I only watched Gunsmoke on occasion. I could swear it had hour-long episodes. Apparently, it seems it had both? Also, I only recall Festus, not Chester. When did these changes come about?
Dennis Weaver (Chester) left the show in 1964. Festus (Ken Curtis) was already on the show, but took on a more prominent role after Weaver left.
AFAIK, the TV series was a half hour in the beginning, but expanded to an hour in 1961. There were also several made-for-TV movies.
RealityChuck beat me to it.
I watched it regularly, thought Chester was the star. (I was 10 in 1960.) When Dennis Weaver left the show I quit watching.
My 90 year old mother and Beckywreck love this show. They actually have a lot in common.
They could totally remake this with Matt Dillon playing Marshall Matt Dillon.
I watched lots of Gunsmoke as a child at my grandmother’s house off her VHS collection. My brother and I always preferred Chester to Festus.
I think it was the foundation that fed our later love of Bonanza, which led to us spending time working on actual cattle ranches.
Never watched it when it was on, but I’ve been catching the radio shows, which are quite good.
Early on in the pandemic I went through a TV Western phase, watching Gunsmoke, Bonanza and a few others on the on-air retro channels like MeTV, H&I or Decades.
It seems like there was a period after the show went from 1/2 hour to an hour, but still in the B&W era that Gunsmoke had some really dark-ass episodes. For example:
When Festus was on the show but was not yet Matt Dillon’s right-hand man, just another of the townsfolk (Chester was still deputy) there was an episode centering around Festus. It began with him getting into a fight with another guy while playing poker.
Then his cousin Daisy showed up and reminded him that their family agreed that if neither one was married by then, they would get hitched, so she was ready to get married to him. This resulted in Festus avoiding her because he didn’t want to get married, though he did help her find a place to stay while she was in town. So it seemed like it would be a light-hearted jokey episode.
Then the guy who Festus got in a fight with at the beginning showed up at Daisy’s place and advanced on her menacingly. Fade to commercial. The implication being that she was about to be raped and / or murdered.
In the next scene, Daisy, Matt, Festus, Miss Kitty and Doc were all sitting around a table. Daisy says “what man will want me now that my virtue has been stolen?” I wonder if that’s the first direct allusion to being raped on a prime time TV show?
So Festus tracks down the guy and shoots him to death in cold blood. None of that “Draw” shit, he just up and shoots the guy. Dillon arrests Festus, but says to Doc and Kitty, “don’t worry, no one in this town will convict him”.
The show ends on a happyish note when another of the Hagen cousins shows up to declare his love and marry Daisy.
Being a young man of 60, I’m a member of the Festus generation. I only knew about Chester because Barnie did an imitation of him on the Flintstones.
I’ve Been watching Gunsmoke again on the oldies channel. Loved it back when I was a kid, but I’m surprised at how much I’ve forgotten. Does anyone else remember the episode where a lady comes into Dodge on the stagecoach, and dies giving birth to triplets? I do remember that from when it was first on, but watching again I was trying to remember who played the judge. It was irritating because I KNEW I’d seen the guy and couldn’t put a name to him. And finally figured it out. It’s Uncle Jesse!(Denver Pyle) a true “that guy”.
I have Charlton Heston’s autobiography, and in it he tells a story about Milburn Stone, Doc Adams. He admired him as an actor and they were in a movie together, Heston’s only comedy The Private War of Major Benson. Back when TV series were in their infancy Stone was telling Heston about a contract he’d been offered, to do a series of short Westerns. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be roped into a seven year contract. So Heston told him to just go for a year. If the shows flopped, no problem. If it became popular, then they’d have to resign Stone at a hopefully higher rate. Of course we all know what happened and Heston said he liked to think he help Stone get rich.
I love Gunsmoke.
Matt Dillon is the bomb.
That dang Miss Kitty just sickens me. She needs to quit trying so hard.
I like Festus more than Chester.
I’ve recently moved over to Andy Griffith. I had overdosed on Gunsmoke.
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Festus was originally a rather shady character who couldn’t really be trusted completely. He became a dependable hero at about the changeover to color episodes.
He became a more stereotypical hillbilly character as he advanced in nobility.
The radio series with William Conrad as Matt Dillon is one of the best-written and believable radio dramas in my opinion.
It helps if you can picture Conrad as he looked during the '50s, as opposed to the overweight and bald Conrad who starred in “Cannon” on TV.
I agree completely. And it was surprisingly modern in many ways. There was an episode where a wife killer her abusive husband and didn’t show her being punished. I just listened to one where the reaction of the people of Dodge City strongly hinted that Kitty was a prostitute.
I thought John Stamos played Uncle Jesse 
Another future Dukes of Hazzard alumnus (James Best, who played Roscoe P. Coltrane) was on another pretty dark GS episode with a nice twist ending.
Best played a cowardly asshole who killed a woman out of jealousy, and fled, where he was captured by Matt Dillon while passing through Dodge,
Dillon took him back to his home town for trial, where he was sentenced to hang. He hysterically begged for his father, who was the mayor of the town, to do something to get him out of the hanging. His father said he tried but could not change the sentence, and told his son to pull himself together, stop crying and accept his fate like a man, for god’s sake.
Then in the middle of the night before the hanging the sheriff woke him up in his cell and said, your father paid me off to fake the hanging. It’s an extra long rope, so you’ll fall safely under the platform onto some hay bales, and then we’ll sneak you out of town and give you a horse to ride to Mexico. Here’s $1000 to live on.”
The next morning he went to his hanging just as happy as a clam. He tipped his hat to Marshall Dillon, who stayed to watch the hanging, and said “no hard feelings”. Then they put the rope around his neck, pulled the lever, and…
The town sheriff goes to the mayor and says “here’s your $1000 back”. The mayor says “at least he died like a man”.
Probably where Tales from the Crypt got the idea for the episode Yellow.
That episode was just on locally. She shot him just before the end, and Matt came, turned her around, and gently led he towards the marshall’s office.
I read the synopsis at your link. Could be, it’s the very same concept. It’s also possible it’s an even older story that the writer of that GS episode cribbed from.