Christmas of 2019, I wrote about events in my childhood leading up to December 25, 1969.

Fifty years ago tonight

It's nothing these days for young kids to have access to a seemingly infinite amount and variety of movies and television, but back then, an eight year old boy getting a TV set for his room- that was something.

It meant that I could watch what I want, within the limitations of the time and the technology. Over-the-air broadcast from three networks- ABC, CBS and NBC. No PBS, no cable, no HBO. Just three stations and two of them came in fuzzy, and if you didn't see it when it was broadcast, you didn't see it. The TV station in my town was an NBC affiliate. ABC and CBS were 50 and 60 miles away.

Consequently, most of my network viewing was comprised of programming from NBC.

My family didn't watch Gunsmoke, a program which aired on CBS, but from time to time, when nothing else was on, I'd tune in to watch Matt, Festus, Doc and Kitty.

Back then, the networks usually broadcast episodes of their primetime network programming twice, so there are tow possible dates for what I'm about to describe: January 14, 1974, which was the original air date of season 19, episode 15 of Gunsmoke, entitled "A Family of Killers". The second possible date would have been sometime that summer, when the episode was rebroadcast. I would have been age 12 for the first airing of the episode, and 13 for the re-run of the episode.

The point of all this is to see how closely reality matches my memory from a half century ago.

I was in my room, watching whatever was on NBC and I got bored with it, so I changed the channel. This was near the end of this particular episode of Gunsmoke.

I didn't know his name then, but on the screen was actor Glenn Corbett pointing a Peacemaker at actor Mills Watson.

Just as I changed the channel and saw this, Corbett was saying to Watson "I'm gonna scatter your brains, Harley," at which point Mills Watson made a noise or said something like "No!" and threw his hands up in front of his face. Despite what he said, Corbett did not shoot Mills Watson.

I recall that this struck me as rather odd. "I'm gonna scatter your brains" is not something one would expect to hear in a TV show back then, especially one with the pedigree of Gunsmoke.

The series had been in production since 1955; the early episodes of the series could be cold-hearted and fairly brutal for TV, but in the late 1960s the television censors were really coming down on violence in network TV programs and Gunsmoke had to tone it down. I didn't know any of this at the time, of course. All I knew was that it was startling to hear such a line in Gunsmoke.

Starting a few months back, I began looking for this episode. Both TV Land and the INSP channel broadcast the series, and tonight, after just shy of fifty years, I am going to get to see this episode when it airs on INSP at 9 PM Eastern.

Memory is an odd thing. Not only do one's memories become murkier over time, but also, the details of one's memories can and not infrequently do become altered substantially. Everyone has experienced this.

Let's see what five decades has done to this insignificant little snippet I've carried in my mind for all that time.

If you've got a Gunsmoke box set, or an old VHS tape with this episode, please do not tell me how the scene plays out. I want to experience this in real time. I know that all of this will matter little to anyone else, but this thing connects me to my past. My parents are long gone, that house is long gone, and that young fella who was me, well, he's gone, too, but let's see if the memory is accurate.

Thanks for reading this.

Enjoy! Rehashing old memories can be healing, especially if they are good.

flashguy

As a family, we used to watch Gunsmoke, but I did not remember much from those days until recent years when I would occasionally watch reruns on MeTV. The one I remembered vaguely was the two part episode "Gold Train" when Dillon is shot in the back and is transported on a train to get an operation. Eric Braeden portrayed Jack Sinclair, the mastermind train robber. It was interesting watching it because I would remember stuff before it popped up on screen. And funny, I just recently saw Braeden on a Barnaby Jones episode playing the killer.

I find myself viewing old reruns for two reasons; to get a bit of nostalgia from shows I used to watch, and to watch shows I did not view as a child. Barnaby Jones is one I never watched in the 70s. Trackdown is another w/ Robert Culp.

I recall that Gunsmoke was the only TV show Western that John Wayne endorsed.

quote:

Originally posted by Dakor:
I recall that Gunsmoke was the only TV show Western that John Wayne endorsed.

September 10, 1955. The very first episode of the series, and the first thing you saw on the screen was John Wayne.

Not only did Wayne endorse the show, he got James Arness the role as Matt Dillon. The producers of the show offered the part to Wayne, who turned it down and then recommended Arness.

John Wayne had worked with Arness in the 1952 film Big Jim McLain, chasing down stinking commies for HUAC in Hawaii.


9/10/1955

Arness and Wayne were in Hondo, too.

we didn't get a TV in the bedroom, and we weren't allowed to watch Gunsmoke, so we would sneak in behind the hall door and watch it through the crack (dad probably knew, I don't think mom did)

I haven't seen or thought about actor Mills Watson in years! He was in a ton of things: Simon & Simon, Emergency!, Bonanza, CHiPs...

It'll be interesting to see how accurately you remember the scene. Enjoy!

quote:

Originally posted by cheesegrits:
I haven't seen or thought about actor Mills Watson in years! He was in a ton of things: Simon & Simon, Emergency!, Bonanza, CHiPs...

BJ and the Bear- T&A TV

He played deputy to Claude Akins' sheriff, the nemesis of BJ.

Bear was a chimp.

Thanks for posting this Para. I never got to watch Gunsmoke other than a few odd episodes years back but watching episode 1 now. https://archive.org/details/GunsmokeS1E1

Yeah.

On the money.

Incredible. Just as I remembered it.

Terrific, absolutely terrific. It's like memory archeology.

Spent many hours watching Gunsmoke and The Rifleman with my Grandad. Those were our 2 favorites.

I stumbled on to a radio station in my youth that aired old radio programming. The call letters were old too as it was WEST and did not start with "K."

I got mesmerized with the old programming and would listen. One of those that I remember was Gunsmoke and the leading actor was William Conrad who played a rotund detective on a then current TV show, Canon. My dad loved watching Canon.

quote:

Incredible. Just as I remembered it.

Nice, I've been wondering all day.

That must have been a thrill!

There was a line after the one I remember. "This is for Benny Lee."

I don't recall this line, nor would I expect to have. As I said, the reason this stuck with me for decades was because the line "I'm gonna scatter your brains, Harley" was so unexpected in an episode of Gunsmoke.

And yes, it was a bit of a thrill and I mean that. Ancient memories rarely have such fidelity.