Remembering Milburn Stone, Doc from ‘Gunsmoke’

GUNSMOKE, Milburn Stone, 1955-75 — Everett Collection

Milburn Stone became a regular fixture on television with the Western TV drama Gunsmoke, on which he played Doc Adams in all 20 seasons and 605 episodes, nearly matching costar James Arness’ longevity on the show. But Stone was no overnight success: He’d been paying his dues in Hollywood for decades by the time he started playing the good doctor.

Stone was born on July 5, 1904, in Burrton, Kansas, according to USA Today. After splitting his childhood between Burrton and the Kansas community of Frizell and losing his father at a young age, Stone turned down a Congressional appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy to pursue an acting career, and his vaudeville-star cousin Fred got him a part in the Broadway play The Jayhawkers in 1934. Stone also appeared in the Broadway show Around the Corner two years later.

Stone started acting in movies in 1935, just a few years before the 1938 death of wife Nellie Morrison, with whom he welcomed daughter Shirley. The actor remarried in 1942, tying the knot with Jane Garrison — and continued toiling away in Hollywood.

PORT OF MISSING GIRLS, Judith Allen, Milburn Stone, Harry Carey, 1938

Everett Collection

In fact, Stone had appeared in some 250 movies before breaking through to the big time on Gunsmoke, according to his New York Times obituary. Those big-screen credits included “long-forgotten efforts” like 1938’s The Port of Missing Girls, 1946’s The Spider Woman Strikes Back, and 1949’s Calamity Jane and Sam Bass.

Finally, in 1955, Stone found fame and long-term employment as the fictionalized Dodge City’s town doctor on Gunsmoke, and the role suited him fine. “I was bred to play the part of Doctor G. Adams,” he once said, per USA Today.

On set, he formed a tight bond with costars Arness, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, and Ken Curtis. “I know of no group of actors who could stay together for 20 minutes… except the five of us on Gunsmoke,” Stone told The World-News in 1967, per MeTV. “There has never been a quarrel. We have a lot of fun on the set, and I always look forward to going to work every day. … It’s a happy show.”

Stone took a naturalistic approach to acting — “Someone told me a long time ago, ‘Acting is a great profession, but don’t let anyone catch you at it.’ In other words, be as natural as possible,” he once said, per the Times. And his Gunsmoke performance got the attention of Emmy voters, who awarded him with the Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Drama award in 1968.

GUNSMOKE, (from left): Milburn Stone, Dennis Weaver, 'Tobe', (Season 9, ep. 904, aired October 19,1963), 1955-1975.

Everett Collection

Gunsmoke ended in 1975, and Stone retired to his home in Rancho Santa Fe, California, north of San Diego. He died of heart failure at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California, on June 12, 1980, at age 75. He was survived by wife Jane, daughter Shirley, and four grandchildren, according to The New York Times.

Predeceasing him was another actor in the family, his niece Madge Blake, who had long-running roles on the TV shows Leave It to Beaver, The Real McCoys, and Batman before dying in 1969. And both Blake and Stone were related to vaudeville and Broadway star Fred Stone.

And Stone’s legacy lives on. The actor — who’s interred at San Diego’s El Camino Memorial Park cemetery — is an honoree on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and at the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the Boot Hill Museum’s Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Dodge City, Kansas. He also received an honorary doctorate from St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City and an honorary membership from the Kansas Medical Association, and he’s the namesake of the Milburn Stone Theatre in Cecil County, Maryland.

Stone also lived on in the memories of his costars. In one Gunsmoke anecdote recounted by MeTV, Stone stormed off the set of the Western after arguing with a young producer about a scene that didn’t strike Stone as true to the show. “I am too old to scare and too rich to care!” Milburn reported yelled.

Then Arness reportedly chimed in, telling the producer, “I’d listen to him if I were you. We always do, and it’s never done us one bit of harm!”