diffident, evasive, and a bit off. I’m sure the reused scripts abound with such changes.
The TV show also had the advantage of a wider actor pool, unlike the radio show, which reused a small pool of actors. You’d hear the same voices week after week – nervy jumped-up young guy, drawling slow-talking man of few words, hot-shot killer – all in different roles. I wonder whether people noticed, or cared.
Aficionados of character actors surely date back at least to Shakespeare’s time, but only recently has it been possible for them to blog about it.
Used to watch Gunsmoke as a kid, and loved it. I remember reading somewhere that on one of the earlier episodes of Gunsmoke, Albert Einstein had a cameo role.
Alas, no. Einstein died the year the TV show began. As Snopes says:
Thanks for the reality check.
Gumby, you forgot Festus, surly he was one of the main characters. Gunsmoke was a family favorite of ours. It seems to me the coming of the antihero saw a end to scripts that reinforced straightforward virtues unashamedly.
For those who enjoy or enjoyed Gunsmoke , I recommend Longmier, streaming on Netflix. It’s shares many of the same values. It’s well written and acted.
We watched all of Longmire also. Now I am listening to all the books in order.
As much as I loved Gunsmoke and Longmire I now look forward to Yellowstone. Go figure.
Anyone remember Bonanza?
Sure, but they didn’t seem like real cowboys.
There was also Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel, Cheyenne. I couldn’t stand Big Valley.
It was liberalism’s answer to Bonanza.
I’ve read all of Craig Johnson’s Longmier novels. They are all fun, but I like the earlier ones best. I watched a little of Yellowstone, there was too much sex in it for my taste. I like stories with admirable main characters. Matt Dillon and Walt Longmier fit the bill.
Had the same reaction to the Longmier novels. Thought the early ones were great and then they got a little weird for me.