Gunsmoke
The Sharecroppers
TV Flash files “The Sharecroppers” as the listed series bookend — Gunsmoke (1955–1975) on CBS, season 20, episode 24, aired 1975-03-31, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S20E24: listed hour 635 of 635 in the Gunsmoke guide, last listed hour of season 20. It aired 1975-03-31 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Manolo” (S20E23). No later hour is listed in this guide. Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Twenty years, then a quiet street. The job ends without a legacy speech — the most honest western trick.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
When Festus accidentally shoots a man in the leg, he takes the man back to his farm only to be used by members of the family.
Viewer FAQ
Where does The Sharecroppers sit in the Gunsmoke guide?
S20E24 is listed hour 635 of 635 — last listed hour of season 20, season 20 episode 24.
When did Gunsmoke S20E24 air?
The Sharecroppers aired 1975-03-31 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…