Like Lay’s Potato Chips…

…I just can’t seem to stop with just one Gunsmoke episode. I checked out four of them again last night, thanks to what I like to call the “eye of the hurricane.” (You see, tomorrow marks the start of Savannah’s city-sanctioned drunk—a.k.a. St. Patrick’s Day celebration—and things are relatively calm for the time being.) This quartet of episodes was penned by scribe John Meston, and there was nary a bad one in the bunch.

“Matt For Murder” (7/26/54) is the first of these outstanding episodes, its plot features Dodge City’s marshal accused of murdering a man named Lou Price by Price's former partner, Red Samples (Vic Perrin). What makes this entry fun is Meston’s taking historical license by having famed Abilene lawman Wild Bill Hickok (John Dehner) journey to Dodge to arrest his old friend Matt Dillon. (Matt’s friendship with Wild Bill is also briefly referred to in “Westbound,” which was discussed in yesterday’s post.) This intermingling of historical figures with Gunsmoke’s cast of characters was not uncommon on the radio western; the premiere episode (4/26/52) has Matt encountering a young William Bonney (a.k.a. “Billy the Kid”) and an additional episode on the Ultimate Gunsmoke Collection CD set is titled “Doc Holliday” (7/19/52), with Harry Bartell as the titular character.

Meston’s sharp dialogue includes a sly reference foreshadowing Hickok’s demise:

MATT: How is Abilene these days?
HICKOK: Well, I’m still sheriff there…guess I will be ‘til somebody gets around to shootin’ me…
CHESTER; Aw…nobody’s gonna shoot you, Mr. Hickok…
HICKOK: They keep tryin’, Chester…
MATT (chuckling): They keep missin’, too…don’t they, Bill…?
HICKOK: Well, so far…maybe that’s just because nobody’s tried to shoot me in the back yet…

Fans of Frontier Gentleman will no doubt recall an episode titled “Aces and Eights” (4/20/58) which centers on the events of Hickok’s shooting—and has its main character, J.B. Kendall, as a participant in that fateful card game. (Kendall was, of course, played by actor Dehner…who plays Hickok here…okay, maybe I should stop now before someone’s head explodes…)

The rehearsal sessions for Gunsmoke were fondly remembered by the cast and crew as “Dirty Saturdays,” in which the participants freely clowned and cut up during the proceedings before reverting to professionalism for the final transcribed product. A few of these rehearsals survive in recorded form, most notably “The New Hotel,” which can be heard on the 5-CD set Too Hot For Radio. During rehearsal readings, Dehner used to try and distract Bill Conrad by playing this meek, mousy character who would call out—at anytime and anyplace—“Hello, Marshal!” And Conrad would invariably respond: “Hello, John…” Both actors do this bit in “Matt For Murder,” (it’s just before Matt and Chester encounter Hickok at the train station) and because I was completely unprepared for it, I nearly spit out a mouthful of water I was drinking at the time. I’m convinced that the “John” character is the same “John Bomby” Matt talks to in “Christmas Story” (12/20/52), though when I floated this theory balloon in #oldradio chat one night, I didn’t get many takers.

The second episode I listened to was “Matt Gets It” (10/2/54), which has the distinction of being adapted as the premiere episode of the television version of Gunsmoke. Producer-director Charles Marquis Warren chose it for the first show because “It was shocking in those days to have your hero shot down.” That’s the plot in a nutshell: Dillon is injured by a gunman (Perrin) who is much faster than he. Now—this may be Monday-morning-quarterbacking, but I don’t think I would have gone with this episode as the TV debut; “Matt Gets It” plays much better after you’ve got a few Gunsmokes tucked under your belt. Had I watched the show’s lawman hero get gunned down in the first episode, my first thought would have been: “Not much of a lawman, is he?”

The radio version is far superior—and one of the reasons this is so is this classic moment of Chester’s reaction to Matt’s shooting:

CHESTER: Grat hit him, first shot…I could tell…Mister Dillon still got one off…I don’t know why he had to miss him…
DOC: Well, of course he missed him, Chester…Matt was out on his feet when he fired that shot…
CHESTER: He dropped his gun ‘fore he fell…
DOC: And who wouldn’t, with two bullets in his arm?
CHESTER (after a pause): Is it ruined, Doc? His arm?
DOC: No…no, it’s not ruined…it’ll be stiff for a while…but…
CHESTER: Doc?
DOC: Mm-hmm?
CHESTER: I’d-a tried to kill Graf is I’d-a had my gun out—I was gonna pick up Mister Dillon’s and do it, but Grat kicked it away from me…
DOC: It’s a good thing he did, too…
CHESTER: …I wanted to kill him…
DOC: I know…I know how you felt…
CHESTER: It’s a terrible thing, watchin’ a man like Mister Dillon get shot that way, Doc…
DOC: Of course it is, Chester…but killing Grat won’t help him now…
CHESTER (his voice rising in anger): Well, if Mister Dillon dies, I’ll kill him…I’ll get me a shotgun and I’ll kill him! I’ll blow him in half and then we’ll see how doggone fast he is…

Because the radio Gunsmoke has taken the time to establish the idolatry Chester has for Matt, that’s why “Matt Gets It” works so well. In fact, the friendship between the two men is just one of the many things I admire about the radio version, Chester Proudfoot being one of OTR’s most memorable characterizations. It’s important to note that Chester wasn’t Matt’s deputy (as he was on the TV show), but more of a helper/hanger-on; he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed (actor Parley Baer characterized him as “a dependable non-thinker”) but he made up for his lack of smarts with an incredibly fierce loyalty.

The other outstanding feature of this entry is Vic Perrin’s performance as Dan Grat, the gunslinger who puts Dillon temporarily out of commission. Perrin was one of Gunsmoke’s “repertory company” regulars, who was also multi-talented enough to pen five of the show’s radio scripts. I’m sure there were occasions when Perrin played a good guy on the show, but his portrayal of villains stand out in my mind—they always seemed to have this…haughtiness about them, as if they were insulted by the very idea of someone like Matt daring to challenge them. Perrin also appeared on programs like Dragnet, One Man’s Family, and Fort Laramie—but he’s probably best-remembered as “the control voice” on TV’s The Outer Limits (1963-65).

“Kitty Caught” (10/16/54) is yet another 24-karat Gunsmoke gem, in which our favorite dance hall gal is taken hostage by a pair of bank robbing brothers (Dehner, Larry Dobkin) who threaten to kill her if Matt goes after them. It’s a powerful episode that finds Matt resorting to cold-blooded murder to save Kitty, plus there’s a nail-biting scene where Matt and Chester—who are stationed just a ways outside the cabin where she is being held by the two brothers—are desperately trying not to make any noise so that she won’t be harmed…and then we hear the unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake…

Finally, I wrapped up my evening of pure audio pleasure with “Chester’s Murder” (1/15/55), yet another variation of Gunsmoke’s recurring “duty vs. friendship” theme. This time, Matt’s loyal helper has been accused of murdering a man (James Nusser) he had a disagreement with in a saloon earlier in the evening, and Dillon is forced to place his devoted friend under house arrest. Vic Perrin is in the cast—so you can pretty much guess who the bad guy is in this one—along with Lawrence Dobkin, who plays Sam Noonan, a character who would later become partners with Kitty in the Long Branch Saloon, thus establishing her role as businesswoman on the television series.