Top
Gunsmoke Television Episodes: The Harris List
I love your list
of top ten and bottom ten episodes of Gunsmoke. The CBS
affiliate in my hometown carried it for 20 years on the network and
16 more
years in reruns. The reruns are of the color episodes, so I missed
all of
the Norman McDonnell-John Meston collaborations and view the John Mantley
shows. I probably have about 50 of them on tape, perhaps more.
Here's a list,
in chronological order, of the episodes I really like and
don't like. There are a good many more than ten! Most of
the shows I list
are not on your list, in order to avoid duplication. And once
in a while, I
go against your choices outright. In one case ("Arizona Midnight"),
I had a
good time watching the show because it was so darn silly, even though
the
producers hated it themselves.
I also have not
seen some acclaimed episodes such as "This Golden Land"
(March 5, 1973; a very early role for Richard Dreyfuss). Some
other shows
just don't appeal to me because they overwork a theme ("Hostage!" being
a
prime example). And, especially in the 19th season, co-producer
Leonard
Katzman showed the cockiness which would lead to Bobby Ewing in the
shower on
Dallas and really turn off many viewers.
Particularly Good Gunsmoke Episodes:
"The
Jailer" (October 1, 1966). Little remains to be said about this
episode, except for "Look at that guest cast!"
Okay, Zalman King is the guy
who produced The Red Shoe Diaries and Bo Derek's
series Wind on Water, but
other than that ... Bruce Dern, Tom Skerritt and
Julie Sommars all in the
same episode. This was Bette Davis's first major
television appearance, and
even though she was notorious for her temperament
on the set, she seems to
have kept it under control and gotten her first
glimpse of television as a
workable medium for her talents.
"Mistaken
Identity" (March 18, 1967). A killer happens upon a snakebite
victim, gives him a swift kick in the face to
finish him off, and then swaps
identity papers with him -- only to have the second
man brought into Dodge
alive but seemingly amnesiac. What makes
this episode work is the late
Albert Salmi really getting into it as the killer,
who has the cunning of a
trapped rat. At one point he meets two bounty
hunters who, not recognizing
him, offer him $25 to root out the second man.
He says, and you believe him,
that "I spent three months repairing fence lines
in the dead of winter for
less than that." Also watch over a marvelous
scene between the bounty
hunters (Ken Mayer and the underrated Sam Melville)
in their hotel room where
they seem almost reasonable. (Note: for
some reason Ken Curtis is not seen
in this episode, so Glenn Strange as Sam gets
a substantially larger part.)
"Nitro!"
(April 8 and 15, 1967). This was the last episode of the twelfth
season, and it's the one where Matt's mad horseback
dash finds a place in the
series' later openings. The entire two hours
are taut as you can get them,
but the aforementioned horseback race (Matt's
trying to stop David Canary
from mixing a batch of nitroglycerin) is the key:
the crew was on location
preparing to turn on the camera when word came
down that the show was
canceled. James Arness was staring straight
into the abyss of his career
when he got on that horse, and he "rode like the
wind" (to quote an excellent
book on the show). It creates a chill running
the length of your spine, even
though CBS head William Paley got back from vacation
after the episode was in
the can, and promptly reinstated Gunsmoke as a
Monday show, leading to TV's
biggest-ever comeback in the ratings. Incidentally,
this role probably
landed Canary his job on Bonanza!
"Major
Glory" (October 30, 1967). This is worth seeing just to watch
Carroll
O'Connor (in the title role) before he was Archie
Bunker and Chief/Sheriff
Gillespie. Suffice it to say that he still
had some subtlety in him back
then. He can also stare down a killer like
nobody's business; when the
killer fires at him he barely grazes O'Connor's
ribs because he's too scared
to aim.
"Deadman's
Law" (January 8, 1968). What would really happen if a "vigilance
committee" ran the town? You guessed it.
The interest here is finding
Gunnar Hellstrom, the series' most frequent director
in the latter years, in f
ront of the camera (the episode was directed by
John Rich). He's not much of
an actor but is well-placed in the role of sidekick
to smoothly evil John
Dehner, and the gunfight in a canyon is a wow.
"Mannon"
(January 20, 1969). This was the basis for the first Gunsmoke
followup movie, which is extremely unfortunate
because that film purely and
simply butchered the premise. The world's
fastest gun can outdraw anyone --
he even says he can beat a shotgun-wielding bartender
who has the weapon
aimed and his finger on the trigger -- and consequently
lives like a king
wherever he goes as people bribe him to avoid
a showdown. Steve Forrest's
cool and polished performance would enliven this
and several other episodes,
and he makes this one work. BTW, he does
outdraw Matt and drop him in his
tracks -- but doesn't count on Matt having enough
life in him to call out and
beat him on the second try.
