In an episode from just the previous year, "Chester's Mail Order Bride", there was a plot device that I thought curious at the time. Chester had been writing to a young lady back east, and now she was coming to visit, with matrimony being a possible outcome. The problem was that Chester had sent her a picture of the tall and handsome Marshal Dillon rather than one of himself.
But what did they mean by "picture"? This could only mean two things. Prior to photography wealthy people would commission portraits of themselves. I can hardly see Chester hiring an artist and sitting for a portrait, complete with pipe, hunting dog, and family crest. OK, I can see it, and I am bent over laughing at the idea.
That means Chester had sent her a photograph of Marshal Dillon at a time when photography was a novel thing and the resulting clunky tin types were hardly something you'd pop into the U. S. mail and expect to arrive in one piece.
So a year later, along comes this episode with an eccentric photographer bringing to town what appears to be the first camera that the people of Dodge City have ever seen. They react as expected, with wonderment and curiosity. So it is obvious that neither Chester nor Marshal Dillon have ever had a photo taken of themselves. The problem is that the photographer, played by Sebastian Cabot, is so anxious to capture scenes of the wild west that he is willing to stage incidents, and the incidents he wants to stage are increasingly violent. Some Indians who are passing through believe the strange box may steal their soul, and in the case of the photographer they may very well be right. How does this work out? Watch and find out.
I'm sure that when Gunsmoke first came on the air the thought of these episodes being in reruns 65 years later or immortalized in digital format never occurred to anybody, so I am willing to cut the anachronisms some slack, still it is amusing.