One step ahead of a family intervention, I've taken the advice of my loved ones and switched channels from the evening news and opinion shows on TV.
(They think I watch too much news. I'm tempted to ask if they recall the line of work I was in for 50 years.)
Turns out their advice was pretty good, however. And I've found that a couple hours free of election year poll results, ”battleground state” updates, and the sulfuric acid back and forth is good for the soul.
What am I watching instead?
“Gunsmoke.”
I'm watching two hours of mostly black-and-white, half-hour and hour re-runs of “Gunsmoke” most weeknights. If you've got Dish, turn to channel 259 and lose yourself in the shoot-'em-ups, trials and regular murders, and hangings in frontier Dodge City, Kansas.
There was no languishing on Death Row for 20 or 30 years in frontier Dodge, as we see with the supposedly condemned today. No, a day or two after the circuit judge passed the ultimate sentence, U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon marched the condemned out to the scaffold. Watch enough episodes of “Forensic Files,” and the grisly procession of innocent victims killed in the most gruesome ways, and you'll feel nostalgia for the days – as in “Gunsmoke” – when perpetrators met their fate in days, not decades.
If you don't love “Gunsmoke” and Marshal Matt Dillon, played by the late James Arness, well, there must be something wrong with you, mister. Get some help.
Dillon was a head taller than anyone in Dodge, and his arrival on the scene brought an immediate stop to drunken cowboys from Texas shooting up Dodge, or murdering scoundrels bent on all kinds of skulduggery, or the regular chair-busting riots that broke out at Miss Kitty's Long Branch Saloon.
(John Wayne once advised Arness to stick with television and not venture into movies, because no leading man wanted to appear next to a guy as tall as Arness.)
That ability to restore order by simply walking onto the scene is what we're all probably looking for in a leader. And at the risk of dipping back into politics, I'll say some see a little of that in Donald Trump. But Marshal Dillon never bragged about his virtues, or said he won “a perfect gunfight.” So I'll just stop now. Forget I even mentioned it.
The clear, apparently unrequited love affair between Matt and Miss Kitty is a regular feature on “Gunsmoke.” And they never get into what's going on with all those dance hall girls taking cowboys up the stairs to the second floor at Miss Kitty's Long Branch. We're led to believe that Matt is just too darned virtuous to be tempted by the second-floor goings on, or a fling with Miss Kitty.
Much to her dismay.
It adds a little 1960s-era electricity to “Gunsmoke.”
Maybe the best part of “Gunsmoke” is the procession of familiar actors who played bit parts on the show. Couple weeks ago I saw a young Buddy Ebsen – long before his “Beverly Hillbilly” days – playing a vicious, knife-wielding murderer in Dodge. In another episode, a young Carroll O'Connor played a struggling farmer, long before his Archie Bunker stardom.
Morey Amsterdam, if you can believe this, played a lying, drunken Long Branch bar fly in another episode. June Lockhart – the mom from “Lassie” - appeared in another episode. In recent episodes I saw a young Jon Voight, and Tom Skerritt, who played Duke in the movie version of “MASH.” Just last Sunday I saw Troy Donahue.
Appearing numerous times in “Gunsmoke” episodes was Strother Martin, who played the warden in “Cool Hand Luke,” uttering the famous line, “What we have here (pause) is a failure (pause) to communicate.” He also played the Bolivian mine boss in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” calling Butch and Sundance, “Morons. I've got morons on my team.”
All that, and Burt Reynolds played the town blacksmith, Quint. Doc, Kitty, Chester, Festus - what a cast. “Gunsmoke” is a true showcase of great actors we've been seeing in the movies ever since.
So if you're tired of election year yammering, give “Gunsmoke” a try.
You'll find yourself yearning for tall, virtuous leaders like Matt Dillon, fast times at the Long Branch, and hanging judges.
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
