It takes a special kind of lawman to carry on for 20 years in the Wild West of TV.
Matt Dillon, the mythical marshal of Dodge City, stood tall — all 6 feet 6 inches of him — on “Gunsmoke” from 1955 to 1975. He outlasted dozens of other Western heroes while making history on TV’s longest-running dramatic series, a record that held until NBC’s “Law & Order” tied the CBS Western’s record in 2010.
Through all those gunslinging years, James Arness, who died Friday at 88 at his Los Angeles home, kept Marshal Dillon righteous, peace-seeking and, most of all, believable.
In an era when TV actors typically chewed the scenery, Arness had a credible, commanding presence by hardly uttering a word. A typical scene found a dozen cowboys riding up to the town jail intent on busting out a prisoner pal.
Dillon faces them all down.
“The first move anybody makes,” he says, “I cut you in two.”
No wonder “Gunsmoke” wore so well. And became the last word on a programming craze that some seasons found as many as 30 Westerns on the air. When “Gunsmoke” went off in 1975, it had been the only Western left.
By the end of his career, Arness seemed almost indistinguishable from Matt Dillon in the audience’s mind.
Befitting Marshal Dillon’s dignity and composure, Arness wrote, and left behind, a simple, straight-from-the-heart farewell, which, at his request, was posted posthumously Friday on his official website.
“I had a wonderful life and was blessed with . . . (so) many loving people and great friends,” he said, then went on to thank his multitude of fans.
In life, Arness was a quiet, intensely private man who preferred the outdoor life to Hollywood’s party scene, rarely gave interviews and refused to discuss his personal tragedies. (His daughter and his former wife, Virginia, both died of drug overdoses.)
“He’s big, impressive and virile,” co-star Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty) once said of Arness, adding, “I’ve worked with him for 16 years, but I don’t really know him.”
