A Handy Guide to the GUNSMOKE TV Movies, Part 1

Donna and I recently completed our plan to watch GUNSMOKE in its entirety - some 20 Seasons and 635 episodes. I didn't know much about the show, as it had never appealed to me from afar, but my friend Larry Blamire sent me a small stack of his favorite episodes and they got me interested. What took me by surprise was the quality of the writing, the guest stars, even its cinematography. When I finally took the bait, the next step was predicated on buying the CBS complete series DVD box set, a pricey item. Fortunately I found a refurbished used set within our range (with no apparent problems other than a torn seam in the outer packaging), and it turned out to be one of our happiest entertainment purchases. We started seriously watching late last July, and we finished last night with postscript screenings of the five GUNSMOKE TV movies. Since finishing the series, I've been wrestling with regrets that I didn't take notes on each of the episodes. A few friends have even been nudging me to write a book about the show, which is a nice idea but my schedule is pretty much claimed for the near future. But it wasn't too late to write something about the TV movies, so here is my handy guide yet another surprising high quality body of work.

GUNSMOKE: RETURN TO DODGE (1989) - Though more than a decade had passed since the cancellation of the twenty-seasoned series, the first GUNSMOKE TV movie feels very much like an authentic continuation, thanks to a still-authoritative James Arness and two other series veterans: director Vincent McEveety (45 episodes) and writer Jim Byrnes (34 episodes). Milburn Stone had died in 1980 and Ken Curtis was insulted by the offer they made, so neither Doc nor Festus is present (save in flashbacks). It's hard to see how the story could have accommodated them anyway; it's too busy getting told to allow for much Old Home Week indulgences. That said, a measure of sentiment is allowed for the return of Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty, absent from the final season, who (we're told) left Dodge for New Orleans when Matt came too close to death in an earlier episode. (This actually happened in "The Badge" - Season 15, Episode 19 - four years and dozens of episodes prior to her real leave-taking of the series. Hey, artistic license.) Alas, their relationship appeared to be waning even as the series endured - both characters were given independent and ultimately tragic love stories in Blake's final season - and here, with a much-slimmer Blake audibly restrained by recent oral surgery - there is an air of inevitable defeat hovering over their relationship. Steve Forrest's Mannon (GUNSMOKE's most chilling villain, introduced in Season 14, Episode 17) and Earl Holliman (a three-episode veteran playing a new character, albeit one with past history of Dillon) also return, and with them there's a hell-yes feeling of recaptured thunder in their performances. Arness has lost none of his authority as Matt Dillon but he took the wrong advice about his hair, which frames his well-lined face like an anachronistic Elvis wig. Latter-day series regular Buck Taylor returns as Newly O'Brien, now Dodge City's newly-mustachioed sheriff, and he is a particular standout in impressive company; he has aged wonderfully into his role, and gives it everything he’s got. I was also pleased to spot Mickey Jones - former drummer for Bob Dylan, the Hawks, and Trini Lopez - in a supporting, rifle-toting role. If it’s rushed for time and a little too obviously written to accommodate flashback footage, RETURN TO DODGE comes much closer to hitting the bullseye than I would have predicted.

GUNSMOKE: THE LAST APACHE (1990) - The first feature-length sequel was written by Earl W. Wallace (the author of seven Season 20 episodes) and entrusted to fledgling director Charles Correll, a veteran cinematographer whose CV boasted the likes of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, THE WINDS OF WAR, STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK - and RETURN TO DODGE. Just as RETURN TO DODGE served as a sequel to Steve Forrest’s two superb "Mannon" appearances, this one adds a postscript to "Matt's Love Story" (Season 19, Episode 3) which chronicled an amnesiac Dillon’s surprising sudden romance with widowed rancher Mike Yardner (THE WALTONS' Michael Learned). Seventeen years after this one-night-stand (which featured Arness' only screen kiss in the entire series), Matt receives a letter from his lost love asking for a return visit. Once he gets there, quick - no time for hellos - he gets caught up in pursuing Wolf, an Apache son of Geronimo who has abducted Mike’s teenage daughter Beth (Amy Stoch) - whom Matt belated learns is his daughter, too.  Richard Kiley, another popular GUNSMOKE guest star, returns to essay a new character here, that of Chalk Brighton, an aging scout who’s been leisurely courting Mike for many years and, feeling a "loss of thunder," initially doesn’t take kindly to Matt Dillon’s arrival on the scene. The story of how their relationship matures through trial and error is as rich as any the story encompasses, with both Arness and Kiley in top form. All told, this is another success, with fine performances across the board (Matt's hair issues are under control) and handsome location photography by Jerry G. Callaway (Michael Mann's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS). There are some breathtaking shots, and one can only regret that the medium had yet to go widescreen. The score by Bruce Rowland (THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER), which leans a little too heavily on synthesized instrumentation for a film of such natural settings, sounds like a budgetary concession and is the only department where things might have been improved. The end credits include a memorial dedication to Miss Amanda Blake and series writer Ron Bishop, the author of "Matt's Love Story." 

GUNSMOKE: TO THE LAST MAN (1992) - After a two-year hiatus, James Arness reunited with THE LAST APACHE’s writer Earl W. Wallace and his director on the TV series HOW THE WEST WAS WON, Jerry Jameson for this solid sequel - the first of the TV movies to stand on its own two feet without incorporating any flashbacks to scenes from the original series. In this story (set “in the 1880s” - perhaps less than 10 years after the final season), a lean and lanky Matt Dillon - now a rancher moving 100 head of cattle - gets involved in the crossfire of a bloody family feud after embarrassing the young hellraisers of one of the families, the Grahams, in a barroom showdown: they retaliate by stealing his herd and abducting his 18 year-old (!) daughter Beth (Amy Stoch). There is a complete dissociation from Dodge City (which one imagines would have looked artificial in the midst of all this western authenticity); I don’t even remember Dillon once referring to it as home. Nevertheless, the film maintains the series’ integrity with a strong script (if the dialogue is sometimes clichéd and predictable, they are welcome clichés), generally committed performances, and some returning faces from the series’ long history such as Morgan Woodward (as the morally waffling sheriff of another town) and Pat Hingle (no longer Doc’s temporary replacement, here the head of a KKK-like group of hooded lynchers calling themselves the Committee of 50). An especially happy sighting is young Jim Beaver as Woodward’s hapless deputy. If the film has any weakness at all, it has something to do with the then-present pool of available young talent not always having the natural grit that young Western actors seemed to acquire and wear naturally in the 1950s through the ‘70s, which I suspect has something to do with the Western losing its pride of place in filmed entertainment over the years since shows like GUNSMOKE left the air. Not that these performances are bad, but bad guys are more memorable, and cut deeper, when cast with character actors rather than pretty boys and GQ types. Also, the script invests so much of Dillon’s emotion in Beth and the memory of her (now late) mother Mike, one is left with the residual feeling that his long-term relationship with Miss Kitty was never as deeply meaningful to him as it was made out to be. The end credits include a memorial dedication to GUNSMOKE's creator and principal writer, John Meston.

TO BE CONTINUED

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