Small Bore

I always knew that Aurness was a Minnesota Norwegian Priss

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

I keep watching the opening sequence of Gunsmoke in the gun fight in the street and while there is always allot of know it all about Matt Dillon being outdrawn, no one seems to have noticed something odd about the gun he is shooting.

This is a 45 with a big cylinder. You see them often on the set as you can not miss those huge bores. In the picture below, you can see that bore, but the barrel looks trimmed down.

I could not find the opening shot by Matt Dillon, but there is one below that is close to the gun that Matt Dillon is shooting. If you watch the sequence in black and white footage, the bore on that gun is quite small. It apparently is a prop gun, which would be something like a 22 on a 45 frame which fired blanks.

So it appears the famed scene has never been really examined in the old footage. It seems a really obvious oversight by the editors.

I am though impressed by the times that Matt Dillon actually has to plug people a few times, which is reality. I am impressed by Matt Dillon telling outlaws he is going to kill probably all of them, even if they shoot him first, before he goes down, because anyone knows people just do not die instantly from being shot in the body.

James Arness was an astute businessman. I remember John Wayne telling this 6 foot seven inch hulk to get into television as no leading men wanted a big guy like that towering over them. His Arness company was producing after a few seasons, which meant he was making a great deal of money.
He never tried movies again in funding his own, but he milked Gunsmoke for all it was worth. He was one of the great success stories in entertainment, even bigger than John Wayne.

I always thought he was a bit too full of himself. His first epic in Gunsmoke, basically stole from John Wayne movies. I still assess that the early 30 minute episodes were some of the best in cinema. They explored a variety of psychological subjects, but when it moved to 60 minutes, they had too much time and struggled for filling space.

They struggled with Burt Reynolds as a half breed in finding story content. There simply was not enough space for Arness, Weaver, Stone, Russell and Reynolds when coupled with the guest stars taking up too much time. Sometimes to Arness' credit he just went fishing and disappeared for the hour, and frankly the show did suffer, so he did have some star power.

It is all about small bore and big bore.

Nuff Said

agtG