Gunsmoke – 50th
Anniversary: Volume One & Two Sets
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B+ Episodes: B+
When TV first became the hot new medium, Westerns were the
hottest of all the genre shows in production.
They dominated the airwaves from the dawn of TV until the early 1960s,
when they began to become overtaken.
CBS was the #1 network from that time until the mid 1970s and the one
series that earmarked that dominance was the most lavishly produced series of
them all. Gunsmoke made James
Arness a bigger star than ever and though not as existentialist as some other
series of the time, it was consistent in its high quality and knack for getting
the top, up and coming talent in the business over and over again. The two volumes that make up the 50th
Anniversary sets remind us why.
Volume One starts in 1955 with the first
broadcast show, including the introduction by no less than Arness’ good friend
John Wayne, who highly recommends the show and sees a big future for it. Even he could not have imagined at the time
how right he was. The titles are as
follows, including notes on guests and commentaries in some cases by those
guests:
1) Matt
Gets It (Arness commentary)
2) Hack
Prine (Dennis Weaver commentary)
3) The
Killer (Charles Bronson)
4) The
Preacher (Chuck Connors)
5) The
Guitar (Aaron Spelling stars!!!)
6) Legal
Revenge (Cloris Leachman)
7) Sins Of
The Father (Angie Dickinson)
8) Romeo
(Barbara Eden commentary)
9) Doc’s
Reward (Jack Lord)
10) Lost Rifle (Charles Bronson)
11) The Bobsy Twins
(Richard Chamberlain)
12) The Blacksmith (George
Kennedy commentary)
13) Little Girl
14) Chesterland (Dennis Weaver
commentary)
15) Quint Asper Comes Home (Burt
Reynolds, James Doohan)
16) Ash (Adam West commentary)
17) Prairie Wolfer (Ken
Curtis joining the cast)
If that was not impressive and terrific enough, the show
continued its winning ways as it grew in popularity, reputation and become a
survivor after many other TV series (especially Westerns) came and went. It was not easy, but CBS backed this show
like crazy and made it (no pun intended) one of their great workhorses. Volume Two has the show form 1964 to
its close in 1974. Once again, the
titles are as follows, including notes on guests and commentaries in some cases
by those guests:
1)
Hung High (Ed Asner commentary)
2)
One Killer On Ice (Dennis Hopper &
John Barrymore, Jr.)
3)
Treasure Of John Walking Fox
(Leonard Nimoy)
4)
The Jailer (Bette Davis, Tom Skerritt and
commentary supplier and co-star Bruce Dern)
5)
The Wrong Man (Carroll O’Connor)
6)
Quaker Girl (William Shatner)
7)
The Pillagers (Buck Taylor commentary)
8)
The Prisoner (Jon Voight, the same year as Midnight
Cowboy)
9)
Chato (Ricardo Montalban)
10)
P.S. Murry
Christmas (Jack Elam, Jodie Foster, Jeanette Nolan, Erin Moran)
11)
A Quiet Day In
Dodge (Margaret Hamilton, John Fiedler, J. Pat O’Malley and an Arness commentary)
12)
Trail Of
Bloodshed (Kurt Russell, Janit Baldwin, Craig Stevens)
The show was a winner all the way and though this critic
is not its biggest fan, there is no doubt it was a high quality show and Arness
was one of the reasons, demanding the best and getting it. Writers and directors over the years
included Sam Peckinpah, Alan Crosland, Jr., actor Peter Graves, Arthur Hiller,
Alf Kjellin, Buzz Kulik, Vincent McEveety, Bernard McEveety, Donn Mullally,
Joseph H. Lewis, Leo Penn, Christian Nyby, Ted Post, Arthur Rowe, Mark Rydell,
Joseph Sargent, Robert Stevenson, Andrew V. McLaglen, actor William Conrad (who
played Marshall Dillon on the original radio version that preceded this series)
and even Dennis Weaver. The actual list
is much longer and it had to be to produce 633 episodes overall. This is a stunning “sampler” to say the
least and an ace job in choices and extras overall.
The 1.33 X 1 image varies throughout, especially covering
over two decades worth of shows. The
show was running so long, it did more than just go from black and white to
color, but permanently went from a half-hour to an hour before color was an
issue. The black and white looks decent
for its time, shot on film similar CBS series at the time like The Twilight
Zone and Have Gun Will Travel (reviewed elsewhere on this site)
were. The color shows vary more in
quality like EastmanColor starting to fade in various ways on the second set,
though some of the shows look closer to the way they would have looked in
original broadcast than others. All
have some degree of a slight digititis haze affecting detail throughout, but
the richness of the images helps make up for it. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is monophonic on all the shows, though the
commentaries and extras are simple stereo at best.
Special note should be made about the many composers who
contributed music to the series, including Elmer Bernstein, Bruce Broughton,
Luchi De Jesus, Gerald Fried, Ernest Gold, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann,
Alex North, Morton Stevens, Franz Waxman and even Van McCoy, best know for his
later dace hit The Hustle! That
is quite a diverse set of talents and not event he entire list, but as I
watched, the music played an even more vital role in making these shows work
than I ever expected or remembered.
Extras are numerous and impressive, including brief audio
introductions on all the episodes by Arness himself and the commentaries noted
above. Other extras include several
Emmy acceptances, several Ed Sullivan Show segments on the first set,
promos of its recent run on The Western Channel, a few blooper reels, stills,
Museum Of TV & Radio seminar with Arness and Amanda “Miss Kitty” Blake, CBS
and syndicated promos, Blake’s appearances on a 1972 David Frost Show
and 1974 Mike Douglas Show on the second set.
The last time we looked at the show, it was in its three
revival telefilms, which made us wonder about when the shows were coming
out. Though Paramount/CBS has some work
to do on the shows and have not announced individual seasons, these 50th
Anniversary sets will make fans who have old videotapes or bad copies
otherwise very satisfied. This is the
best “best of” release for a classic TV series on DVD to date, even if it was
spilt into two sets. Despite some aged
moments and those that the most picky would consider “politically incorrect” or
the like, the show was bold in dealing with racism, women’s rights and a
changing world, much of which did change as the show grew and grew. Its arrival on DVD is very welcome.
- Nicholas Sheffo
