Arness' other great western role

[stuart.uk]

Inbetween the hugely successful Gunsmoke tv series and the outstanding tv movies where James Arness reprised the role of Matt Dillion in the late 80s and early 90s was How The West Was Won.

James Arness was surprised to learn Gunsmoke was cancelled in the mid 70s after 20-yrs, even though the show was still popular. However, in a short space of time he was offered the role of mountain man Zeb in HTWWW. It was about a family, the mother of whom was Eva Marie Saint, who travelled west to find a new life during the Civil War. Zeb already a living legend was the middle-aged uncle

The original mini series was a big hit in the States and I thought it also brillaint. It suffered in the UK because it aired the same time as the new UK series about Yorkshire vets in the 1930s All Creatures Great And Small, which had already been made in two successful feature films, and it went through the roof.

Arness has said he found HTWWW harder work than Gunsmoke with more demanding stunt work. He also liked playing a mountain man with his own more brutal code of law unlike Matt's Marshal. It's also been suggested that when Arness made his Gunsmoke movies that his aging Matt was more like Zeb than the original younger Dillion

A tv series followed and while still great in parts, though I thought it did up to a point go into a 60s western format, I don't think it was good as the outstanding mini series

Here's a link

[movieman1957]

I used to watch this one fairly regularly. There was still some Matt Dillon there but it was mostly a departure. There was some more action and he my have found it a little tougher because of his age. As I recall his limp became more pronounced during that time and maybe that was because of the stress on him with the action.

Pretty good show. It was one of the few westerns on at the time.