Gunsmoke was a primetime television Western that ran for two decades on the CBS network. The show premiered in 1955 and was preceded by a radio program of the same name that began in 1952. Both the radio show and television series followed a character by the name of Marshal Matt Dillon, though different actors portrayed the character.
On the Gunsmoke radio program, voice actor William Conrad had played the character of Marshal Matt Dillon. Sadly, the network viewed William to be too fat to carry the role over to television, necessitating a new actor for the series. 26 actors were supposedly screen-tested for the part. This included Raymond Burr, who was also deemed to be too rotund to take on the iconic Western character. When casting Gunsmoke for television, the main actor that the network had in mind to portray the character of Marshal Matt Dillon on the screen was John Wayne. However, John Wayne wasn’t willing to commit to a weekly television series. Instead, John Wayne recommended James Arness. Of course, James is the actor that went on to get the part. The Gunsmoke television series premiered on September 10, 1955. The cast and crew met at James Arness’s house to watch the premiere and were surprised when John Wayne popped up on the screen to introduce the episode. Though the network wasn’t able to secure John Wayne for the role of the show’s main character, they did convince him to lend his genre credibility for a filmed introduction. Besides the aforementioned trivia, there are plenty of other interesting factoids related to both Gunsmoke’s television premiere and the hundreds of episodes that followed it over the show’s two-decade run! Join Facts Verse as we take a look at huge details you didn’t notice in Gunsmoke.
