Relaxing in the paneled den of his years. Dennis Weaver’s problem is that made of both these proposed pro- the Dodge City bastille, where, it $250,000 home on its $50,000 hilltop so far he has found no other role grams under auspices which seemed to should be noted, he is always welcome, acre overlooking the San Fernando which provides an actor with $250,000 guarantee their going on the air. Be- usually on his own terms. Valley, Dennis Weaver says--with just homes and $50,000 hilltop acres. tween times, Weaver had visions of Those terms include a limited num- a trace of Gunsmoke’s Chester in his It isn’t that he hasn’t tried. Twice himself as the young Abraham Lincoln ber of appearances-15 last season, 12 voice--“I don’t think any less seri- he has let it be known that he was in a television series based upon the next-in which he has a leading role, ously about Chester than I did about leaving Gunsmoke for good-once to Civil War President’s early legal at a six-figure salary comparable to King Lear in college.” emcee a variety show called TV To- career. But when these projects dis- the one he received in the days when But he says it as if he would prefer night and again to star in a dramatic appeared into the dark land where un- he did 39 shows a year. Thus, ‘where to be playing Lear-or almost any- program called The Giant Step, in seen TV programs go, he came limping Jimmy Durante used to proclaim, “I thing else-rather than the Dodge City which he would play the vice-princi- gratefully back to the familiar can do widdout Broadway, but can deputy he has portrayed for eight pal of a high school. Pilot films were warmth. security and bad coffee of Broadway do widdout me?” continued

6 7 Dennis Weaver/ continued he majored at Oklaboma, had not ex- ceeded his interest in athletic, he When he could not find work acting, covered with plastic and there is a it appears that neither Dennis Weaver might have done better than sixth in he sold vacuum cleaners and worked narrow strip of carpet to walk on so nor Gusmnoke can do without the the Olympic trials. He recalls, ‘The for a florist. He says, “The day the that the white wall-to-wall carpeting other, although the program has taken tryouts were in Bloomfield, New Jer- director called to tell me I’d be Ches- won’t get soiled. out insurance in the bulky form of sey. As soon as I got there, I headed ter, I was out delivering flowers.” Concerning Frankenstein’s monster,_ part-time deputy Burt Reynolds, and right for New York to see a friend of He got the- part as a result of his Boris-Karloff once-said, “He is a very Dermis Weaver keeps right on looking mine. He had graduated from Okla- performance in a motion picture-~ dear old friend.” That is the way. for something else. homa the year before. I walked around called “Seven Angry Men “which was Dennis Weaver feels about Chester. This season, Weaver wants to be all day watching rehearsals and directed by Charles Marquis Warren, But the monster was known to over- through with all his Gunsmoke ap- ended up staying in New York all the first producer-director of Gun- whelm a lot of people. Dennis Weaver pearances by late October, so that he night, sleeping on somebody’s couch. smoke. Today Weaver says, “I don’t doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by will be free to make another pilot- I got back to Bloomfield in time to suit know what he saw in me that sug- Chester, but perhaps he already has this time for a series called Kentucky’s up. My legs were dead from walking gested Chester. In the pilot script been and refuses to admit it. Kid, about a horse trainer and a Chi- on concrete all the day before.” Chester was almost dimwitted, and I -Leslie Raddatz nese orphan, which NRC hopes to get His New York friend was Lonny thought they’d made a mistake-that on the air in the fall of 1934. Chapman, who played the part of I was supposed to read for the part of Turk, the young javelin thrower in Matt” Disabused of this impression, Wants to be top man “Come Back, Little Sheba,” starring he first did Chester “straight” and im- Shirley Booth. Dennis Weaver’s first mediately realized that he had not “I’ve exhausted the potential of professional job was understudying done well. Then recalling an Okla- Chester,” he says, and after eight years him, and eventually he replaced Chap- homa accent he and a college friend this is undoubtedly true. But Norman man when the “Little Sheba” company had worked up, he asked for five Macdonnell, producer of Gunsmoke, went on the road. At the end of the minutes to rehearse. “I had been try- sees more to it than that: “Denny tour Dennis returned to New York and ing to get the regionalism out of my wants to be the top man-the star-of enrolled at The Actors Studio, where speech, so it was hard for me to get his own series, and he won’t be happy actress Shelley Winters saw him and it back in,? he says. “But after five until he finds out whether he can brought him to the attention of Uni- minutes I came in and read again.” make it or not.” versal-International Studios. Weaver was hired. Chester’s limp was James Arness. who is not the talka- added later: tive type on screen or off, is reluctant A Jimmy Stewart type Charles Marquis Warren says that to discuss Dennis Weaver and his Dennis Weaver got the part simply plans for the future. The two men are He saw no immediate future for- “because he is such a fine actor. In friendly on the set, but Weaver says, himself on the Broadway stage, and ‘Seven Angry Men’ he had to go in- ‘We don’t socialize otherwise. My wife he had a wife, Gerry, whom he had sane, and he did it so well that I knew and I socialize mostly with our Little married in 1945, and a child, born in he could do. anything.” League friends.” (Weaver is manager 1943. Thus, when Universal offered Probably Dennis Weaver can do of the Encino Cubs, for whom his 10- him a contract in 1952, he grabbed it. anything. And therein lies his prob- year-old son plays left field.) “They had a training program for lem. Discontented with the limitations Weaver has always been a tough young actors,” ha says. ‘They saw me of Chester, he continues to look for competitor-which makes Chester’s as a James Stewart type.” something more challenging. But then limp one of the ironies of television. However the studio may have seen he considers the million dollars he re- In high school in Jopliu, MO., where he Weaver, they put him in a series of portedly received for bis residual was born on June 4, 1924, Dennis set minor roles in undistinguished West- rights in Gunsmoke, and he looks track-and-field records which still erns and let him go at the end of a about bim at the home that Chester stand. During two years in the Navy year. By this time his wife was ex- built, with its tennis court and swim- in World War II, he set a speed-and- pecting their second child. He free- ming pool; its “children’s wing of agility record. After the war, at the lanced during 1953 and 1954-small three bedrooms and two baths for the University of Oklahoma, he became a parts in movies and TV and a little- three boys, Rick, 14, Rob, 10, and decathlon star and tried out for the theater production of “A Streetcar Rusty, 4; its luxurious master suite American Olympic team in 1943. Named Desire,”in which he played with king-size bed and sunken bath- If his interest in drama, in which Kowalski to Shelley Winters’ Blanche. tub; its show-place living room, where the giant curved couches are kept 8