Why Did Chester Goode Disappear From ‘Gunsmoke’?

GUNSMOKE, Dennis Weaver, Amanda Blake, 1955-1975 — Everett Collection

Like too many other TV characters, Gunsmoke’s Chester Goode seemingly vanished into thin air. Dennis Weaver last played the character on the TV western in Season 9’s “Bently.” That episode, at least, gives Chester a starring role: He comes to the aid of a husband and wife after the husband makes a deathbed murder confession Chester thinks is a bid to make life better for his soon-to-be widow.

In the next episode, though, Chester has gotten out of Dodge, so to speak, and no one seems to acknowledge his disappearance. It was a confounding end for a character who became a fan-favorite deputy to James Arness’ Marshal Matt Dillon. Weaver played the character for eight and a half seasons, from 1955 to 1964, and won an Emmy Award for the part in 1959.

Eleven seasons later after his exit, Gunsmoke fans learned — at least a little — about what happened to Chester…

Matt Dillon finally discussed Chester’s departure more than 10 years after the fact

In Season 20’s “The Fourth Victim,” Dillon and his deputy Newly (Buck Taylor) rifle through old court records as they try to find clues about a sniper targeting the members of a jury from a years-old case.

Two of the men listed in the records are former Gunsmoke standbys: Chester and Quint Asper (Burt Reynolds), another former deputy. And Dillon gives updates on both men as Newly reads their names.

Of Quint, Dillon says, “He was a blacksmith here. He went to California about 10 years ago.”

And Chester? “He used to work for me here. He was before your time,” Dillon tells Newly. “He left, I think, right after the trial.”

James Arness called Dennis Weaver an “integral part of the show”

GUNSMOKE, from left: Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone (front), Dennis Weaver, (1962), 1955-1975.

Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone (front) and Dennis Weaver. Credit: Everett Collection

When Weaver died at age 81 in 2006, Arness spoke highly of his former costar in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“He was such an integral part of the show, and people loved his character of Chester,” Arness said. “He and I used to go out on appearances in the early years — we traveled all over the country together at fairs and rodeos — and his character was just indelibly etched in the minds of millions of people around the country. Everywhere you went, people would ask, ‘How’s Chester?’”

Arness said that Weaver was a “really fine actor” and that they’d stayed closed after Weaver’s Gunsmoke exit. “We really liked each other a whole lot,” he said. “It’s just a shock and sadness to see him go and not be here anymore. I thought the world of him.”

Weaver exited Gunsmoke to “leave the second banana role”

In a 1987 Toronto Star interview, Weaver revealed why he left Gunsmoke behind. “The reason I got away from Gunsmoke was that I wanted to leave the second banana role,” he said, per the Times. “It was a very important — and frightening — step for me career-wise. I was a little naive. Gunsmoke was the only series that I had done up to that point, and I thought, well, I’d just get another series and I’d get a successful one. But that’s not the way things happened.”

That successful starring role didn’t come immediately, but Weaver finally found it in 1970 when he played the title role — another deputy marshal, coincidentally enough — in the NBC police drama McCloud. “Quite suddenly, Dennis Weaver became something he’d never been before … a sex symbol,” Times TV critic Cecil Smith said in 1975.

But it was hard for Weaver to shake off the part of Chester — or, at least, Chester’s stiff-legged gait. “Dennis later told me he had a heck of a time losing his limp after he left the show,” Arness wrote in his autobiography, per /Film.

Weaver had come up with the idea for Chester’s stiff leg at the start of Gunsmoke as an explanation for why the character wasn’t more involved in the show’s action sequences, as he recalled in his own autobiography, MeTV reports.

And the physicality of the part stayed with Weaver on other projects, Arness wrote: “On other shows, when a director yelled ‘action,’ he’d automatically start to limp. It took him several months to walk normal when on camera.”