Ken Curtis

In 1991 Curtis died in his sleep of natural causes in Fresno, California. In addition, Lopez performed in Real Women Have Curves, which was feaured in the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and later aired (to much acclaim) on HBO. His last role was as cattle rancher "Seaborn Tay" in the TV production Conagher (1991), by famed Western author Louis L'Amour, starring Sam Elliot in the lead role. ABC, who had been criticized by Latin-American groups for lack of Latinos on their television shows quickly picked up the television series, which began airing in 2002, aired in ABC's TGIF lineup in 2003-2004, and is now shown on ABC at 8:30 on Tuesday nights. Inducted (as a cast member of "Gunsmoke") into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1981. In 2000, after several years of performing stand-up comedy, Lopez was approached by actress Sandra Bullock for Lopez to produce and star in a comedy. Bullock was concerned about the lack of Latino-oriented sitcoms on American television and pushed to get a sitcom on television that starred Latinos but wasn't exclusively about the Hispanic American community. Cedar Jack, who lived about 40 miles out of town in the hills, made a living cutting cedar fence posts, gave Curtis plenty of opportunity to observe him when Jack would come to Las Animas where he would usually end up drunk and in jail. Much of his humor was drawn from the financial poverty of his upbringing and of the Latino community in general.

Festus is patterned after “Cedar Jack”, a man from Ken’s Las Animas childhood. He became a popular stand-up comedian, especially among the Latino community for his satirizing of Latin-American life and culture in the United States. Ken is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scrofulous, cantankerous deputy in the TV series Gunsmoke. Lopez grew up in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, California. In the 1950's Curtis even tried his hand at producing with two extremely low-budget monster films, The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster. George Lopez (born April 23, 1961 in Mission Hills, California) is a Latino American comedian, actor and entertainer and star of a self-titled, ABC sitcom, The George Lopez Show. Curtis also teamed up with Ford, along with Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Jack Lemmon, and William Powell in the comedy Navy classic Mister Roberts.

This son-in-law of director John Ford teamed up with father-in-law and also John Wayne in Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, The Searchers, The Horse Soldiers, and How The West Was Won. Ken Curtis, who was a singer before he moved into acting, sang with the Sons of the Pioneers and Tommy Dorsey's band. Movie audiences will hear his voice from the introduction of the western standard: "Tumbling Tumbleweeds". The family lived above the jail and his mother, Nellie (Sneed) Gates, cooked for the prisoners. Dan Gates, his father, was the sheriff in Las Animas.

Curtis Wain Gates and raised in Las Animas, Colorado). (b. Ken Curtis (July 2, 1916 - April 29, 1991), Singer-Actor, best known as "Festus" of Gunsmoke fame.