Then you have guys like James Arness who rode Gunsmoke right into old age and then made a couple of Gunsmoke movies.
I always get a kick out of watching Miss Kitty's saloon in "Gunsmoke," filled with "working girls." Straight arrow Marshall Matt Dillon would go in there to have a drink and NEVER indulged in the women. Maybe they should have had an episode where Marshall Dillon returned to Dodge City after a couple of weeks on the trail and asks Miss Kitty to get him a room plus one of the working women for the evening.
I believe James Arness got the Gunsmoke job on the recommendation of John Wayne, who turned the job down. Good move for both.
Yeah, and that’s why Arness could do whatever he wanted (in terms of acting) after “Gunsmoke” left the air. If you watch the early, 30-minute, black-and-white episodes of Gunsmoke, you’ll note that the last three or four years of shows in that format were produced by the “Arness Production Company.”
To keep their star happy, CBS set him up as the producer, then when the show expanded to a one-hour format, the network bought him out and made him a multi-millionaire in the process. And Gunsmoke ran for another 14 seasons after Arness folded his production company, and he took home a rather healthy paycheck each week.
There is potential gold in being typecast.