This episode of Gunsmoke featured in all-star cast of character actors in support of the horrid Abraham Sofaer, who played Harvey Easter. This was his second and last performance on Gunsmoke. In his first guest appearance, Sofaer was the horrible man who was verbally abusing Miss Kitty and shoving her around, until she killed him, in "Kitty's Killing."
This time Sofaer is verbally abusing everyone in town. What a nasty guy. John Meston wrote this vicious take on self-improvement, personal development, and the War on Poverty. All these were big issues taken from the headlines in the early 1960s. Like usual, Meston sees the dark side of people trying to help others work their way out of poverty.
Harvey Easter gets rich mining gold, and he comes to Dodge to share his wisdom with the low-income yokels. Abraham Sofaer plays him as a very verbally abusive and arrogant man who goes around humiliating people into wanting to change their lives. Then he financially backs them into businesses that are beyond their abilities.
John Meston's message seems to be that the people who need help are too dumb to benefit from it, and that those who try to help are just doing it to feel superior. Based on the Gunsmoke stories, I have to think John Meston was a pretty miserable and bitter person.
As Sofaer wrecks the lives of the people in Dodge, he crosses paths with Mary Pickett (Mercedes Shirley in her only Gunsmoke appearance), who looks beautiful until Sofaer convinces her to leave the Longbranch Saloon and start washing laundry. She does a great job of looking pathetic and miserable after she follows Sofaer's advice. Adam Williams plays her boyfriend, and he witnesses the drastic change, and later gets shot by one of Harvey Easter's failed self-improvement students.
Then Sofaer meets Strother Martin (11 appearances on Gunsmoke) and Warren Oates (10 appearances on Gunsmoke), who play a couple of trail hands that Sofaer convinces to homestead dry prairie land 20 miles out of town. Sofaer buys them a wagon and some tools, and tells them they will have to pay him back if they cannot grow any crops on the barren soil. After a month or two, they are starving to death, and turn to crime.
Sofaer locks a drunken Harry Obie (played by Shug Fisher; 27 appearances on Gunsmoke) into his shack to force him to get sober, and Fisher has a heart attack due to the stress. He brings ruin to a couple of other people, and then he tries to burn down the Lady Gay Saloon.
As a note, the Lady Gay looks like a totally different bar nearly every time it is shown in a Gunsmoke episode. Sometimes it is a nice saloon, sometimes a small but clean bar, and other times it is a dirty shack with a wooden plank as the serving bar.
So H. M. Wynant (8 appearances on Gunsmoke), veteran Western actor Roy Engel (11 appearances), Harry Bartel (10 appearances), and Louie Pheeters (James Nusser; 57 appearances on Gunsmoke), and a couple of others, decide to teach the vile Sofaer a lesson. Thus ends self-improvement and the War on Poverty in Dodge City!
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