Art only really imitates life sometimes. Other times, art reacts to life or shifts with it.
In a three-month stretch in 1968, both Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. While these deaths affected American life in the immediate, their ramifications in the art and entertainment world weren’t truly felt until later in the decade.
Gunsmoke was an action series which had to be without violence for some years in the late ’60s. While the show kicked off with saloon brawls and shootouts in 1955, by the latter part of the following decade, it had been effectively neutered by network intervention.
In 1970, Gunsmoke slowly began reintroducing the violence of the Wild West back into its scripts. Associated Press writer Bob Thomas was invited onto the set to interview James Arness (Marshal Matt Dillon) on the day of their first new action sequence.
“That’s the first fight we’ve had in a long time,” Arness told the journalist, “and I suspect that the network will cut it out of the finished show.”
Just like many other TV series, Gunsmoke lost its edge in the wake of the assassinations of MLK and RFK in ’68. These back-to-back murders of high-profile public figures made networks afraid that audiences would find fictional violence distasteful. With a tense cultural climate in the aftermath of both politically motivated killings, shows like Gunsmoke weren’t allowed to feature nearly as much gunplay.
By the time Gunsmoke was filming its 16th season, things were beginning to return to normal in Dodge City.
“We have a little more freedom, but not much,” said Arness. “I can understand the reasons for cutting down violence, but I must say it makes it damned hard to film a Western when you can’t use fists or guns.”
Despite the restrictions placed upon it, Gunsmoke continued to grow in the ratings. In 1969, it was the second-biggest show on television, regularly drawing 14.5 million viewers.