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Despite the occasional stand-out episode like "The Jailer" (with Bette Davis) and "The Well" (about a drought on Dodge City), it's no wonder that GUNSMOKE was cancelled in 1967 for the second of three times after a ratings drop at the end of Season 12 (it plummeted to 35th place, the lowest-rated year of the entire series). Despite the switch to color, most of Season 12 is a blur of the same-looking villains in a blur of the same-looking plots, all set to a barrage of generic western music scores, and a heaviness that's tiring to sit through.
With the surprise renewal for Season 13, executive producer Philip Leacock is out (he goes off to produce a 90-minute western for Stuart Whitman called CIMARRON STRIP) and John Mantley ascends to the top producer position and soon hires Joseph Dackow as line producer. The result is that Leacock's style of drably mythical bigness is dampened slightly and replaced with something that feels less sluggishly repetitive.
But with Dackow's death just before the end of Season 16 in 1971, DALLAS' Leonard Katzman takes over line producer duties, and the program improves even further. People who think GUNSMOKE ran too long and believe it shouldn't have gotten into the 1970s are either nuts or they never saw the last half-decade of the show. Under the auspices of Katzman, the series becomes warmer, cleaner and more clearly-defined, the music more interesting. It's all just more engaging.
I just saw a Season 18 episode entitled "Tatum" with Gene Evans as a crusty hired gun, mauled in the first scene by a bear threatening his native American wife, his injuries terminal. Taken to Dodge City to receive his negative prognosis by Doc Adams, surly Tatum finds his three daughters have arrived in town in anticipation of his inevitable demise -- one is clinically depressed, another a plain and dour spinster, and the third appears to have transformed herself into a saloon-based hooker (whom he encourages to not fear letting a man put his hands on her -- something it would appear wasn't a problem for her). But these three women have one thing in common: they all hate Daddy for how his career affected their family and, in the end, killed their mother... He wants to be buried in Spearville, Kansas, a few miles to the east of Dodge, beside the remains of his first wife, but the townfolk won't make it easy, as he's hated by them, too. And his daughters scoff at his interment choices and the idea of accompanying him on the trip (a chore complicated by the fact his youngest, mousy offspring is betrothed to the sheriff there).
Tatum's Indian wife gives a noble speech, and everyone is properly humbled.
Set to an elegiacal score that only Richard Shores could compose, the episode is so crisp in its high-resolution, it looks like it was filmed yesterday (one benefit of the advent of streaming, where GUNSMOKE is doing shockingly well, especially for a 50- to 70-year-old show). Absurdly, however, "Spearville" is ensconced by mountains, Saguaro cacti, and the Coronado National Forest (i.e., gorgeous Tucson, Arizona) when, in real life, Spearville is surrounded by a flat-as-a-pancake terrain for several hundred miles in every direction. (Why not change the script to some hamlet to the southwest?). But this is a manifestation of Dodge City's Any-Western-Town persona on GUNSMOKE where Kansas is Any-Western-State: the landscape just out of the city generally looks nothing like that of western-and-central Kansas whatsoever.
Isn't this the same role Gene Evans played on DALLAS?
Next up: THE BROTHERS, as homicidal Steve Forrest (in one of several guest appearances) goes gunning for whomever killed his sibling, a wanted felon, at a nearby waystation -- one of whom is none other than Miss Kitty. (Original Music by John Parker -- remember him??)
Parmalee porn:
With the surprise renewal for Season 13, executive producer Philip Leacock is out (he goes off to produce a 90-minute western for Stuart Whitman called CIMARRON STRIP) and John Mantley ascends to the top producer position and soon hires Joseph Dackow as line producer. The result is that Leacock's style of drably mythical bigness is dampened slightly and replaced with something that feels less sluggishly repetitive.
But with Dackow's death just before the end of Season 16 in 1971, DALLAS' Leonard Katzman takes over line producer duties, and the program improves even further. People who think GUNSMOKE ran too long and believe it shouldn't have gotten into the 1970s are either nuts or they never saw the last half-decade of the show. Under the auspices of Katzman, the series becomes warmer, cleaner and more clearly-defined, the music more interesting. It's all just more engaging.
I just saw a Season 18 episode entitled "Tatum" with Gene Evans as a crusty hired gun, mauled in the first scene by a bear threatening his native American wife, his injuries terminal. Taken to Dodge City to receive his negative prognosis by Doc Adams, surly Tatum finds his three daughters have arrived in town in anticipation of his inevitable demise -- one is clinically depressed, another a plain and dour spinster, and the third appears to have transformed herself into a saloon-based hooker (whom he encourages to not fear letting a man put his hands on her -- something it would appear wasn't a problem for her). But these three women have one thing in common: they all hate Daddy for how his career affected their family and, in the end, killed their mother... He wants to be buried in Spearville, Kansas, a few miles to the east of Dodge, beside the remains of his first wife, but the townfolk won't make it easy, as he's hated by them, too. And his daughters scoff at his interment choices and the idea of accompanying him on the trip (a chore complicated by the fact his youngest, mousy offspring is betrothed to the sheriff there).
Tatum's Indian wife gives a noble speech, and everyone is properly humbled.
Set to an elegiacal score that only Richard Shores could compose, the episode is so crisp in its high-resolution, it looks like it was filmed yesterday (one benefit of the advent of streaming, where GUNSMOKE is doing shockingly well, especially for a 50- to 70-year-old show). Absurdly, however, "Spearville" is ensconced by mountains, Saguaro cacti, and the Coronado National Forest (i.e., gorgeous Tucson, Arizona) when, in real life, Spearville is surrounded by a flat-as-a-pancake terrain for several hundred miles in every direction. (Why not change the script to some hamlet to the southwest?). But this is a manifestation of Dodge City's Any-Western-Town persona on GUNSMOKE where Kansas is Any-Western-State: the landscape just out of the city generally looks nothing like that of western-and-central Kansas whatsoever.
Isn't this the same role Gene Evans played on DALLAS?
Next up: THE BROTHERS, as homicidal Steve Forrest (in one of several guest appearances) goes gunning for whomever killed his sibling, a wanted felon, at a nearby waystation -- one of whom is none other than Miss Kitty. (Original Music by John Parker -- remember him??)
Parmalee porn:
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