During one of his long programming phases, Griz routinely followed daytime reruns of the Gunsmoke TV series as background noise. I didn’t actually sit down and watch many episodes and there are a lot of episodes (635). The original series ran for 20 years before cancellation in 1975. Broadcast at one episode per day in reruns, that’s a lot of Gunsmoke. I warmed to the series over time – much more than I would have imagined. The few episodes I actually watched were predictable, but fairly well-told morality tales with not-bad acting by a repertoire of interesting characters.
One episode that caught my attention guest-starred the late Jeanette Nolan [1911-1998] as Dirty Sally Fergus, a cantankerous, tobacco chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, 60-something, junk lady who scrounged westbound, wagon-train trails for discards; and peddled her finds in Dodge City. Sally lived alone in a shack outside of town - a female hermit and a very memorable hermit, too! A Western written in the 1970′s, spotlighting any elderly, solitary female character is as rare as records of real-life 19th-century female hermits.
The Dirty Sally Gunsmoke episode involves a young gunfighter named Cyrus Pike (played by the late Dack Rambo) who Sally hides in her shack and nurses back to health. But it was Nolan’s fascinating Sally that drew me in to the episode. Apparently her portrayal also drew attention when originally aired. A spin-off series, Dirty Sally, evolved from the episode and ran for one 13-week season in 1974. Nolan was nominated for an Emmy for her role in the short-lived series.
- Jeanette Nolan, age 32
Jeanette Nolan had a 70 year acting career. She was in her 60′s at the time she portrayed Dirty Sally. I have great admiration for actresses who willingly relinquish the roles of youth to become successful character actors in their elder years. In the case of Dirty Sally – Nolan actually played the role without her dentures.
Jeanette Nolan continued acting. At the age of 86 she played Robert Redford’s mother in The Horse Whisperer [1998] which was released a month before her death.
