Product Description
-------------------
All 39 episodes from the debut season--including "Matt Gets It,"
"Smoking Out the Nolans," "Yorky," "Cooter," and "Alarm at
Pleasant Valley"--are featured in a six-disc set.
.com
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A TV series doesn't get a more auspicious launch than did
smoke, the first episode of which, broadcast on Sept. 10,
1955, was introduced by none other than John Wayne ("Some of you
may have seen me before"). In this historic prologue (included in
this first-season round-up), Wayne hypes smoke as "honest,
adult, and realistic." Of James Arness, starring as United States
Marshal Matt Dillon, Wayne predicts, "He'll be a big star, so you
might as well get used to him." Viewers did more than get used to
him. "Mr. Dillon," as his sidekick Chester (Dennis Weaver) calls
him, became a television icon who literally stood tall as a
steadfast, incorruptible symbol of justice through two of
America's most tumultuous decades. The Bravo network ranked him
among TV's 50 greatest characters. smoke was television's
longest running Western, and Arness's 20-year stint as Dillon
would be matched only by Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Crane (and, by
the way, Milburn Stone, who costarred with Arness as crusty,
"vinegar face" Doc Adams).
For those who grew up with smoke's full-hour color episodes,
this first season will be something of a revelation. The show is
in black and white, and, at a half-hour, lean and gritty. Not
that Dodge City is Deadwood, by any means, but its reputation as
"the Gomorrah of the plains," as Dillon notes in the first
episode, is well earned. Most episodes begin with Dillon setting
the stage, Dragnet-style, like a frontier Joe Friday. "A man will
choose his quicker to make a point than he'll draw on his
logic," he ruminates at one point. "That's where I come in."
smoke has its share of shootouts and traditional Western
action, but the best episodes are gripping psychological dramas.
In "Reward for Matt," the embittered widow of a racist Dillon was
forced to down puts a price on his head. In "The Killer,"
Dillon exposes a slinger (guest star Charles Bronson) for the
coward he is. Even an otherwise light-hearted holiday episode,
"Magnus," in which Chester's backwards, backwoods brother comes
to visit, is darkened by a twisted man ning for "wicked" dance
hall woman Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake), queen of the Longbranch
saloon (and a close friend of the marshaljust how close is only
hinted at). John Wayne was right: More than 50 years later,
smoke remains "the best thing of its kind to come along."
--Donald Liebenson
Beyond smoke
More TV Westerns (
/gp/browse.html/ref=d_ap_smoke_1/?node=1023356 )
50th Anniversary Collection (
/gp/product/B000BITUYI/ref=d_ap_smoke_2 )
Directors Collection (
/gp/product/B000H7JCHI/ref=d_ap_smoke_3 )
Stills from smoke: The First Season (click for larger image)
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