The Sacketts miniseries made a star of Tom Selleck in 1979. Jim Byrnes, Ben Johnson and Louis L’Amour enjoyed a moment together at the premiere of the 1979 NBC mini-series, The Sacketts. I did what they call a bible, almost 100 pages, with storylines for the first season.” James Arness wasn’t considered for the lead, but when Gunsmoke was abruptly cancelled, its star was a natural for Zeb Macahan. The West Was Won.” They screened the original movie, “but it was too episodic, and I wanted a family. In 1976, MGM came calling, asking him “to do a series based on the movie How By the end of “Women for Sale,” our sympathies have turned against a girl victim, in favor of her young kidnapper! Byrnes’s episode “Thirty a Month and Found” won Best Episodic Drama from The Writers Guild, and the Spur award from the Western Writers of America. I got really pissed off when they changed the title to ‘Women for Sale.’”Īnother element common in Byrnes’s stories, but rare in the black hat/white hat world of Westerns, is moral ambiguity. Indians would raid ranches and farms, kidnap the women, then meet in the Valley of Tears with the Comancheros, who’d trade for them, to sell them into prostitution in Mexico. Byrnes also tackled history that was uglier than TV generally dealt with, as in one of his several two-parters. “The Badge” is one of the few shows to deal with the Matt Dillon/Miss Kitty romance. While Dillon was making mostly cameo appearances, Arness preferring to spend his time surfing, Byrnes’s skills often earned him plum assignments with Dillon in the center. Blood-and-Guts because I kill a lot of people.” We were warned constantly about violence-the network called me Mr. “They had to change the opening of the show: Matt in a shoot-out Matt riding a horse. and Bobby Kennedy led to demands for less violence onscreen. The back-to-back assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. The late 1960s was a tough transitional time for TV, especially Westerns. Then they said, ‘We want you to stay,’ so six weeks turned into two years.” Jim Byrnes (right) wrote the 1971 Gunsmoke episode, “The Bullet,” the only three-part Gunsmoke during its primetime run on CBS from 1955 to 1975. He recalled with a laugh, “Watching it, I got so involved, I forgot I’m watching me!” īefore Byrnes had finished writing “Lobo,” Mantley offered him a six-week job as story consultant. I finally found this story about a wolf.” The episode became “Lobo,” and the late Morgan Woodward, who was Gunsmoke’s most frequent guest star, named it his favorite. ‘We did that 10 years ago.’ I think, this is my great chance I can’t blow this. Come up with a story.” The problem was, they’d already been on for 13 years. “They said, we want you to write a Gunsmoke. Gunsmoke producer John Mantley read Gaucho, and called Byrnes in. Then I didn’t sell anything for six years.”īyrnes wrote scripts on speculation, and drove taxis and trucks until his script, Gaucho, landed him an agent. Carr read it and said, ‘You guys should submit it: this is pretty good.’” It became an episode of Zane Grey Theater, “and James Coburn and Dick Powell starred. Any ideas?’ We wrote a story called Desert Flight. “My brother said, ‘They want us to write something, and you watch all the Westerns. I was in high school when I sold my first script.” His older brother Joseph was taking a writing course at Los Angeles Valley College from prolific Western telewriter Richard Carr. “I loved Rawhide, Wanted: Dead or Alive, and of course I loved Gunsmoke, never dreaming I’d ever write for Gunsmoke. The Iowa-born writer always knew what his specialty would be. And to fans who read credits, Jim Byrnes is a familiar name, having penned 34 of the very best episodes, and one of the movies. With 635 television episodes, 480 radio shows and five movies, no other series in any genre has equaled the longevity of Gunsmoke. Jim Byrnes developed a lifetime friendship with Gunsmoke’s leading man, James Arness (left), during his tenure as a writer of 34 episodes and one movie of the classic TV Western.
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