Nah, Kidding! Its sort of messes with your mind to hear the sound coming out of his mouth while dressed up like Festus after watching a million Gunsmokes. Man was talented!

On Gunsmoke, once, and a while Ken Curtis would shine through Festus. Mostly when he smiled.

According to his wikipedia page he replaced Sinatra in the Tommy Dorsey band.

He produced, and directed movies, The Giant Gila Monster, the cult film.

He's still talked about around here. I live about 7 miles from the Jail that he lived in the basement of growing up. Loved watching Gunsmoke as a kid, by the time I was old enough to remember the show it was all reruns by then.

Ken Curtis was a lead singer with the Sons of the Pioneers, one of my mom’s favorite singing groups in those days. She loved “Room Full of Roses" and I really liked “Ghost Riders in the Sky” Didn’t get any better than that.

Sounds like a monster movie I used to watch as a kid.
😉.
I might check it out. Always been a fan of those, and liked Festus.

I used to have a big Alligator Snapping Turtle that I used for wildlife shows. I traded a pair of Bull snakes for him. First thing I said when I got him,.
"You look like a Festus.".

It stuck and everyone liked Festus.
Fortunately, I still have all my fingers. This isn't him, but the same kind.

So strange to see such a different persona coming from Festus.

Curtis and some of the SOTP boys, in the John Wayne flick, "Rio Grande".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jwPVe_sWa8

There are quite a few actors with surprising talents. Remember Delmar from 'Oh Brother, where Art Thou'? Here's the full version of his Jailhouse song.

And he can shoot a Colt Peacemaker like nobody's business.

I considered Ken Curtiss the most talented actor on Gunsmoke. I wasn't the only Gunsmoke writer who thought this.

L.W.

Were you seriously a writer for Gunsmoke?

Yes. Plus a number of other shows. I am retired now.

L.W.

Cool.

He was singing long before he was acting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhlpDbhurR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWR6FLnPack

Congratulations on having a part in some of the best TV ever.

Thank you for your work! My family and I love that show.

He married John Ford's daughter and Arness was friends with John Wayne, and that helped him land the role.

I'm watching all the episodes now, I"m not up to Festus yet, still on season 5

Cool to know we have a former writer on here

I shook his hand once at the state fair .

Leanwolf. were all those skits of Festus, and Doc written for fillers to be used when needed?

Did you write the episode where Festus travels to the big city to deliver money to a woman who moved there and asked him to sell her dead father's property? When he gets there, he finds she started work as a prostitute and was making that amount of money in a day.

We got our first TV around 1953, when I was maybe seven?. I was used to going down the street a bit and listening to the Gunsmoke radio show (William Conrad as Dillon), with one of our neighbors whose daughters were my best buddies at the time..Their old man worked on the Pennsylvania RR. Forget now what night Gunsmoke came on, but if he was home, I was down there listening to the radio show.

I think the TV version with Arness came on a couple years later? When Gunsmoke came on TV, I still bopped on down the street to listen to the radio show. My dad was pizzed he'd finally got a TV, my favorite show was on and I preferred the radio version.

Friends of ours had a TV long before we did. Squinky little round screen. Dad waited until Zenith came out with a 17" rectangular screen, before he'd buy a TV. He said looking at their TV was like sitting there watching a damn snow globe.

My grandparents bought a round screen tv.

In the early 1960s, we had one something like this.

We had a Curtis Mathis that looked just like that. Parents bought it New in 1966, when I was 6, I think. First Color TV. And it had a turntable and radio inside the cabinet. Think they threw it out in 1978, the year I graduated HS, because the TV finally quit.

He was heck of a singer. I remember him singing and playing the guitar in my favorite movie, “The Searchers”

I have autographed pictures of Ken Curtis, Milburn Stone, Dan Blocker and Fess Parker. Don't remember the exact circumstance but it was at some kind of event in Lubbock, Texas in about '66. I was 8.

That’s really cool. Mainly Westerns??

Gunsmoke had some really strong writing. Easily 80-90% of the episodes are strong. I watch Bonanza from time to time, and while some of it is great, there’s lots of corny fluff, too. How many “Gypsy” episodes did they do???

About the only Gunsmoke I turn off, is when it’s a “Kitty gets Kidnapped” episode...

This one amazed me when I 1st came across it. I'd have never imagined the funnyman could play a banjo!

