"Timothy Carey Was On Gunsmoke."

                            

Timothy Carey was on Gunsmoke.

The episode is called "The Gentleman."

I recommend you watch it if you are at all what you claim to be, id est, a discerning follower of culture.

Marshal Matt Dillon peremptorily kicked Carey out of Dodge, but not before Carey voiced the wildcat vow to come back. He was like Ezra Pound, who used to say, "I cease not to yowl."

Next scene, in walked Jack Cassidy.

Amazing cast this episode has!

Jack Cassidy was instantly spoiling for a fight with Timothy Carey. He happened to see the first scene in which Carey menaced the "working girl" with a heart of gold (VIRGINIA BAKER). Cassidy's character, a raffish gambler with a lopsided smile not to say a slantacular take on life, had a fatal heart condition, went to see the Doc, but he must revenge himself on the man who mistreated his lady love, the homely hooker (VIRGINIA BAKER), before he up and expires.

She was not exactly a pretty woman but Jack Cassidy was just moonstruck like a teenage polecat and declared her the best-looking women he ever seed.

"You can't have been looking very hard," I said to the TV at that point.

                           

The whole episode was a build-up to a showdown between these two classic character actors. These two Dick Tracy, spaghetti western grotesques.

Lovers of thespianism and cinema everywhere and for all eternity were robbed of any joy by Marshal Matt Dillon, who coolly subverted the destined meeting between the two. He punched Jack Cassidy out, rendered him unconscious with a single blow, slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and threw him into a post-chaise leaving Dodge post-haste.

Off it went stage right and then in came Timothy Carey, stage left, running after the departing stage. Matt Dillon punched him unconscious too. That was that. Deprived of the scene all refined lovers of the craft desired by that lowbrow (but brilliant) two-fisted lawman MATT DILLON!

(It is to be noted that both Timothy Carey and Jack Cassidy would later show up on multiple episodes of Columbo, but never together.  Carey never played the killer, he used to be a character who slung hash in a greasy spoon and made a bowl of chili that Columbo particularly liked. I think he was meant to be a recurring character and then he drifted away. He never did get to have that scene with Jack Cassidy.)