Gunsmoke: Season 14

Despite stiff competition from NBC's top-rated Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, the venerable CBS western Gunsmoke continued to flourish in its (relatively) new Monday-night timeslot during its 14th season on the air, finishing the year as America's sixth most popular TV program, with a 24.9 ratings share. Still at peak form were the series' veteran stars James Arness as Matt Dillon,... (read more) Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty, Milburn Stone as Doc Adams and Ken Curtis as Festus Haggen, with relative newcomer Buck Taylor no less impressive in the role of garrulous gunsmith Newly O'Brien. Also, though the program had started way back in the censor-ridden 1950s, Gunsmoke had admirably grown and matured with changing times, offering hard-hitting episodes about racial prejudice, sexual harrassment, child abuse, alcoholism and other social ills that were just as timely in Dodge City of the 1870s as they were in the United States of the late 1960s. Among the talented actors appearing in guest roles in the 26 episodes comprising Season Fourteen are future Dallas patriarch Jim Davis, octogenarian character man Burt Mustin (playing a man even older than himself!), John Ford "regular" Harry Carey Jr., longtime Michael Landon costar and associate Victor French, soon-to-be Police Squad stalwart Leslie Nielsen, and the ubiquitous Bruce Dern, who seems to have appeared in every TV western ever made except for The Cisco Kid. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cast:

• James Arness
• Amanda Blake
• Milburn Stone
• Ken Curtis

Producer(s):

James Arness, Frank Paris, Joseph Dackow