Gunsmoke
Stark
TV Flash files “Stark” as hour 518 of 635 in the TV Flash guide — Gunsmoke (1955–1975) on CBS, season 16, episode 3, aired 1970-09-28, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S16E03: listed hour 518 of 635 in the Gunsmoke guide, hour 3 of 24 in season 16. It aired 1970-09-28 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “The Noose” (S16E02). Next is “Sam McTavish, M.D.” (S16E04). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Adam Bramley, an immature selfish young man, has escaped from prison. Lewis Stark is a bounty hunter who catches him, then blackmails him for money with Bramley's father, John, a rancher with a serious heart condition. Adam's strong-willed sister Glory, has the ranch hands beat up Stark, while John pays him off to leave. Adam finally has an epiphany just as his father is dying of a heart attack.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Stark sit in the Gunsmoke guide?
S16E03 is listed hour 518 of 635 — hour 3 of 24 in season 16, season 16 episode 3.
When did Gunsmoke S16E03 air?
Stark aired 1970-09-28 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Where should I start?
Start with the 1955 opener, where the marshal is not invincible. Then sample a later guest-star hour rather than marching through hundreds of titles in order.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Twenty seasons of Dodge as a civic appointment: a marshal who can lose, a chorus instead of gadgets, and adult-western hours that treat a gunfight as a verdict. Longevity here was weather, not catalog padding — weekly public work with dust still on the boots.
September 1955, CBS: a marshal takes a bullet in the first hour and the adult western stops being a kid’s hat commercial. Gunsmoke had already lived on radio, with a different voice in the badge. Television wanted a face the lens could trust. The lore still pours like bar whiskey — John Wayne pointing at James Arness, William Conrad left on the airwaves, a casting fight that was really a medium fight. Radio-to-TV is never a reprint. It is a negotiation about whose body gets to mean the law.
Filed against
- James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon
James Arness towered over Dodge City as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, the long-running western that turned weekly moral court into a twenty-year empire. Quiet steel defined adult TV drama’s early prime-time map. Radio-to-TV casting…
- Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty Russell
Amanda Blake’s Miss Kitty Russell ran Dodge City’s Long Branch with red-haired steel on Gunsmoke — saloon diplomacy as weekly moral court. Longevity made her western TV’s most reliable soft power. TV Flash files her as the original…
- Milburn Stone as Doc Adams
Milburn Stone’s Doc Adams is Gunsmoke’s civic medicine — twenty seasons of Dodge City as a weekly moral court, a doctor who treated violence as a bill the town had to pay. CBS moved radio muscle to Saturday, then Monday; Stone made the…
- Dennis Weaver as Chester Goode
Dennis Weaver’s Chester Goode was Gunsmoke’s limp and loyalty — chorus, not gadget, in Dodge City’s weekly moral court. Twenty seasons of adult western that treated a gunfight as a verdict, James Arness as a marshal the camera could…
- Ken Curtis as Festus Haggen
Ken Curtis’s Festus Haggen is Gunsmoke’s later chorus — Dodge City as a weekly moral court, a marshal who can lose, adult-western hours that treat a gunfight as a verdict. Twenty seasons of civic work with dust on the boots. On TV Flash…