When he was a little kid growing up in Collins, Mississippi in the early 1950s, Gerald McRaney and his dad would sit by the radio every week to listen to William Conrad as Sheriff Matt Dillon in the latest episode of Gunsmoke. It was their favorite show.
When he was 8, Gerald and his dad watched John Wayne introduce the first episode of Gunsmoke on television in 1955 -- sitting glued to the family TV set as a young actor named James Arness stood in the middle of Dodge City's dirt main street ready to face the first in a long line of wanted posters who would bite the dust trying to outdraw Marshall Dillon.