I always look for Leanwolf's comment on threads like this.

Legendary.

Gentlemen, thank you for "congratulations." I'm glad you enjoyed Gunsmoke.

TRH, no, I did not write that episode.

Wabigoon, those were not fillers with Doc and Festus. They were written into the scripts.

I wrote mainly for cops-'n-robbers shows, from the old West, private eye shows, modern cops, and future "cops" (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century). I never wrote for any comedy shows ... unless you call The Dukes of Hazzard comedy. I wrote for Little House On The Prairie, but I'm not sure what genre that would fit in, other than "human Interest" where Mike Landon got to cry a lot. Mike was a good crier.

As an aside, each year at Christmas time the production company of Gunsmoke would throw a big Christmas party on the Dodge City sound stage at CBS Studio City. They'd invite G.S. writers, directors, some production people, etc. Kinda fun to saunter up to the bar of the Long Branch and swill down some good Scotch free gratis for nuthin'. None of that "bust head" whiskey (tea) served to the "cowboys" on the various shows. Food was good, too. No beans, sowbelly, nor biscuits. All catered. That Dodge City set was a standing set at CBS where all the Dodge City scenes were filmed over the years.

As the old adage goes, "Long ago and far away."

L.W.

one side was a record player, the other side was a bar.

I can appreciate that.

Weren't they called entertainment centers?

My daughter loves Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - and Gunsmoke too!

That's the best picking thats ever been on that stage.

Thanks for contributing to all those fond memories with families around the tv over the years......the good ol days of wholesome entertainment. They really don't write em like that anymore.

Ken is in The Quiet Man too......dad was a can. Always pointed him out.

Ken and many others, were part of the John Ford stock company, through the 40s, 50s and 60s. Not many of Ford's films that some or all of them, didn't appear in.

TVs. My dad held off on getting a color TV until the early 1960s. Neighbors had RCAs, but he didn't like them. So we got our first Zenith color TV just in time for the Beatles to appear on Ed Sullivan. Had quite a crowd of my neighborhood friends in for that one. The old man was not amused to have so much company in his living room, just to watch "a bunch of Limey's that couldn't sing and needed haircuts".The old boy was a WWII ETO vet, had dim views of the French and the British.

He was a big fan of the latest/greatest antennas and had to replace whatever we had, with something new and better.We finally put up a three-sided tower on one end of the house, just to gain another ten feet of elevation. Alliance Ten-A-Rotor to adjust the antenna. Then the Zenith Space Command "clicker", for a remote. Used to drive us nuts clicking that damn thing.

Yes, but our mid-1950's RCA entertainment center looked the same but with darker wood. No bar.Three or four channels.

Ours could be closed up with matching hinged wood doors when not in use. When it became obsolete, and no longer worth calling for the TV repairman (Yeah, that used to be an occupation), my mom hired someone to remove the TV and turn it into a storage cabinet. I guess that was the middle or late 1970s.

Back then many TV cabinets were made of select close-grained hardwoods and finished as fine furniture and regarded as such.

Watched him on Gunsmoke last night. One of my favorite episodes where Cousin Ely(?) was trying to shoot Festus' ear off. Not all of it, just the hangy downy part. lol.

Yeah, that's what we had.

We had one too.

Wow! You work was an influence in my young life. I NEVER missed an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard.

My favorite Gunsmoke episode involved Festus getting bitten by a dog that had, unbeknownst to him, just ate a toad. Festus thought he'd caught the hydrophoby, and had to take three guys into custody in the nearby town. George Lindsay was one of the miscreants, and they went to beat up Festus, and he bit every one of them. It was funny as hell.

A lot of them were. Most of the reruns I could watch as a kid were the newer ones that were in color. Many years later I got a cable package that ran the early Gunsmokes,
and noticed right off that they were quite a bit darker. Matt and the gang were all business at first.....no kidding around. At some point, the people in charge decided to inject some levity into the characters and I guess you could say it was a good decision.

Season one is on or used to be on Youtube.

Back in the Chester days, I read Dennis Weaver regretted wearing the device that held his leg straight, if he'd have known how long he had to wear it.

He also had a great part in The Quiet Man...About the 3 min mark

Great thread ! I listen to the old raido gunsmoke at 6 per weekend .....btw ...I... was the tv remote for mom an dad.