The record still stands.
"Gunsmoke" holds the record for longest running prime-time drama on American television, although when "Law and Order" ended its 20-year run in May of this year, it tied with "Gunsmoke" for the title.
Never mind that "Gunsmoke" aired 635 episodes while "Law and Order" aired 456.
For fans and fanatics of the popular Western series, it's not so much the record as it was the show itself: the story lines, the clearly-drawn values and, above all, the complex and well-acted characters.
Times were different when "Gunsmoke" first aired on Sept. 10, 1955 and when Marshall Dillon stepped out onto Front Street for a gun battle, you knew who the good guy was.
The full canon of the "Gunsmoke" scripts quite literally contributed significantly to the creation of an American mythology set in the old West.
In their comprehensive chronicle of the "Gunsmoke" experience, "Gunsmoke, A Complete History," SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas quote author Robert Lasson: "When Jim Arness rider guriously by in that opening credit, friends, that's not Marshal Dillon. It's Odysseus and Theseus and Siegfried. On Mondays...you can support your local myth."
And Dodge City became the hub of the battle between good and evil. When Mrs. Boggs said to Marshal Dillon "The earth'll open up one day and swallow this sinful town," Matt replied "Well, I'm afraid they'd just build another one like it, ma'am."
The legend begins
"Gunsmoke" first hit the airwaves as a radio show. The first episode was broadcast April 26, 1952 and "Gunsmoke" remained on the radio until June 18, 1961.
"Gunsmoke" on radio was widely praised for two technical elements: the creative use of sound effects and the use of a live orchestra in the studio to provide dramatic underscoring.
But it was the writing and the acting that carried the drama to a higher level.
On May 31, 1952, the credit "Written by John Meston" appeared for the first time in the show's history. Meston would become the show's driving force, both on radio and television.
Meston grew up in Pueblo, Colo., and attended Exeter, Dartmouth and Harvard. He worked his way up the ladder at CBS and eventually became story editor. He shaped much of the "Gunsmoke" reality.
Meston had considerable knowledge about the real Dodge City and the times he was writing about. He aimed for authenticity — not in historical details, but in the people and the times they lived in. And he hated movie cowboys.
In a letter to the New York Herald Tribune, he explained his position:
"It isn't often that a writer or any man is given an opportunity to destroy a figure he's always hated...a character that all his life has cluttered his landscape like a slum. And to be able to do so, and get paid for it to boot, is to be doulbly blessed. My hated figure is the Western hero who rides along looking like a transvestite, strumming his guitar, nasally singing a synthetic ballad, and looking for all the world like a fugitive from a cheap circus. I spit in his milk, and he'll have to go elsewhere to find somebody to pour the lead for his golden bullets."
So Meston and the other "Gunsmoke" writers created a roomful of archetypical characters that sparked the listeners imaginations so strongly that the move to television was inevitable.
