Gunsmoke Trivia
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100 free Gunsmoke trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Gunsmoke trivia questions with answers. Gunsmoke ran for 20 seasons and 635 episodes on CBS, and before that for nine years on radio with a different Marshal Dillon. This quiz covers the whole story: how the radio show grew out of a request for a 'Philip Marlowe of the Old West', why the radio cast was passed over for television, the John Wayne introduction, the near-cancellation of 1967, the quiet axe in 1975, and the five reunion movies that followed. Along the way you will meet Matt, Miss Kitty, Doc, Chester, Festus, Quint, Newly and Sam the bartender, and the actors behind them: a wounded Anzio veteran, a decathlete who invented a limp, a Sons of the Pioneers singer, and a Miss Kitty who bred cheetahs. Easy warm-ups sit beside genuinely obscure questions about the radio scripts, the theme song and the spin-off Dirty Sally. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which lawman's rival TV Western premiered four days before Gunsmoke?
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp: ABC's The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp beat Gunsmoke to air by four days as television's first Western written for adults, yet Gunsmoke outlasted it by 14 years.
Q 02Whose deep voice played Marshal Matt Dillon on the Gunsmoke radio series?
William Conrad
William Conrad voiced the Marshal for nine years, but CBS would not put him on screen: the heavyset actor said he lost the TV part because he didn't look like Gary Cooper.
Q 03Who played Marshal Matt Dillon for Gunsmoke's entire television run?
James Arness
James Arness at first refused the part, afraid a television series would typecast him, until a friend talked him round; he then played Dillon in all 635 episodes.
Q 04Which movie star introduced the first Gunsmoke television episode on camera in 1955?
John Wayne
John Wayne came on in full cowboy gear to vouch for the little-known lead, a protégé he had recommended for the part after using him in four of his own films.
Q 05Gunsmoke took over as television's top show in 1957 from which series?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy ended its weekly run in May 1957 while still number one; Gunsmoke then held the top spot for four straight seasons, until Wagon Train passed it in 1961-62.
Q 06Gunsmoke is set in Dodge City, in which state?
Kansas
Kansas: the stories unfold in the 1870s, after the Santa Fe railroad arrived in 1872 and turned Dodge City into a booming cattle town.
Q 07What was the name of the saloon owned by Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke?
The Long Branch
The Long Branch was a real Dodge City saloon, bought in 1878 by Chalkley Beeson and William Harris; it burned down in 1885, and a rebuilt version now serves visitors at the town's Boot Hill Museum.
Q 08Who played Chester Goode, Matt Dillon's limping assistant on Gunsmoke, from 1955 to 1964?
Dennis Weaver
Dennis Weaver had no agent and was delivering flowers for $60 a week when a friend told him CBS was casting the series; the part paid $300 an episode.
Q 09Who played the scruffy deputy Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke?
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was a smooth big-band singer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra long before Gunsmoke; Festus was meant to be a one-off guest spot, and he stayed for 11 years.
Q 10Which actor played Doc Adams for Gunsmoke's entire television run?
Milburn Stone
Milburn Stone won a 1968 Emmy as Doc, and he played the part so convincingly that viewers wrote to him asking for real medical advice.
Q 11Who played Miss Kitty Russell on television's Gunsmoke?
Amanda Blake
Amanda Blake quit a year before the show ended, so a new owner, Miss Hannah, ran the saloon through the final season.
Q 12Which future movie star played Gunsmoke's blacksmith Quint Asper from 1962 to 1965?
Burt Reynolds
Burt Reynolds left to chase leading roles of his own, feeling there wasn't room for two leading men, yet he later called Gunsmoke the best time of his life.
Q 13On Gunsmoke, Buck Taylor's character Newly O'Brien came to Dodge practising what trade before becoming a deputy?
Gunsmith
Gunsmith: Newly arrived from the East to mend firearms, went on to study medicine under Doc, and by the 1987 reunion film had become the town's marshal.
Q 21Which Hollywood legend guest-starred in Gunsmoke's 1966 episode 'The Jailer' as a widow who takes Matt and Kitty captive?
Bette Davis
Bette Davis plays a matriarch out to hang the Marshal because he sent her husband to the gallows; TV Guide later ranked it among the 100 greatest episodes ever.
