Speaking of Gunsmoke...

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When I was in high school, we had a neighbor, Jay, that had spent several years as a stunt man. His biggest gig was the main stand-in for James Arness on Gunsmoke. If you remember the opening, it either started wth Arness riding his horse at a full gallup or coming out into the street for the showdown. The scene was shot showing only the hip of who we thought was Arness. He drew his gun and shot his opponent. Only then did they show his face. That was really Jay's hip. For the other opening, Arness only rode about 50 yards and they looped the film. In reality, Arness was afraid of large animals. Jay and Ken Curtis (Festus) were good friends and he had a pair of spurs that Ken gave him. He says that Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty) was a real *itch. Milburn Stone (Doc) was a true gentleman.

Jay was also in the original Planet of the Apes. There is a scene early in the movie where the apes are chasing the humans through a corn field. Jay is the ape riding the horse and shouting instructions. He has a great story he tells of heading back into town from the set. It took along time to put on the makeup, so they wouldn't always take it off at night. As the car full of apes drove along, they would wave at cars going the other way. One car swerved off the road and got stuck in the sand. The apes went back to help, but that cause the woman passenger to scream. The actors tried to tell them they were just making a movie, but it didn't help. So, they started pulling off the makeup and latex....which just made things worse. Luckily, a car full of crew members came along about then and got everything settled down.

The last story I remember Jay telling was when he was in the movie MacKenna's Gold. In one scene, he was to ride his horse off a cliff and into the lake below, then he and the horse were to swim out of the lake and make their escape from the people chasing them. It didn't work out as planned. The horse was smarter than they thought. It stopped at the edge of the cliff. Take two: Jay is now wearing spurs and jams them into the horse's belly. But the horse still refused to go off the cliff. Take three: Put a sage brush at the edge of the cliff and have someone hide behind it with a cattle prod. Sure enough, when the horse got a jolt of the prod, it went over the cliff. But still, things didn't go as planned. The horse started to lean onto its side. Jay knew he was in trouble and tried to get off, but his foot was caught in the stirrup. His up-hill foot was in a break-away stirrup, but he couldn't get enough weight on it to detach it. So, they both hit the water sideways. When you watch the movie today, you can plainly see that, but all of a sudden they are upright and swimming away, as planned. They had to take a horse out there, then swim it back to follow the script.

Gunsmoke, Planet of the Apes, MacKenna's Gold, and many other movies and TV series (mostly westerns) were shot in southern Utah near Kanab and Lake Powell.


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>No, as Alan recognized, that's Yancy Derringer who defined cool in the cowboy days. This was when the biggest thing on TV was Gunsmoke and the sheriff was the hero. Yancy was a riverboat gambler in New Orleans. His sidekick, Pahoo, looked like a cigar store Indian, never talked except to Yancy in sign language, carried a sawed off shotgun under his blanket and a huge knife in a rig behind his neck. Madame Francine ran a "dancehall" - the Sazarak , Jody Baker the pickpocket was a confidant and Yancy lived on a riverboat - the Sultana. He carried a number of 4 barreled Sharps derringers concealed (including in his sleeve and in his hat) and a friggin' sword-cane ! ( to this day I have a collection of real sword-canes )
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>The only character even close to as cool was Paladin.
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>(Yancy was played by Jock Mahoney, an acrobat and stunt man who previously had a hit series "The Range Rider" with an opening sequence of him dancing the horses on a runaway stage that has to be seen to be believed )