On September 10, 1955, CBS premiered Gunsmoke with the 30-minute, black-and-white episode “Matt Gets It.” Adapted from the popular CBS radio drama created by producer Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston, the television series brought its tougher, more adult-oriented vision of the West to a national TV audience. Charles Marquis Warren developed the program for television and wrote and directed the premiere.
The episode introduced James Arness as U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City, Kansas, alongside Dennis Weaver as Chester Goode, Milburn Stone as Dr. Galen “Doc” Adams, and Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty Russell. In “Matt Gets It,” Dillon is seriously wounded while pursuing the fast-drawing outlaw Dan Grat, who exploits the marshal’s absence to menace the town until Dillon can confront him again. The story immediately established the show’s emphasis on violence, duty, vulnerability, and the difficult realities of maintaining order on the frontier.
Gunsmoke had begun as a CBS radio drama in 1952, but its television adaptation became one of the medium’s most successful and enduring Westerns. The series ran on CBS from September 10, 1955, through March 31, 1975, ultimately producing 635 episodes across 20 seasons. It moved from half-hour to hour-long episodes in 1961 and ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four consecutive seasons, from 1957–58 through 1960–61. Its longevity and serious dramatic approach helped make it a defining American prime-time Western.
Image: The principal cast of Gunsmoke in 1967, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
