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James Arness made it look so real.Gunsmoke was a masterpiece.

Funny thing about Gunsmoke, Matt wasn't near as good a gun slinger as Festus was, Festus was really fast with a gun.
I could have out did old Matt on a bad day.
The fastest, and best western star I know of was Richard Boone of Have gun will Travel.

Big guys reflexes are not as fast as smaller guys and boxing makes this obvious. Still he rode the rails. He was the alpha male in real life and this I believe has a lot to do with making it look so real. Sheriffs like Wild Bill Hickok also had guts galore and were very handy with their fists.

Richard Boone wasn't a small man, Festus/Key Curtis was not so big though.

Speaking of Kin Curtis, here is something most people don't know.

Festus certainly doesn’t look like someone who can sing well. Actors used to have to be skilled in many entertaining arts. Kim Kardashian on the other hand has big boobs and booty and is a glamorous superslut.

Curtis sung in the Sons of The Pioneers before Gun Smoke, and did country music.
Most people think of him as just Festus which was started after he fought in WW2.
To me his character made Gun Smoke more than James did.

Oh, he even did a few songs for the Tommy Dorsey's orchestra.

Looks pretty different all cleaned up

Gary Oak wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2023, 2:54 am James Arness made it look so real.Gunsmoke was a masterpiece.

And he did it with that "big iron" single action, 1873, 71/2" barrel, Army Colt. Clearing leather with one of those monsters, quickly, is no small feat.... With a little practice anyone can become somewhat proficient with the 4-3/4" or the 5-1/2" models but the 71/2" is a lot more difficult.

Blue Frost wrote: ↑May 30th, 2023, 12:14 pm Richard Boone wasn't a small man, Festus/Key Curtis was not so big though.

Speaking of Kin Curtis, here is something most people don't know.

IMHO Ken Curtis's best movie role was Charlie McCory in John Ford's "The Searchers".

"Spit over that piece of Firewood"...

Probably one of the finest Westerns ever made.

I believe he married Fords daughter, gotta look that up.
I do know he somehow married into the Ford family.

Matt Dillon sure was a badass.

I would have shot him first, Dillon was slow, even for accuracy he was slow.
He was also a big target.

Absolutely, I can’t see a 6’6” guy having nearly the handspeed of an average sized guy. In one of the posts on the founding of the USA thread it says that the old cowboys back then were about 5’ to 5’3” on average. No doubt their diet wasn’t very good for growing. Still Matt Dillon did know how to behave like a real alpha street fighter but no way would he have as good reflexes as an average sized or smaller guy.

That's where a gun makes all men, and woman equal, that's if they know how to use one.
That's also one reason governments are timid of pushing harder than they do.

Gary Oak wrote: ↑June 9th, 2023, 3:27 pm Absolutely, I can’t see a 6’6” guy having nearly the handspeed of an average sized guy. In one of the posts on the founding of the USA thread it says that the old cowboys back then were about 5’ to 5’3” on average. No doubt their diet wasn’t very good for growing. Still Matt Dillon did know how to behave like a real alpha street fighter but no way would he have as good reflexes as an average sized or smaller guy.

I don't think that's true at all. Americans have always been taller than average as compared to the global average human height...

Some of our earliest recorded measurements of large groups of people come from army records during the American Civil War. These records show that on average the height of a soldier enlisted in the Army of the Potomac was about 5'7" to 5'8". Granted these were probably men from older families, a couple generations living in the US, but I still I don't see how cowboys of the 1870s or 1880s could have shrunk 5" or more inches from the average recorded in the early 1860s. It doesn't seem possible to me unless they were measuring Chinese immigrant cowboys...

I had an ancestor at Bunker Hill which was actually the next hill over, he was 6-3, and 400+ pounds.
Mighty big target, might have been a skunk ape.

I watched a video about the Wild West and that I got the five foot tall to five five foot two for the early cowboys. I may have posted it on the founding of the USA thread. I will give a look for it. I’ve been wrong before.

By the Civil War people where taller, you had many Scotsman, Germans, and Dutch move west, and other Nordic peoples.
Also the ones who had been here as Renee touched on where getting taller also.
The Brits, and Irish where the smaller peoples, but still you had large ones also since many where not all Brit by then.
I read once the average man in the revolution was 5-5 to 5-8, and in the Civil war 5-7 to 5-8 on average which is not short on average.
Today the average is 5-10 I think.

I think the average we were in our twenties was 5’10” but now it appears that the average young guy is two or three inches taller and are thicker as well. They would have had to compete in the amateur heavyweight division of 200 pounds.

I was 6 foot even till I got injured, and older, my dad was 5-10
My dad had uncles that where around 7 foot tall.
My first nephew was 5-10, and second one 6-3
My great nephew is 5-8 maybe.

I think in Japan the height has increased by maybe four inches since WW2

This is interesting

I believe that it’s obvious that youngsters now are a lot bigger than they were in 1996 as in the graph.