Q 22Liggett & Myers sponsored Gunsmoke on radio and then television in the 1950s to sell which product?
Cigarettes
Cigarettes: the tobacco firm signed on in 1954, but it was not the first sponsor; the show ran for more than a year with none at all and then, briefly, sold Post Toasties cereal.
Q 23Gunsmoke's first radio episode, in April 1952, was named after which Old West outlaw?
Billy the Kid
Q 14Which sitcom did CBS cancel in 1967 to clear room after reversing its decision to drop Gunsmoke?
Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island had been promised a fourth season, but CBS chairman William Paley was furious to find his favourite Western cancelled and ordered it back, so the castaways lost their slot.
Q 15In a 1953 Time interview, Gunsmoke producer Norman Macdonnell said the radio Kitty was secretly what?
A prostitute
A prostitute, 'plain and simple', he said, though no script spelled it out; he feared a sponsor would make them clean the show up and move Kitty to 'a sweet little ranch' with her parents.
Q 16What was Doc Adams's first name on the Gunsmoke television series?
Galen
Galen: on radio Doc had been Charles Adams, but the TV series gave him the name of the ancient Greek physician whose teachings guided doctors for centuries.
Q 17On radio's Gunsmoke, Doc Adams had changed his name and come west to escape a charge of what?
Murder
Murder: radio's Doc was really Dr. Calvin Moore, a darker figure than TV's kindly physician, who in early episodes cheerfully counted on autopsy fees whenever the Marshal shot someone.
Q 18The radio voice of Matt Dillon later became a 1970s television star as which detective?
Cannon
Cannon ran on CBS from 1971 to 1976 and made a star of the actor the network had judged too heavy to play the Marshal on screen; now the detective's bulk was the selling point.
Q 19On the Gunsmoke radio series, Chester's ad-libbed surname was what?
Proudfoot
Proudfoot was actor Parley Baer's own ad-lib for a character first scripted only as 'Townsman'; television renamed him Chester Goode.
Q 20Howard McNear, Doc on the Gunsmoke radio series, later became famous as which Andy Griffith Show character?
Floyd the barber
Floyd the barber stayed in Mayberry even after the actor's stroke: rather than write him out, the show brought him back and filmed him seated or propped up.
Billy the Kid gave the first episode its title on 26 April 1952; Miss Kitty was missing, and did not turn up in Dodge until the third broadcast, 'Jaliscoe', two weeks later.
Q 24Under what title was Gunsmoke broadcast in the United Kingdom?
Gun Law
Gun Law was the British title, chosen because broadcasters there thought it had a better ring; a daily newspaper comic strip ran under the same name.
Q 25Which singing cowboy recorded a vocal version of Gunsmoke's theme?
Tex Ritter
Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter, cut the song for Capitol backed by composer Rex Koury's orchestra; the show itself only ever played the theme without its words.
Q 26Chester's actor left Gunsmoke in 1964 and later starred as a New Mexico marshal loose in New York in which series?
McCloud
McCloud, a deputy marshal from Taos on loan to Manhattan's police, turned the Marshal's limping sidekick into a leading man and, one critic wrote, suddenly a sex symbol.
Q 27Which show finally passed Gunsmoke's scripted-episode record in April 2018?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons marked its 636th episode with a spoof of the Gunsmoke opening in which baby Maggie outdraws Marshal Dillon in the street.
Q 28Which series broke Gunsmoke's season record for a live-action primetime drama in September 2019?
Law & Order: SVU
Law & Order: SVU went one season better than Gunsmoke that month; its parent show, Law & Order, had tied the record in 2010 but was cancelled before it could break it.
Q 29By one Old West historian's count, how many times was Marshal Matt Dillon shot during Gunsmoke's television run?
56 times
56 times, by Marshall Trimble's tally for True West magazine, with eight wounds to the left arm alone; yet the Marshal was back for every one of the show's 635 episodes.
Q 30Gunsmoke's Miss Kitty actress and her husband ran an early captive breeding program for which animal?
Cheetahs
Cheetahs were bred at her Phoenix compound, among the first ever raised in captivity; she also brought her pet lion, Kemo, to work on the set one day in 1974 and made the newspapers.