Because he attended Beloit College, I wanted to make a video about actor James Arness. And I wrote to him a month before he died.

His web site said he enjoyed letters from fans. I am a fan, having just watched 174 of his old TV Gunsmoke shows on Netflix.

Although these westerns were made a half century ago, they are still good stories. But when you watch an episode or two a day for months something else happens to you along with being entertained.

You find yourself becoming a resident of that dusty frontier community of Dodge, Kansas with its cattle herds, horses, mules, buggies, stagecoaches, covered wagons, telegraph offices, hard drinkers, brawls and gun fights.

Your family is James Arness aka the stern Marshal Matt Dillon, Kitty, Doc, Chester, and Festus. These characters care a lot about each other and you care for them, too. It is almost too much to endure when outlaws take kind Kitty or grandfatherly Doc hostage.

Gunsmoke has strong stories and characters and occasionally first rate music by movie composers such as Franz Waxman.

But the show used the same background over and over again… no matter where the location is supposed to be--Kansas, Texas, or Mexico--you always see the same cabins, meadows, trees, and the same mountains. The horse with the white neck spot shows up with a different owner every episode. I'm not complaining about this. It made me feel at home.

In the saddle, Marshal Dillon is a rugged giant and his spurred heels almost scrape the ground. Yet he rides a beautiful horse with a fluffed up hairdo. The animal prances along the prairie during those long trailing-the-bad-guy scenes.

At the end of the trail, Dillon almost always wins the gun fight, but is often bloodied. His New York Times obituary said he was wounded 30 times in Gunsmoke.

James Arness was actually severely wounded in the leg during World War II.

He remained a patriot the rest of his life. Here is an excerpt from an Armed Forces film he made in his prime.