‘Gunsmoke’: Matt Dillon’s Hat Is in the Smithsonian

The hat makes the man. On Gunsmoke, Matt Dillon donned his trademark Stetson as he worked to keep the peace in Dodge City. It’s almost impossible to imagine the character without it. In fact, the headgear worn by actor James Arness on the popular show is so iconic that it earned a place in the Smithsonian.

The Stetson Matt Dillon work in ‘Gunsmoke’ is in the National Museum of American History 

Gunsmoke is one of the best-known and longest-running shows in American television history. More than 600 episodes aired from 1955 through 1975, all of them starring Arness as U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon. In the process, it had a lasting impact on popular culture and many viewers’ ideas about the Old West. So, it’s only fitting that a piece of the show made it into one of the country’s top museums. 

One of Matt Dillon’s signature Stetson hats is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Unfortunately for Gunsmoke fans, the hat isn’t currently on view at the museum. However, you can see another hat worn by Arness at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. That museum has the hat (and the rest of the costume) Arness wore in the 1990 TV movie Gunsmoke: The Last Apache. It’s on display as part of the “Sombreros Texanas and Bosses of the Plains” exhibit, which is on view through Jan. 8, 2023. The exhibit also includes hats worn by actors such as John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and Tom Selleck. 

The Smithsonian also has items from ‘The Lone Ranger,’ ‘All in the Family’ and other classic TV shows

Gunsmoke isn’t the only TV western that’s made it into the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. The National Museum of American History has the mask worn by Clayton Moore in The Lone Ranger. The museum’s collection also includes items such as Archie Bunker’s chair from All in the Family, a Howdy Doody marionette from Howdy Doody, the prop radio seen on The Waltons, and J.R. Ewing’s hat from Dallas.  

The museum also has props and costumes from more recent shows, including Offred’s bonnet from The Handmaid’s Tale, a necklace worn by Rachel Brosnahan in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and C.J. Cregg’s (Allison Janney) fishbowl from The West Wing. 

‘Gunsmoke’ is a television ‘landmark,’ a Smithsonian curator said   

The Smithsonian’s vast collections include many one-of-a-kind items from American history, including the Wright Brothers’ plane, the original Star-Spangled Banner, and Abraham Lincoln’s top hat. Some might wonder if cast-off items from TV shows are worthy of preserving in the same way. But a curator at the Smithsonian once argued that they were just as important to collect as those other artifacts. 

“Television is possibly the most intimate theater ever created,” then-curator Carl Scheele told the Chicago Tribune in a 1985 interview. “Americans understand TV. They experience it on a personal basis. It engages them. They engage it.”  

Still, he admitted that not everyone at the museum was on board with collecting items such as the Fonz’s jacket from Happy Days or Matt Dillon’s Gunsmoke hat. (Scheele called the latter show “a landmark.”) 

 “There was some resistance to it here, at first,” he said. “People feel very safe collecting any old chamber pot from the 18th century, but TV is . . . controversial. It’s new. It’s not held in high esteem by the academicians.” 

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