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James Arness hated ''Gun-Shy'', the spoof episode from Maverick
Arness wasn't very flattered.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," or so goes the often miscredited quote. The words are most attributed to Oscar Wilde but appeared in a book of aphorisms published thirty years before Wilde was born. However, there is some evidence that he agreed with the adage. He's quoted in an 1882 lecture in New York City expressing a very similar sentiment: "Satire, always as sterile as it is shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius"
James Arness didn't use such floral language. He did, however, see eye-to-eye with Oscar Wilde regarding parody. Specifically, Arness sincerely disliked the Maverick episode "Gun-Shy", a knowing take-off of his long-running series Gunsmoke.
With their lampoon of the more successful show, Maverick went further than a "winking acknowledgment" of the competition, truly hammering home that they were making fun of Gunsmoke. "Gun-Shy", like the best of parodies, keeps it so close to the real thing. Arness' Matt Dillon is, here, Mort Dooley, played Ben Gage, who would later go on to be Arness' double on Gunsmoke. So, they shared more than a passing resemblance.
The episode satirizes Marshall Dillon's relationship with Milburn Stone's Doc, as their Maverick counterparts ramble pointlessly about topics that have nothing to do with the plot. Mort Dooley goes off on a tangent, remembering a series of strange characters who passed through town. The clearest of these recollections is a gunslinger with a business card— an obvious reference to Have Gun - Will Travel. The episode reduces Gunsmoke to caricatures and nonsequiters.
Maverick wasn't the only— or even the first— to present a Gunsmoke pastiche. The George Garbedian Players beat Maverick to the punch by a whole year with their record, "Mr. Grillon". The single featured Walker Edmiston playing a character named Fester, a parody of Gunsmoke's Chester. Edminston would again do his Chester impression a year later in "Gun-Shy."
Arness, though, wasn't impressed, according to John Peele's 1989 book Gunsmoke Years.
"It's poor taste and poor business for one show to rap another," said Arness.
Perhaps Arness would've identified with that old quote's supposed second half. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... that mediocrity can pay to greatness." While Maverick was surely more famous than The George Garbedian Players, neither can claim to have the cultural impact of Gunsoke.
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