Also, not too long ago I saw a rerun of this episode on television. The circuit judge that came to town, to decide the fate of the orphaned triplets, sure looked familiar. I kept thinking, “I know this guy!” I didn’t want to Google, I like figuring these conundrums out myself. Finally I did a :smack:. It was Denver Pyle, better know to me as Uncle Jesse, from the Dukes of Hazzard TV series. Without the beard he looked different.
And that episode was the only one, it’s said, in which a gun was never fired, although I don’t have a cite for that.
At the time you almost never saw non-regular characters after their appearance in a single episode. But in a later Gunsmoke the family that adopted the triplets(and they already had a dozen kids!) was seen again, when they took in yet another, a girl who’d been abandoned and lived in the wild by herself.
Arness is another of my childhood heroes. I recall the excitement in the early 1990’s when he came back for several Gunsmoke tv movies. Even at that age he seemed very tough and still the Matt Dillon I remembered.
For those not getting the joke: an MST3K riff during a Peter Graves movie (parts: the clonus horror). Possibly the funniest 10 seconds ever on television, IMHO.
While we had much of that genre available to us; The Rifleman, Wanted, Death Valley Days, Have Gun Will Travel, for some reason I only remember about a year’s worth of Gunsmoke. Pity as much of it was on par with or better than just about everything else. Arness was captivating, his character and demeanor seeming dead perfect for the part. I’d like to know more too about his WWII experiences. Wounded by a machine gun at Anzio? Dayum.
I got to learn a bunch more about Ken Curtis, Festus, later though a friend of my in laws. Dick was a CO rancher, one hilarious sonuvabitch and grew up in Las Animas best friends with Ken. He told us many stories about the crap the two of them would get into, like when they and a buddy rode their horses full gallop racing down through a draw. Ken hit a branch of grapevine hanging down, was knocked from his horse and broke both arms in the fall. Dick 'bout broke a rib laughing at Ken trying to get him back on his horse. They remained good friends over the years and Dick would always light up at mention of his name and soon have us laughing at their exploits.
I passed by the Las Animas jail there in front of the courthouse several times last week but just now realized that’s where Ken was raised. It’s easy to believe though that those environs contributed to some of the character development he employed in Gunsmoke and his movies. Bogsville too, where Kit Carson was first buried, is just down the road.
