Do You Remember When Buck Taylor’s Newly O’Brien Arrived in Dodge City on ‘Gunsmoke’?
Like his dad, legendary cowboy actor Dub Taylor, Buck Taylor was a popular guest star on many of the top Westerns of the 1960s. From Bonanza to Wagon Train to The Big Valley and The Virginian, the younger Taylor was willing to saddle up or slap on a Stetson and play good guy or bad.
In 1967, Taylor signed on to play murderous rancher Leonard Parker in the two-part episode Vengeance, which sees quickdraw Bob Johnson (James Stacy) seek vengeance on Parker after the rancher lets Johnson’s stepdad and foster brother be trampled as they try to steal a calf. Taylor was a huge fan of the series and its star, James Arness, so he did his best to make an impression. It worked.
Just a few episodes later, Buck Taylor returned to Gunsmoke, this time as a series regular, in the episode “The Pillagers.” Only this time, Taylor plays gunsmith Newly O’Brien, whose arrival in Dodge City is marred by him and Kitty (Amanda Blake) being taken hostage by a gang who believes the newcomer is a doctor because he carries his supplies in a doctor’s bag.
Newly, who really did train to be a doctor for a few months, goes to work on the gang leader’s brother’s bullet wound, hoping to keep up the ruse until help can arrive. Finally, he convinces the baddie to let him take his dying brother to Dodge, where a surgeon can help him extract the bullet.
The gang leader agrees, and Newly buys enough time to alert Marshal Matt Dillon (Arness) and his deputy Festus (Ken Curtis) of what’s going down and help them save the day.
Though Newly O’Brien started his Gunsmoke tenure as a gunsmith, he quickly developed a close friendship with Marshal Dillon and became a deputy himself. Taylor’s arrival helped fill Dillon’s ranks after Roger Ewing, who played deputy Clayton Thaddeus Greenwood, had recently left the show.
Taylor and Newly O’Brien remained on Gunsmoke through its 20th and final season in 1975, and returned for the 1987 TV movie Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge. But the experience lasted a lifetime. Taylor named his sons Matthew and Cooper Glenn after Arness and their costar Glenn Strange. And he formed a lifelong friendship with Arness, delivering the eulogy at his pal and mentor’s June 2011 funeral.
GUNSMOKE. Milburn Stone, Glenn Strange, Amanda Blake, Ken Curtis, James Arness, Buck Taylor. Everett Collection
“James Arness is still my hero,” Taylor, now 87 and a talented creator of Wild West art, once said. “He’s a humble and shy guy. … He’s a patriotic American, wounded in World War II. When I painted a portrait of him, he asked me to make him look like he did on Gunsmoke.
“It was hard to work with him, because he was a funny guy,” Taylor added. “He had a great sense of humor. I’d run into the marshal’s office in the rehearsal, out of breath, and say, ‘Marshal, there’s a fight in the Long Branch!’ He’d look at me and go, ‘Oh, we’ve got ourselves a serious actor! Let’s just wait till the take before we do all that stuff, Buck.’ And then when I would try to be serious, he’d start laughing.”
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TV Westerns of the 50's & 60's
September 2021
’50s and ’60s TV Westerns roundup, celebrating the shows and stars of their golden age.
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