Amanda Blake: A Closer Look at the Terrific Career and Tragic Death of TV’s Beloved “Gunsmoke” Star

According to journalist Stacey Feintuch and ShowBizCheatSheet.com, “Gunsmoke aired on television from 1955 to 1975. One of the first TV Westerns geared toward adults, the show was a huge hit for CBS. It centered on Matt Dillon (James Arness), a U.S. Marshal in the frontier town of Dodge City, Kansas. Plenty of conflicts and criminals blew into town, and the marshall and his deputies dutifully handled them all. Dillon also had a friend and confidant in Miss Kitty Russell. Actor Amanda Blake portrayed the local saloon and bordello owner for 19 of the show’s 20 seasons.”

But as Feintuch continued to document, after Blake’s successful run on the show, she “faced challenges, including health problems that ultimately killed her. What was Amanda Blake’s cause of death, and why did her friends tell everyone she died of throat cancer?”

“When Amanda Blake signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the late 1940s,” Feintuch explained, “…the studio believed she would be a star. The actor did a few films before becoming Miss Kitty. She appeared in Cattletown and A Star Is Born and played the title role in 1954’s Miss Robin Crusoe.”

“But Blake was best known for Gunsmoke,” Feintuch chronicled. “Miss Kitty had a tough exterior and a warm heart. Audiences tuned in to see the relationship between her and the marshall. The show hinted at romantic feelings between the two but never showed anything beyond friendship. Blake left the show after 19 years, and Gunsmoke ended the following season. Many observers believe the cancellation wasn’t a coincidence — that the series was never the same after her departure.”

“In 1974,” Feintuch noted, Blake left Gunsmoke. “I was tired and it was time to go. It was the end of the trail,” she told the Los Angeles Times a decade later.

“Blake was a two-pack-a-day smoker and underwent surgery for oral cancer in 1977,” Feintuch relayed. “She later became involved with the American Cancer Society and made appearances across the nation on the organization’s behalf. The Gunsmoke star was 60 when she died on Aug. 16, 1989, at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento. An initial statement from the hospital and her friends said Blake died of throat cancer.”

Months later, the Associated Press confirmed she had throat cancer, but ″that wasn’t the reason that she died,″ Dr. Lou Nishimura, a Sacramento internist, said.

As Feintuch concluded, Nishimura “explained that the actor died from complications related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and that he had been treating her symptoms for a year before the celebrity’s death. He also signed her death certificate, which showed Amanda Blake’s immediate cause of death as ‘cardiopulmonary arrest due to liver failure and CMV hepatitis,’ the AP reported. Nishimura said CMV (cytomegalovirus) hepatitis is AIDS-related. Her certificate listed the contributing causes of death as AIDS and cancer.”