User Reviews

Matt Dillon has captured an outlaw named Charlie Noon. When the story begins, the Marshal and Noon are on their way across the desert back to Dodge City where Noon has been sentenced to be hanged. The reason why Dillon had to chase and capture Noon is never revealed -- it is not important to the story. Later in the episode, Noon reveals he has killed several people.

Marshal Dillon and Noon ride upon a house that has burned and is still smoldering. A dead man is found outside the house, and there are signs the destruction are the results of a Comanche raid. When Matt begins examining the site more closely, he finds a woman and a young man hiding in a cellar.

"The Woman" (her name is never revealed, she explains her Comanche name is too difficult to pronounce) is also a Comanche. The young man is Jamie Barker, and his father had married The Woman years earlier. After the husband and father died, the man who the Marshal and Noon found dead outside the burned house had taken in Jamie and The Woman. Dillon's prisoner harbors a hatred for Comanches, and he protests Matt's insistence The Woman and Jamie accompany he and Noon.

The Woman reveals she is the reason the Comanches, led by a man named Lone Wolf, are searching the desert. Lone Wolf considers her his property, and they were supposed to be married before she escaped the tribe and married Jamie's father.

The foursome of The Woman, Jamie, Marshal Dillon, and Charlie Noon soon find themselves pinned down by their pursuers near a watering hole. Noon has been injured by a Comanche arrow, and The Woman graciously and lovingly helps care for him, despite the venomous comments he makes toward her.

The remainder of the episode involves the foursome attempting to evade death at the hands of the Comanches while Matt develops a strategy for getting them out of the situation.

This is one of the episodes where James Arness is the only regular Gunsmoke cast member involved. The entire story takes place in the desert setting.

The cast is minimal for this episode, but they are all outstanding. James Best plays the Charlie Noon character. Best guested in three different Gunsmoke episodes, including Season 8's "With A Smile," which I consider easily among the top ten of all Gunsmoke episodes. Best was an underrated, versatile actor who could easily play everything from comedy roles to the most sinister villains imaginable.

Ron Howard, who was still being billed as "Ronny," fills the Jamie Barker role. This would constitute Howard's only Gunsmoke appearance. Classic television fans will already know that Howard and Best appeared together in Season 1 of The Andy Griffith Show. This role falls between Howard's time as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and his starring role in George Lucas's American Graffiti, which was followed by his subsequent portrayal of Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.

Miriam Colon returns to Gunsmoke as The Woman in this story. Colon appeared in eight different Gunsmoke episodes going all the way back to Season 7's "He Learned About Women." She had appeared in one of the standout episodes of Season 14 in "Zavala."

This story marks the final appearance by Edmund Hashim in a Gunsmoke episode. Hashim usually played villains, and portrays the Comanche chief Lone Wolf in this episode. Hashim appeared in a total of seven installments of the series over a four-year period.

This is one of the most unusual Gunsmoke episodes of the entire series. Often, the stories that involve a significant amount of dialog and personal introspection give the appearance of merely filling time to stretch a story that is lacking. This is not the case with "Charlie Noon." Jim Byrnes's script manages to deal with prejudice and dehumanization of entire groups of people with subtlety and respect. It also portrays poignant grace and mercy in the face of hatred and abuse from Colon's The Woman character. The outcome of the story is no huge surprise, but the pleasure here is in the journey to the end.

Developing unique scripts had to be a challenge fourteen-plus seasons into this series. Gunsmoke certainly had its share of formulaic stories and sometimes relied on Western tropes. Brief descriptions of this story reduce it to familiar plot devices used in Westerns, but the treatment here makes the story compelling and well worth watching.

A nice story that played out well but at times was hard for even this western-lover to comprehend.

Marshal Dillon is taking prisoner Charlie Noon across the desert back to Dodge. They come upon a burned out house where a man was dead from a arrow in the back. From a spear left at the scene, Matt knows that it is Comanche Indians that have killed the man. While they investigate the burned house they discover two people in the cellar of the house. An Indian woman and a boy named Jamie Barker. So the four now set off for Dodge right before the Indians return to the burned out house. (why the Indians did not check the cellar the first time is beyond me)

During the rest of the show two main plots appear. The Indian woman was a bride of the Comanche Indian named Lone Wolf. She ran away from the tribe before marrying Lone Wolf whom she did not love. Lone Wolf has been searching for her since.-- The other is that Charlie Noon has a hatred for Indians. However during the coming tribulations he begins to feel remorse for the way he treated the Indian woman.

For whatever reason. Lone Wolf believes that Charlie Noon is the person that stole his bride and is out for revenge. With the four backed into a corner someone has to do something in order to save the rest. It will not be an easy choice.

What did not set well with me is that the Comanches had been tracking the woman for years across many different territories. Yet with Marshal Dillon and his group only a few yards from where the Indians were camping, they could not track nor find the group. This would have been a minor circumstance in book form but watching on TV it just seemed unreal.

Anyway nice story with fine acting but far from the best.

In reading the info for Ron Howard it states that his birthday is 1954 which is probably right. But the pictures that show Opie going on a date on the Andy Griffith Show says they're from 1960. This can't be right because Opie is at least 12 in those pictures not 6. Can this be verified?

This is likely my favorite installment of GUNSMOKE out of it 636 episodes and 20 seasons.

Filmed entirely in the Mojave Desert, the story focuses on an outlaw that Marshal Dillon is transferring, Charlie Noon (James Best), and the Indian woman (Miram Colon) and her caucasian stepson (cute-as-a-button Ronny Howard, fresh off of ANDY GRIFFITH) whom Dillon and Noon pick up and carry along with them after the boy and his mother's house is burned and the father killed by comanches. The foursome soon find themselves tracked by the braves who want the woman back and believe, erroneously, that Charlie Noon is the man who'd originally taken her from the tribe.

Directed by Vincent McEveety and written by Jim Byrnes (perhaps GUNSMOKE's best one-two punch) and scored hauntingly by John Parker (whose smouldering, native American-influenced work here far surpasses the irritating, jazzy junk he would churn out during the later seasons of DALLAS) the heat and tension are palpable. The entry feels like a movie, not just another TV-episode, and epitomizes what GUNSMOKE could be at its most polished rawness, the tone gritty, steaming and desolate.

And the episode even won an Emmy award for sound editing!

It's just great --- it does everything right. 10/10.

Charlie noon is the western everyone who doesnt like westerns should see.it includes pure racism from charlie noon,however,he completely overcomes it with a woman he falls in love with.beautiful dessert sceens in real dessert.one reply guy said,it was so so cause why didnt commanches find the cellar where lady and boy were hiding.this person must have never watched westerns before lol it was normal for settlers to have a hidden door to cellers for protection,this is the best of the best in western episodes.i consider my self a extreemly knowledged westerns person.i have super collection of 1950s tv western collectable cards from maybe 560 differant westerns from tales of well fargo,gunsmoke,wyatt earp,and the texan.whats wild about the texan is rory calhoon plays real texas murderer from 1850s to 1870s called bloody bill who shotso many black men just for nothing,bloody bill longley.the show made him a very noble man lolll.