Any Way You Look at It, Gunmoke Is a Prodigy Among TV Shows. It Has

Any way you look at it, Gunmoke is a prodigy among TV shows. It has been in the vanguard of the “adult” Westerns and of the so-- called “psychological” West- erns-although its makers deny any responsibility for the latter. It was-and still is ’ -the most literate Western. It has transformed its actors from little-known bit players into celebrities mobbed every- where they go; made tidy for- tunes for its creators, and sold enough cigarets to stretch sev- eral times around the world. Even more amazing under Chester (Dennis Weaver), Mar- shal Dillon (James Arness and Doc Adams (Milburn(Milburn Stone) are three reasons for show’s success. the circumstances, it is the most popular show of any sort on the air today-and has been right at the top ever since its beginning in radio. This despite the fact that it very often has no story in the commonly accepted sense of the word, sometimes being little more than a character sketch or vignette. Since everyone envies-and no one argues with-success, it in- evitably has become the most widely imitated show. Some of the things Matt Dillon does, which used to be continued Gunsmoke Keeps Blazing/continuad And Matt Dillon is no exception. If you look closely you will see that thought pretty daring, have become there are only three in the world who cliche’s because every Western does care at all whether Matt lives or dies. them. Thus it is fair to say Gunmoke One is Doc, who digs the bullets is also the most influential of its kind. out of him; another is Chester, who How did it get that way? And admires him and calls him Muster what’s more to the point, how does it Dellon, and the other is Kitty, the manage to stay that way? dance-hall girl, who loves him.” Like most successes, this one was So Meston wrote a radio show called achieved partly by accident and partly “Jeff Spain.”When they showed it by dogged perseverance over the to a then-top-executive of CBS, Harry chorus of “experts” who swore it Ackerman, he told them they must be couldn’t be done. out of their minds. “Westerns are for Back in 1952 there were laboring in children,” he said flatly, and the idea the vineyards of CBS radio a couple was dropped. of young men named Norman Mac- donnell and John Meston. Meston, a However, a month or so later a. Dartmouth graduate, is an angular- show called “Operation Underground” faced, strangely inarticulate-seeming suddenly went off the air and the net- man-a Colorado product who had work was left with an embarrassing spent a good deal of time working on gap in its programming. Ackerman, as southern Colorado ranches. Macdon- it turned out, had his own title for a nell, on the other hand, had come by Western-“Gunsmoke.” his love of cowhands and their patois “After that,” says Meston, “every- through a stable he had acquired in- thing was simple, We simply did ‘Jeff of all places-Hollywood. Spain’ and called it ‘Gunsmoke.’ ” The show was an immediate success. They had the notion that a Western Even the hardest-to-please critics might be done for radio which would were impressed. Then three months be, as Macdonnell puts it, “non-horse- later something transpired which operatic,” where everyone would be- made Macdonnell and Meston look have more or less as human beings like heroes. A movie called “High behave in real life, where the char- Noon" as released and suddenly the acters would resemble the real articles. adult Western came into almost uni- They sat down and made out a list of versal public acceptance. “Gunsmoke’’ all the things they planned not to do. was off and running so far ahead of No one would be allowed to say the field that no one could catch it. “sidewinding varmint,” no one would carry two guns slung low on the hip, Three years later the transition was no one would have a favorite horse, made to television. For this delicate much less one that did tricks. operation a new producer-director Instead, the show would operate on was brought in, an ebullient gentle- the revolutionary but entirely valid man named Charles Marquis Warren, principle that in the early West the while Macdonnell functioned as asso- most hated man in town was usually ciate producer and Meston continued the marshal. to write the radio scripts. It was War- “Half the time the town tamers were ren who cast the television version- worse than the gunmen they were and on this score he fought both hired to tame,”explains Macdonnell. Macdonnell and Meston, who were de- “And they were constantly suspect, termined to simply use the radio cast, no matter what good guys they were. regardless of whether or not the actors 10 suited their roles visually. writing. John used to underwrite so Warren won-luckily, because his much he’d drive everybody crazy, casting was inspired: Big Jim Arness especially on radio. You know-with (whose best-known previous credit the sparse dialog and long pauses. had been the title role in “The Thing”), They kept telling us, ‘You can’t do it.’ hulking, fatherly, capable of great Every time somebody’d come up with toughness and tenderness; Dermis that one, John would ask in his Weaver, the slightly comic yet human mumbling way, ‘Where in the book and dignified hanger-on around the does it say you can’t?’ So we did. jail house; Milburn Stone, perfect as “We both like the sound of real the elder statesman and wise man, cowboy talk. Some of it gets on the “Doc”;and Amanda Blake, whose show. Like the time I heard a cow- Kitty strikes a perfect balance be- hand of mine admiring a new mare. tween the hardness of her profession ‘Looks as if she might run a hole in and the softness which makes her ac- the wind,’ he said. John used the ceptable in every American home. line in a script." As it had in radio, Gunsmoke im- mediately proved a smash. What’s Meston’s principal preoccupation is more, the TV version had what with character. Indeed, he has been amounted to an inexhaustible supply accused of not being able to write of scripts. The radio shows-for the stories at all. Be this as it may, he most part-were adapted to the new has written some 160 radio scripts and medium. Then success began to go to each one of them has begun, he says, everyone’s head. According to Warren, with a phrase, a scrap of dialog or “It reached the point where I’d arrive some minute aspect of Western Ameri- on the set in the morning only to have cana that just happens to please him. Arness tell me that ‘Matt Dillon “I like to write with great simplicity,” wouldn’t say a line like that!’ Every- he says. “And I like to have my people body suddenly got to be a self-ap- solve real problems realistically. I like pointed authority.” character better than story, and to tell the truth I like radio writing better After a year of this, Warren left, than television. In radio there is more and the show reverted to Macdonnell play for the imagination.” and Meston. And it should be said that it is pri- It was Meston who conceived of the marily their taste and judgment that Chester character always calling Matt make the show what it is today. “Muster Dellon.” This would not be What’s their secret? unusual except that it has always “Well,” says Macdonnell, “we try seemed so inexorably right. Warren to capture some of the real feeling invented Chester’s limp (to explain of the West. As well as something away Chester’s constant presence real in the people. As soon as your around the marshal’s office). Again, lead becomes a hero, you’re in trouble. like almost everything in Gunsmoke, Sometimes we’ll sit down and say to it is somehow fitting. ourselves, You know, this fellow Dil- Says Warren, who is currently pro- lon is just getting too noble. Let’s fix ducing a fancy new Western of his him.’ So we do. John writes a script own called Rawhide: "Gunsmoke? It where poor old Matt gets outdrawn proves that people will still go for and outgunned and pulls every dumb folksy persiflage and that get-nowhere trick in the book. It makes him, and dialog. But, you know, it’s got some- us, human. thing. Just don’t ask me what.” “Then there is the trick of under- Dwight Whitney 11.

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