Gunsmoke went from a successful radio show to earning high ratings on television screens across the country. Longtime fans were initially upset that the production didn’t bring the radio actors back ...

Gunsmoke was a radio show before Arness, Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone, and Dennis Weaver joined the cast. The original iteration began in 1952, running well-past Dodge City’s introduction to television ...

“Gunsmoke” debuted on television in 1955. Stars of the show included James Arness as Matt Dillon; Burt Reynolds, who starred as Quint Asper, the blacksmith; Ken Curtis as Festus; Amanda Blake as Miss ...

‘Gunsmoke’ aired from 1955 to 1974 and set a new standard for TV drama Tereza Shkurtaj is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. She has been working for PEOPLE since 2025. Her work has previously appeared in ...

Offscreen, James Arness traded Dodge City’s saloon dust for the comfort of his own king-size bed. Photographed in 1956, the towering Gunsmoke star relaxes with a script for an upcoming episode, ...

This summer, as the Black Lives Matter protests overlapped with “safer at home” practices, I slipped into binge-watching the old TV western, “Gunsmoke” — in particular, the pioneer episodes of the ...

Few shows have run on network television for as long as Gunsmoke ran on CBS. For twenty years, the Western series braved television sets after first jumping from a radio drama to the screen, and later ...

For decades, fans of Gunsmoke have discussed the truth about the relationship between Marshal Matt Dillon (James Arness) and the saloon owner Miss Kitty Russell (Amanda Blake). These two CBS staples ...