Gunsmoke was on television from 1955 to 1975. The show was one of the first adult-oriented Westerns on TV, and it was a big hit for CBS. It was about a U.S. Marshal named Matt Dillon, who was played by James Arness. He lived in the border town of Dodge City, Kansas.
There were a lot of fights and criminals in town, but the sheriff and his deputies did their jobs and took care of everything. Miss Kitty Russell was a friend of Dillon’s and someone he could trust. For 19 of the show’s 20 seasons, Amanda Blake played the owner of the neighborhood saloon and bordello.
But after her success, the star ran into problems, including health problems that led to her de@th. What happened to Amanda Blake, and why did her friends say she di*d of throat cancer?
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Amanda Blake Was an Important Part of the Show “Gunsmoke.”
In the late 1940s, when Amanda Blake signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the company thought she would be a big star. Before she played Miss Kitty, the actor was in a few movies. She was in Cattletown and A Star Is Born, and she was Miss Robin Crusoe in 1954.
But Gunsmoke was what made Blake famous. Miss Kitty looked tough, but her heart was soft. People watched to see what was going on between her and the sheriff. The show hinted that they liked each other romantically, but never showed anything more than friendship between them.
After 19 years, Blake left the show, and the next season was the last for Gunsmoke. Many people think that the show being canceled wasn’t an accident, since the show was never the same after she left.
Amanda Blake’s Cause of Death Revealed
Amanda Blake left the show that made her popular in 1974. “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 smoked two packs a day, and in 1977 he had surgery for mouth cancer. She later got active with the American Cancer Society and spoke all over the country on behalf of the group. She di*d at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento on August 16, 1989. She was 60 years old. The doctor and her friends said at first that Blake di*d of throat cancer.
Months later, the Associated Press reported that she had throat cancer, but ″that wasn’t the reason that she di*d,″ Dr. Lou Nishimura, a doctor in Sacramento, said that wasn’t why she di*d.
He said that the star di*d from complications caused by AIDS and that he had been treating her symptoms for a year before the celebrity’s de@th. He also signed her de@th certificate, which said that Amanda Blake di*d from “cardiopulmonary arrest due to liver failure and CMV hepatitis,” according to the Associated Press.
Nishimura said that CMV hepatitis is connected to AIDS. On her de@th certificate, AIDS and cancer were mentioned as the main reasons she di*d. The doctor said that he didn’t know how Blake got the virus that causes AIDS. (It was later thought that she got it from her fifth husband, Mark Spaeth, who di*d of pneumonia at the age of 45 in 1985.)
Jerri Ewen, a spokesperson for Mercy General Hospital, told the AP that Blake’s friends asked her to say that cancer was the reason for his de@th.
It’s not clear why her friends left out Amanda Blake’s official cause of de@th from their public statement. But the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, has a bad reputation because people with the virus are thought to be bad.
