Today, we look at the early episode of Gunsmoke that tried to make James Arness look much smaller than the guest star that week, despite James Arness being the tallest leading man in TV history.
In I Love Ya But You’re Strange, I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing pop culture episodes, films and songs.
One of the interesting things about Gunsmoke was that its star, James Arness, who played U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon, was, for DECADES, the tallest leading man in television history. So it’s just kind of weird for the show, as you want to have the villains on the show be imposing and have your hero appear to be an underdog, but Arness was SO BIG that it was hard to do. This was a guy who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II, but when he got out of his landing craft into the water, his head was still above the water!
This led to a funny early episode of Gunsmoke called “The Preacher” (the 30th episode of Season 1), where Royal Dano plays a meek preacher, while Chuck Connors (just out of the NBA and about to star in The Rifleman in a couple of years) plays a bully, who hates that the preacher won’t fight him, even as he pushes him around.
Connors was 6 foot 5 and a half inches tall, and about 200 pounds, while Arness was at least 6’7″ and well over 200, so making Connors’ character appear more imposing than Matt Dillon was a real trick, but the show used forced perspective to make it Connors look bigger. It’s really funny to watch it with that in mind…
Note that Connors WAS obviously a big guy! He was an NBA player! He was definitely imposing, just not when compared to James Arness, though.
When they fight at the end of the episode, it was harder to hide their height difference…
Funny stuff.
Okay, folks, I’m sure you can think of weird but good pop culture stuff, so drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com!
