Ken Curtis

Ken Curtis Trivia

The Sons of the Pioneers were awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6843 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
Although his character, Festus Haggen, was introduced to "Gunsmoke" (1955) in an episode called "Us Haggens," in which he arrived in Dodge City to avenge the death of his twin brother, the fact that Festus had a twin was never again mentioned on the show.
Ken Curtis replaced Frank Sinatra as the male "band singer" for the Tommy Dorsey band when Sinatra went out on his own.
Inducted (as a cast member of "Gunsmoke" (1955)) into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1981.
Early in his career, he sang with 'Shep Fields (I)'' Orchestra.

Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbilly types he played, many people would not find it hard to believe that Ken Curtis was born and raised in Las Animas, Colorado, the son of the town sheriff. What they would find hard to believe is that he began his show business career as a singer in the big-band era, and was a vocalist in the legendary 'Tommy Dorsey' orchestra. He entered films in the late 1940s at the tail end of the singing cowboy period in a series of low-budget westerns for Columbia Pictures. When that genre died out, he turned to straight dramatic and comedy parts and became a regular in the films of director 'John Ford (I)' (who was his father-in-law). He ventured into film production in the 1950s with two extremely low-budget monster films, The Killer Shrews (1959) and The Giant Gila Monster (1959), but he is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scrofulous, cantankerous deputy in the long-running TV series "Gunsmoke" (1955).

I'm really proud of "Gunsmoke" (1955). We put on a good show every week, one that families could all watch together without offending anyone.