How did Festus leave Gunsmoke? Ken Curtis played him for close to 300 episodes — and then never once appeared in the TV movies

Festus Haggen never left Gunsmoke. He was on screen in the last episode CBS ever aired, which turned out to be the problem.

How Festus got the badge

Ken Curtis first appeared as Festus in "Us Haggens", broadcast on 8 December 1962 — a scruffy hill man who rides into Dodge to settle the killing of his twin brother Fergus, then decides to stay. He returned in "Prairie Wolfer" in January 1964 and joined the regular cast for good, taking the deputy's job vacated by Dennis Weaver's Chester Goode. Matt Dillon got through five deputies across 20 seasons. Festus lasted longest: 11 years, 304 episodes.

The voice was manufactured. Curtis grew up in Las Animas, Colorado, where his father was the sheriff and the family lived above the jail, and he modelled Festus on a local fence-post cutter called Cedar Jack who regularly ended up in those cells. Curtis's own speaking voice was a baritone — he had sung with Tommy Dorsey's band in 1941, taking over the vocalist's chair from Frank Sinatra.

The series stopped before anyone wrote an ending

CBS declined to renew Gunsmoke after its 20th season. The decision arrived without warning, and several cast and crew members read about it in the trade press.

"We didn't do a final, wrap-up show," James Arness told the Associated Press in 2002. The cast had expected another season, possibly three.

So the last episode is "The Sharecroppers", aired 31 March 1975 — the 635th instalment, and a Festus comedy in which Dillon barely features. Festus accidentally shoots a farm boy in the leg, then works the family's land out of guilt. Media historian Hal Erickson later described it as a low-key comic exercise built around Festus that gave no hint the show was finishing.

Read more: What does Jack Ryan say to the cook in Russian?

Then came the reunion films, and Curtis said no

CBS revived Gunsmoke in 1987 with Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, which brought back Arness, Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty, and Buck Taylor as Newly O'Brien. Festus is absent, and so is Curtis.

The dispute ran on two fronts. On money, producer John Mantley told TV Guide that Curtis had asked for double Blake's fee; other accounts have it that Mantley's offer was insultingly low, and Curtis argued his pay should match Festus's standing in the cast. On the script, Curtis backed Jim Byrnes's original draft and objected to the rewrites — heatedly enough that he told Mantley never to ring him again. The two never spoke after that. The writers gave Newly the deputy's badge instead.

• Return to Dodge (26 September 1987) — the only film with any original cast beyond Arness: Blake, Taylor, and Fran Ryan.
• The Last Apache (18 March 1990) — set in Arizona and Mexico before Geronimo's surrender.
• To the Last Man (10 January 1992) — a range war, shot in Tucson.
• The Long Ride (8 May 1993) — retired Dillon framed for murder.
• One Man's Justice (10 February 1994) — the fifth and final film.

Doc Adams wasn't recast after Milburn Stone's death in 1980. Arness is the only actor in all five.

What Curtis did afterwards

He kept working — a season as a regular on The Yellow Rose in 1983, guest spots, live shows, and a 1981 induction into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

His last role was ageing rancher Seaborn Tay in Conagher, the Louis L'Amour adaptation starring Sam Elliott. Also in the cast: Buck Taylor, the man who had inherited Festus's job in the films.

Curtis died in his sleep of a heart attack in Fresno on 28 April 1991, aged 74. Conagher premiered on TNT on 1 July that year, so he never saw it air. There's a statue of him as Festus on Pollasky Avenue in Clovis, California, where he spent his last years.

Earlier we wrote: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: what the title means — Kesey wrote the novel on night shifts at a psychiatric ward