"The
Prisoner" (March 17, 1969). There were too many episodes where
a nice
guy in Matt's custody is wanted for a murder he
didn't mean to commit (there
had been one just like this a month earlier, postponed
from the previous
season). But this one ranks because it was
Jon Voight's last TV role before M
idnight Cowboy, and for some neat touches by director
Leo Penn (Sean's
father). In particular catch Kenneth Tobey
in a unique reversal of roles (he
was the scientist who ultimately stopped The Thing
-- played by James Arness
-- in the famed 1951 movie), and Joshua Shelley
as a drunkard who collects
the bounty on Voight, only to see his friends
disappear and his conscience
reappear in one shattering moment.
"Doctor
Herman Schultz, M.D." (January 26, 1970) The elderly comedian
Benny
Rubin pitched this story idea to CBS as a star
vehicle for himself; CBS
accepted it, had a staff writer work on the characterizations
(including nice
bits for the occasional players) and turned it
over to Bernard McEveety, the
later Gunsmoke's most prolific director and a
very underrated talent.
(Vincent is his brother.) This is fun, plain
and simple, as the title
character uses hypnosis (or "mesmerization") to
swindle people out of money.
But he's never seen anything like his old friend
Doc Adams, who's too smart
to be duped by this bit of nonsense, or Festus
-- who's too dumb! And catch
that final chase scene between the two old physicians
-- though obviously
shot on-set in front of a rear-projection screen,
it's both funny and
exciting.
"The
Badge" (February 2, 1970) Finally Kitty walks out on Matt (who's been
wounded in a gun battle) and buys into a saloon
in another town, with Beverly
Garland as her partner. The catch?
The town boss, played by Henry Jones in
a wonderfully prissy and precise performance.
He has the whole town under
his thumb and goes so far as to frame Matt for
assaulting a woman after he
arrives in the town. Jones pretty much makes
this one, but there's also a
nice bit with the downtrodden town sheriff (John
Milford). WARNING, WARNING,
WARNING! Footage from this episode was lifted
and used as an explanation for
Kitty's departure from the show in "Gunsmoke:
Return to Dodge" -- even though
Amanda Blake didn't leave for more than four years
and they could have used
"The Disciple" (below), her real last episode,
just as easily. And a swift
kick in the synthesizer for the sound editor who
redubbed the distinctive
"POW" gunshots in the gun battle.
"Albert"
(February 9, 1970) Three in a row is quite a run. In this case,
an
inconspicuous bank clerk (Milton Selzer, who doesn't
get top billing despite
the title role) foils a robbery in progress --
after the thieves have opened
the safe -- and pockets $5,000. The thieves
take particular exception to
that, and hold the clerk and his wife hostage
while they try again. Nice to
see Roy Roberts appear as Mr. Bancroft, the banker,
and to see the
mild-mannered William Schallert as a particularly
cold villain.
"Chato"
(September 14, 1970) This episode was the one most frequently rerun
over the next four years, and it's easy to see
why. It was the best work
ever done by director Vincent McEveety, who was
one of a brother pair
directing nearly a third of the color shows and
is still going (he was a
regular director on Murder, She Wrote).
Chato is almost a match for Khan of S
tar Trek and the role was probably written with
that character in mind
(Ricardo Montalban played both roles, of course);
a supremely evil but
supremely intelligent and crafty leader who knows
when to take the path of
righteousness. The action scenes are the
best in the whole series.
"Murdoch"
(February 8, 1971) Director Robert Totten, who is best remembered
as the man who originated the "Alan Smithee" pseudonym
for directors who
don't want a screen credit (a movie he had started
was taken away from him
and finished by Don Siegel; each director admired
the other's work and was
unwilling to take credit for the final film) and
as a minor-league actor, was
in fact a quite good worker on this series.
It never hurts, of course, to
have Jack Elam in the title role. In this
one, Elam is pursuing a
particularly notorious gang (led by the great
Jim Davis, albeit in a cameo
role) whose members sign their names "John Doe"
if they aren't known to the
law already. What Elam doesn't know is that his
own son is one of those John
Does, a teenager who will be hanged under a blanket
execution order if he
doesn't 'fess up. The son (Bob Random) shows
no inclination to do so, so
Elam goes off with Random in tow to find the leader
of the gang, while Matt
plies another gang member (Anthony Caruso) to
identify the real bad apples of
the gang -- "Have you ever done one decent thing
in your whole life?" The
final gunfight is great, though you may notice
Davis fires eight bullets from
a six-gun.
