James Arness created a lonely character about whom he knew that he should never explain too much!

Nihilistic but virtuous, fanatical yet comionate— and somewhere had obtained gravitas to spare.

The classic American male hero!

How much more fun to watch such amoral

people fail to quite bury their better selves.

Robinson walks away with the movie as the moral com of honor.

Brando so distracted Coppola and the cast and crew that nothing was redeemed, no morals validated, just the grimmest of cartoons!

My God I’m tired of the glorification of the typical MGM scrubbed up musical about nothing!

Richard Boone was a dramatic actor, of greatly diverse talents, who played a kind of “equalizer” to the weak local sheriffs, schoolmarms and even a Jewish merchant who was being hounded.

His encyclopedic knowledge of literature, history, culinary arts, the Talmud made him an impossibly talented saint and genius.

What save this panoply of gifts from appearing to know everything was the character’s empathy and never taking himself too seriously.

Btw— I it was shown on CBS Saturday nights at 9:30 leading into the half hour Gunsmokes.