Gunsmoke: Season 20 (1974)

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Synopsis of Gunsmoke: Season 20

The record-breaking 20th season of Gunsmoke also proved to be the series' last stand--not because it had lost its huge fan base (the series still managed to rank among the 30 highest-rated series for the 1974-75 season) but because, after two decades, James Arness had decided to move beyond his familiar role of Matt Dillon, US Marshall of Dodge City, Kansas. Of the six main characters, only Arness and Milburn Stone had been with the show from the get-go; Ken Curtis as Festus Haggen was a comparative newcomer, having joined the cast during Season Eight, while Buck Taylor as Newly O'Brien was practically a babe in the woods, with a mere eight seasons to his credit. Wait, we said six regulars, and that's only five. What of Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty Russell, owner of the Long Branch Saloon, a role she too had been essaying since 1955. Well, actress Blake had opted to call it quits at the end of Season 19, after nearly six hundred episodes of warning her erstwhile sweetheart Matt Dillon to "be careful". Rather than hire a Kitty lookalike as Blake's replacement, the produced chose an older, less glamorous but no less talented performer as the new owner of the Long Branch: Fran Ryan, cast as "Miss Hannah". This cast change aside, life went on as usual in Dodge, with stalwart Marshal Dillon keeping a tight rein on his jurisdiction and making sure that outlaws, drunks, bullies, rapists and other riffraff would not remain in town for long (though he no longer shot down an unidentified miscreant in the middle of main street, as he'd done in the opening sequence of the earlier episodes: That particular sequence had long since been replaced by an "action" shot of Matt Dillon riding his horse on the open Kansas prairie). The 635th and final episode, "The Sharecroppers", was a low-key comic exercise emphasizing Festus, in no way suggesting that a two-decade era was about to come to an abrupt end. In point of fact, it hadn't ended--at least not for James Arness, who would star in half a dozen feature-length Gunsmoke specials produced between 1987 and 1995. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Complete Cast of Gunsmoke: Season 20

Producer(s):

Leonard Katzman, Frank Paris, Ron Honthaner

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