"New
Doctor in Town" (October 11, 1971) You could never replace Doc Adams.
But you could substitute for him briefly when
Milburn Stone was recovering
from heart surgery, and who better to have for
the role than Pat Hingle.
Hingle's character, Dr. John Chapman, was smart
enough to do things his own
way and to use the power of persuasion when people
-- like Newly, deluded
from a brain injury and holding a family hostage
with a rifle -- really
needed it. Hingle also did a neat turn in
"Lijah" (November 15) when he
realized that an eccentric mountain man accused
of murder was really deaf and
had been treated by him many years earlier --
"I was probably the last man to
do anything kindly for him."
"Drago"
(November 22, 1971) This was the first role Buddy Ebsen took after
the close of The Beverly Hillbillies. Imagine
Jed Clampett with a really bad
temper and you'll have Drago, an old Indian scout
who returns to his adoptive
family to find the mother murdered and the son
critically injured. The
efforts by Newly to keep Drago from running completely
rampant make the show
work, but don't forget Ben Johnson, who would
win an Oscar a few months later
for The Last Picture Show, as the leader of the
outlaw gang. This,
incidentally, was by far the highest-rated episode
of the season and gave Guns
moke its best-ever seasonal rating as a Monday
series.
"Alias
Festus Haggen" (March 6, 1972). Your jaw will drop when you see
Ken
Curtis walk into a room minus "them mangy chin
whiskers" and the accent he
adopted for the show. Seems that a vicious
killer named Frank Eaton is
almost a perfect likeness for Festus Haggen, and
a dogged sheriff has Festus
in custody ready to hang (or worse) for Eaton's
crimes. Ramon Bieri and
Lieux Dressler (each of whom had played smaller
roles earlier in the season)
are neat to watch as the sheriff and as Eaton's
two-timing wife, but Curtis
is the main attraction.
"The
Brothers" (November 27, 1972). For some reason this aired back-to-back
with "Hostage" (with a preemption in between),
even though they are almost
completely identical in theme -- a killer seeks
revenge on Kitty for the
death of his brother. I prefer this one,
although the fight scene in
"Hostage!" is the classic of all fight scenes.
Steve Forrest again is the
soul of cool and calmness as a vicious killer
who uses a knife and a small
revolver in alternation. He comes closer
to winning the gunfight with Matt
than almost anybody would.
"A
Quiet Day in Dodge" (January 29, 1973) Now here's a change in
pace -- a
comedy about a day in Dodge that is anything but
quiet. Matt has to deal
with one crisis after another, particularly a
youngster for whom the word
"problem child" was invented (played by Willie
Aames, who was told to just
have fun and does). The show loses some
of its impact today because Matt
disciplines the little fellow with a really good
spanking (and later tells
the boy's parents what he did, prompting them
to spank all ten of their other
children on the spot), but all in all it's lots
of fun. Incidentally, this
was the last episode written by Jack Miller, who
committed suicide later on
-- a tragic loss of the later series' best writer.
"The
Disciple" (April 1, 1974) This isn't that good a show, but it is so
much
better than the 19th-season episodes which preceded
it that it deserves a
mention. This was the season finale and
Amanda Blake's last episode, and --
wouldn't you know it -- Matt takes a shotgun blast
which disables his right
arm. His gun arm. He immediately walks
out on Dodge and turns drifter, only
to save the life of an Army deserter who loves
to show off his gun skills but
wouldn't kill a man to save his life. (References
to the My Lai massacre in
Vietnam, six years earlier, are unmistakable.)
Too bad the gang which pulled
off the bank robbery that led to Matt's shooting
are still on his tail. Nice
work by Dennis Redfield (as the young gunslinger)
Frank Marth (as the outlaw
leader) and David Huddleston in a cameo as a bounty
hunter.
"Matt
Dillon Must Die!" (September 9, 1974) The series took a surprising
rebound in quality -- albeit with some ups and
dcwns -- during this final
season. You've seen this "The Most Dangerous
Game" variant in every Western
and many cop shows, but not with Victor French
behind the camera for his lone
crime story. (It was not the first episode
he filmed, but CBS was impressed
enough to have it lead off the season.)
Morgan Woodward, as the demented
leader of an outlaw clan, brings this one way
up, as does Joseph Hindy as the
one clan member who's never taken part in a killing.
Note: Not once does any
body say Matt Dillon's name in the entire hour.
"The
Fourth Victim" (November 4, 1974) When Gunsmoke decided to do a mystery,
they wisely let director Bernard McEveety do it
as he saw fit -- turning it
into a suspense tale more than anything else.
