.............0111 young men's christian ass 24..............................was the notation for my monthly ymca payment.
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REST IN PEACEJAMES ARNESSthose first several seasons of black and white 30 minute tv episodes of gunsmoke were the finest tv i've ever seen.
i wish they were still available.-- ......That was the Chester Good era. Easily the best in show, so to speak. Those half hour outings (24 minutes really) put a premium on efficient and effective story telling. Even now, I can hear the theme song as Marshall Dillon walked through the cemetery outside of Dodge City. Much better , when it was shot in black and white.
appreciation: JAMES ARNESS 1923-2011from LA timeshttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/06/appreciation-james-arness-1923-2011.html
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Arness played other parts in his career, including two post-"Gunsmoke" TV series, the short-lived detective series “McClain's Law” in the early '80s and the less short-lived “How the West Was Won” in the late '70s. (That he was, unrecognizably, the monster in the 1951 “The Thing from Another World”is widely known movie trivium.) But to rate him as an actor is almost beside the point, so completely and inextricably does he belong to a single character. He was in his early 30s when he took on the role -- which had been originated on radio by William Conrad, who was the wrong shape to play it on TV -- and in his 50s when the series was canceled. But he was in his 70s when he last played Matt Dillon, in the 1994 “Gunsmoke” TV movie “One Man's Justice.” There were several of these films, which play off the “gunfighters at twilight” theme that Clint Eastwood was already exploring; the mileage suits and does not diminish him, and one gets a hint of the messier character that may have always lived within the well-kempt man of the series.
Still, while it may be that Arness was born to play Dillon, you do not keep a character alive and interesting across five decades without some application of real art; it takes substance to keep goodness from becoming blandness, from growing tiresome with time. Could any other actor have carried that weight as long, with as much grace and as little groaning? Maybe. But this one did.
original gunsmoke theme
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