Earlier this year I finished a project I began 20 years ago. I was a huge western fan when I was a kid. I watched reruns of Gunsmoke and Rawhide most back then, but I also loved Have Gun Will Travel and Wanted: Dead or Alive. I didn't get into Maverick until the Mel Gibson movie came out, but I fell in love with that series, too.
I noticed one thing about all these shows, though: the characters killed an excessive number of people, and they also got shot a lot. Some of these guys should be more scar tissue than person, in fact. So I decided to keep a tally of this while I watched every single episode of these five shows on the 50th anniversary of each one airing.
Here are those results.
I learned that the more cast members you have, the more these numbers get spread out among them. On Rawhide they weren't quite the prolific killers that shows with a more limited cast would be. Plus there was some turnover for this show, as there were so many cast members. Here are the tallies starting with the minor characters and moving my way up.
Jed never got shot, but he killed five people. Ian similarly never got shot, but he killed two. Simon didn't get shot, either, and he only killed one person. Forester, Haysoos and Teddy never got shot, and they never killed anyone. Joe Scarlet never got shot, but he killed two people. Mushy (!) got shot once and killed two people. It's hard to picture him killing anyone, but he did it twice.
Quince has been shot four times, and he killed seven. Only seven, considering he was the biggest troublemaker in the lot. Pete Nolan got shot three times and killed fifteen people. Wishbone got shot once (and was dragged by a horse once), but he only killed five people. Not bad for a cantankerous old coot.
And now for the two leads. Rowdy Yates was shot 10 times (once with an arrow), and he killed thirty-nine people over the years. That's a low kill count for Clint, who once killed more Nazis than anyone else in the movie, Where Eagles Dare. I'm certain the scene in Preacher where the Saint of Killers shoots a bunch of Herr Starr's men was based on Clint's deeds in that one.
And Gil Favor was shot seven times, once with an arrow, and he was whipped once. He killed a whopping fifty people. If Rawhide happened in modern times, he'd be considered a serial killer.
Maverick has had the longest life of any of the westerns not named Gunsmoke. Not only was there the original show, but there were also three (!) other Maverick shows (The New Maverick, Young Maverick and Bret Maverick) and the Maverick movie I previously mentioned. Even that movie is canon, as James Garner still plays that same Bret Maverick, and Gibson is Bret Jr. So these tallies count all of that.
Bret Jr. didn't get shot once, but he killed a couple of people. Not bad for Gibson. Usually he plays kill-crazy bastards.
Brent Maverick got shot once and killed one person.
Ben Maverick didn't shoot anyone and never got shot. Pappy would be proud.
Beau Maverick (Roger Moore!) never got shot, but he did kill ten people.
Brother Bart got shot five times, and he killed fifty-two people! But he was the darker, more violent of the brothers.
Bret Maverick only got shot three times, but he was stabbed twice, and he killed a mere twenty-two people.
Josh Randall got shot twelve times, which is kind of amazing, but he killed seventy-seven people. Even a bounty hunter today would be hard pressed to explain that to the courts.
Paladin got around quite a bit. When he wasn't enjoying the San Francisco opera or a good book in the lobby of the Carlton, he got shot sixteen times (once with an arrow). Despite doing his level best to never kill someone unless he absolutely had to, he killed 198 motherfuckers. Holy fucking shit. That's . . . that's insane even by a western's standards. Unless the standard is set by . . .
Wanted: Dead or Alive did have a movie made out of it in the 'Eighties, but it doesn't really count. It was modernized with Rutger Hauer and Gene Simmons. So yeah, no. Gunsmoke, however, started in 1955 and ended in 1975. There were five made-for-TV movies made after, thus making it *the* western TV show of all time. This is another ensemble cast with some turnover, so let's start with the minor characters.
Newly O'Brien got shot five times. He also killed five people. Thad got shot six times and didn't kill anyone (poor Thad). Quint (Burt Reynolds!) got shot twice, stabbed once and whipped once, but he killed six people.
Then there were the assistants. Chester Goode was shot ten times, dragged by a horse once, stabbed once, and he killed eighteen people. Hard to believe Chester was capable of that. Festus Hagen, on the other hand, doesn't surprise anyone with his abilities. He got shot fifteen goddam times, bitten by a dog once, and he killed thirty five* people. WOW.
Miss Kitty got shot twice, and she killed five people. Doc got shot twice (over 20 years, that ain't bad), stabbed twice, and killed seven* people.
And then there's Matt Dillon, US Marshal. He got shot with an arrow once and stabbed twice, but he got shot an awe-inspiring sixty-two fucking times. And not counting the opening credits, he's killed 438* motherfuckers.
That's an astounding number by ANYONE's estimation. The hero that so many people back then looked up to had killed literally hundreds of people. HUNDREDS.
Not even I expected him to be that prolific a killer. Also, could you imagine being shot 62 times? He was a big dude (six-seven), but how the fuck was there anything left of him after that? He should look like Deadpool after all that shit.
*These three numbers are estimates because of one episode in the final season. That deserves some discussion because, for the first 19 years of the show, Matt Dillon loved nothing more than the law and upholding it, and he only killed people if he had no other choice. Festus had more or less the same view, although he was a little quicker to kill than Matthew. Doc loathed killing of any kind EXCEPT for this one episode.
What happened was, these three characters found themselves in a town of criminals, and instead of escaping and siccing the US government on them (as the Matt Dillon of the first 19 years would have done), they decide instead to blow this town up and kill every single man living there. This is an act of wanton violence none of these characters would have ordinarily wanted. The asterisk is because so many people died I couldn't count them all. So 438 is the lowest possible estimation. I only counted the ones I saw die. At least a hundred people lived there, but I can't say for sure.
The real reason I was doing this was so I could compare to the kills of horror movie slashers. I'll bet if you combined Freddy, Jason, Myers, Chucky, Leprechaun, Pinhead and the Cenobites (a great name for a rock band, to quote Dave Barry), and hell, let's throw Pumpkinhead in there, too, you still wouldn't have as many deaths as those caused by Matt Dillon. Which is funny to me. The parents back in the 'Eighties horrified by these monsters killing people while Matt Dillon, the hero of *their* childhood, killed more than all of them combined.
For some reason Matt Dillon stopped caring about the law during that last season and the five movies after. I suspected it was because Clint Eastwood was the western hero of the time, and he was an anti-hero, so maybe the writers wanted one of their own instead of the John Wayne inspired Dillon. And that might even be the real reason his character did a complete one-eighty during that time. But I have another theory, and if there are any Gunsmoke fans reading this, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
What's the one thing that's different about that final season of Gunsmoke? That's right, Miss Kitty left. There was no longer a feminine touch on the show. That last season was a sausage fest. But think about it a bit more. I think Matt Dillon's love for Miss Kitty was the real thing that kept him in check, and when she left, he lost any desire to uphold the law. He felt the world had punished him, so he decided to punish the world back. That last season of Gunsmoke shows us a good man who was broken by the absence of love, and that's why he really blew up that town of criminals with Festus and Doc's help. The next thing you know, he's no longer the marshal, and he's living out in the wilderness, where we find him in Return to Dodge.
Gunsmoke wasn't known for character development, at least not in the main characters, more like in the guest stars. But if I'm right, that's one hell of a swing to take.
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