User Reviews

Joanne Linville's portrayal of Beulah Parker, a woman living in fear of becoming an old maid while her brother keeps away any suitors, is perfect. In this instance the other characters are right to protect her from her desire to marry a man she has just met. As overcome with evil as Beulah becomes, one cannot ignore what has pushed her to being that way. The viewer can empathize with the sad character, and understand her desperation.

Episodes like Old Yellow Boots are what make so many people remember Gunsmoke for being such a great TV series, especially by the time of one hour episodes. Every actor and actress were given characters with depth and great dialogue. This episode leaves the viewer with sympathy for the character who has done wrong.

I love it when all these great charecter actors show up. They add so much depth to a show. Harry Dean Stanton, claude Akins, Bruce Dern,Warren Oates and even regulers with small roles. This is what makes Gunsmoke special.

... and not so much the social perspective of 1870s Kansas. Instead you need the social perspective of 1961.

Drifter Frank Cassidy - played by Warren Stevens who bears a striking resemblance to Gene Kelly, but I digress - runs across an old man with some bags of possessions. Cassidy starts rifling through the old man's possessions. When the old man objects to this, Cassidy just shoots him dead at point blank range without even a warning. There is nothing of value there, so Frank just shrugs his shoulders and rides off. This speaks to his cold blooded amoral nature.

Later he rides up on a prosperous looking ranch and meets a rather weather beaten woman there, Beulah, who claims to be the owner. He comes inside and she serves him a meal. He is attracted to her ranch but makes it seem he is attracted to her. She is attracted to him because he is a man with a 98.6 degree temperature. I'll get into exactly WHY later. But then the woman's brother, Leroy, comes in and reveals himself as the actual owner. Frank leaves in disgust, not because she lied but because the money he wished to marry is no longer available. Believe me, if same sex marriage had been a thing in 1870s Kansas, I'm sure Frank Cassidy would have tried his insincere moves on Leroy, but I digress.

Well it turns out that Beulah wants marriage to Frank even more than Frank would like that marriage, for completely different reasons. She is so cold blooded in her pursuit of said marriage that she does things that make Frank Cassidy look like he is the perpetrator, not intentionally of course. It's just that Matt Dillon rightly perceives Cassidy as a bad character and thus watches his moves closely.

In the end it is pretty obvious that Beulah wants to be a wife and mother so badly she really doesn't care that her prospective groom is a rash bad person. Why you might ask? Would this be something that a 1961 audience could relate to while today we scratch our heads at this neurosis? In 1961 women were being told and had been told for centuries that whatever else they had in life - money, career, friends, respect - really didn't mean much unless they had a husband. It was beat into women at an early age. It's the reason that The Beverly Hillbillies' Jane Hathaway was an intelligent accomplished woman and yet she still chased Jethro for matrimonial purposes, in spite of the fact he had an IQ that was probably less than that of a doorknob and that the two had nothing in common. In the 1960s, plain Jane Hathaway was an object of pity being portrayed as both a comic and tragic figure.

I'd recommend this episode, even though the mores, like the women's hairstyles, are pure early 1960s.