Long before Westworld, Deadwood, or even Yellowstone graced your TV screen in all their Western glory, there was Gunsmoke. On air for over twenty years, Gunsmoke remains one of the most iconic television shows ever made, and is a decidedly singular storytelling experience.
Plenty of Hollywood heavyweights got their start on the fictionalized streets of Dodge City, Kansas, and Harrison Ford happens to be one of them. If you take anything away from this article (apart from Harrison Ford’s unbelievable pain tolerance), it’s that you should watch this show.
You have no excuse not to, after all, it’s free on Pluto TV. Now, back to the task at hand… In a 1994 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Ford detailed his earliest experiences in the entertainment business and how Gunsmoke lead to some of his first on-set injuries.
During their time together, Ford and Leno talked at length about how Gunsmoke wound up being a lot more traumatizing than anyone had expected.
“I was playing a bad guy, and I was shooting out the window at the sheriff and this posse. And the good guy came down the stairs and I whirled around, and I shot at him and he shot me. I was supposed to slump against the window and crumple to the floor, but the first time I did it, I separated my shoulder.”
You’d think a separated shoulder would keep Harrison out of the action long enough for him to heal, but this is Harrison Ford we’re talking about here — of course he stuck around. Going on to his detail that initial injury, Harrison explained that the filmmakers had to schedule a reshoot because he had hurt himself.
“I jumped right off the floor and they didn’t have me ‘dead’ long enough. They were all very kind-solicitous, and they gave me some ice and they sent me home, and a couple days later they said, ‘Listen, we have to do it again because we don’t have you dead.'”
Harrison had no choice but to agree, and went through all those earlier motions. Bad guy. Good guy. Shootout. He dies. Simple, right? Wrong. During his second run-through, things got even worse.
“I slumped against the wall and fell on the ground, and my gun bounced up and knocked out all my teeth.”
Ouch. When you’re in the business of entertaining people, it pays to have a decent smile — so imagining Harrison Ford without his front teeth is absolute nightmare fuel, and Jay Leno agrees.
Panicking, Leno couldn’t seem to find the right words and wound up repeating what Harrison had said second earlier. Which, for caustic wit like Ford, led to an incredibly retort.
“Yeah, are those your teeth? May I make a suggestion?”
After getting all the zingers out of his system, Harrison continued with his story and finally ended by articulating that having your teeth fixed isn’t always a sure thing.
“Actually, the store bought ones were not such a great bargain because they sent me to their (the studio) company dentist. Who put in these teeth. Well, not these teeth, because six months later they started to fall out. And I went to a dentist and he said, ‘How old are you?; And I said ,’What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘I haven’t seen this work since the nineteenth century.’ So I went back to the guy, I tried to find this guy, and his partner said ‘Who? No he’s gone. He’s not in the dentist business anymore.’ So had to pay for my own teeth.”
There’s so much going on here. A screwed up shoulder and busted chompers, all set within an interview that took place nearly 30 years ago. About a show that hasn’t been on air since 1975. It’s a lot to process.