Ken Curtis

In 1991 Curtis died in his sleep of natural causes in Fresno, California. In 1993, he released a song from Red Dwarf, "Tongue Tied", as a single, which got into the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart. 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. He was a member of the original cast of Starlight Express, playing a boxcar, Roxy I. Inducted (as a cast member of "Gunsmoke") into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1981. Before his television and film work he was a dancer, including many productions at West End theatres. 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. In film, he has appeared in Labyrinth, the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Blade II.

Festus is patterned after “Cedar Jack”, a man from Ken’s Las Animas childhood. On television, he has also played the parts of Barrington in Maid Marian and Her Merry Men and of Milton Wordsworth, one of the magical characters in The Story Makers. Ken is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scrofulous, cantankerous deputy in the TV series Gunsmoke. The producers decided that he was cool enough to be the Cat. 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. He got the part of the Cat by turning up an hour late for auditions but being totally unconcerned about this fact. Curtis also teamed up with Ford, along with Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Jack Lemmon, and William Powell in the comedy Navy classic Mister Roberts. Daniel (Danny) John-Jules (born in London on September 16, 1960) is a British dancer and actor. He is perhaps best known for playing The Cat (and its alter ego, Duane Dibbley) in Red Dwarf on television and an up-coming film.

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.