The fact that the guest cast
has no names in it and make only brief, scattered
appearances helps a lot,
because with no prominent roles there are no cheap
clues to the killer's
identity. The endless tracking movements
of the camera following the
murderer (seen only from the chest down or in
deep shadow) really work well,
as does the surprise at the end -- although the
killer must have been deaf
not to pick out which Matt Dillon out of three
is the real one. (James
Arness's two stunt doubles play the other men
posing as Matt; neither one soun
ds like Arness.) By the way, victim Victor
Killian, whose role seems to be
the same Mr. Jones played by Dabbs Greer in the
half-hour series, would later
be featured as "The Fernwood Flasher" in Mary
Hartman, Mary Hartman -- and
would himself be murdered in a still-unsolved
case in 1979.
"The
Tarnished Badge" (November 11, 1974) For the last time ever, Victor
French would play a villain. (As noted earlier,
he was a regular director
for this season and also playing Mr. Edwards on
Little House on the Prairie.)
Never was there a more vivid illustration
of absolute power corrupting
absolutely; the only soft spot French has is for
his deputy, and that changes
fast when French is forced out as sheriff and
kills the deputy (Nick Nolte!)
in a staredown. The inevitable final confrontation
is handled like a world
championship chess match. This was the only
20th-season episode to go
entirely outside the staff for writing and directing.
"The
Fires of Ignorance" (January 27, 1975) Yet another atypical episode,
and
one of the most honored shows in the history of
the series. This one is
entirely focused on the right of a child to get
a full public education;
Lance Kerwin plays an uncommonly bright youth
whose studies get him in
trouble on his father's farm, Allen Garfield (remember
him in the later film
"Teachers?" as the schoolmaster determined to
mentor him, and John Vernon
(delicious irony -- Dean Wormer in "Animal House")
as the student's father
who wants his boy working the fields instead.
Educational organizations gave
this one all sorts of honors. Not surprisingly,
it was directed by Victor
French; somewhat more surprisingly, it was written
by Jim Byrnes, who
certainly isn't the one you would think would
be writing a school drama. The
last major roles for Milburn Stone (Doc) and Herb
Vigran (Judge Brooker).
"Hard
Labor" (February 24, 1975) I am told this was the last episode
filmed
(it is shown three episodes before the end in
the syndication package), and
it's definitely the last one to feature Matt Dillon.
(In today's world it
would probably be held back and run as a May-sweeps
series finale.) That by
itself would qualify it for a top slot, but wonderful
casting and Earl
Wallace's only decent script push it on up even
higher. You saw the premise
before in "The Jailer" (Hal Sitowitz co-wrote
both episodes) and heaven knows
where else. But you never saw Hal Williams
as a cunning hired hand to a
judge's silver mine, Gregory Sierra as a grinning
guard, or especially
William Smith as a half-broken, three-quarters-mad
convict. Other casting
notes: John Colicos, though best known as
the villain in Battlestar Galactica
and as Star Trek's first-ever Klingon (he
played the same role several more
times thirty years later in Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine), is adequate here as
the judge who's still trying to prove he's king
of the hill. And that is
Gerald McRaney, with a reasonable head of blond
hair and clean-shaven to
boot, starting things off as a fugitive killed
by Matt. (John G. Stephens,
who produced the last dozen episodes, must have
thanked his lucky stars for
many years thereafter: he produced McRaney's Simon
and Simon and Major Dad
series for twelve years.) Incidentally,
Matt's last-ever gunfight is with
McRaney, but at show's end he gets the drop on
Sierra and shoots him as
Sierra fires at Williams. Williams comes
back and kills Colicos -- the last
person to be shot dead on the series.
"The
Busters" (March 10, 1975) This was repeated as the last series episode
on Labor Day 1975. It's a character study,
and any show which can make John
Beck look like a good actor deserves at least
a mention. In fact, he's great
here! Beck's partner, the young Gary Busey,
gets kicked in the head by a
horse early in the show. Though Busey doesn't
know it, Doc Adams has told
Beck that Busey is dying of a subdural hematoma,
uncontrollable bleeding into
the brain. (You don't have to be John Beck
to look confused by that one.)
There are no immediate symptoms, so Beck decides
to give Busey the time of
his life. Finally Busey spots the horse
which kicked him, determines to ride
it until it's broken, and does -- only to stagger
and drop dead in his tracks
after dismounting. Tilt up and away.
Pass the popcorn.
From: HHarrisFam@aol.com
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:38:43 EDT
Subject: Best Ten and Worst Ten Gunsmoke Episodes?
- Click HERE to see the 2001 Harris List AddendumClick Here to see Worst Gunsmoke Episodes: The Harris List.
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