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Amanda Blake

Amanda Blake (February 20, 1929 – August 16, 1989), was an American actress best known for the role of the red-haired saloon proprietress "Miss Kitty" on the longest-running television drama, CBS's Gunsmoke series (1955-1975).

Biography

Born Beverly Louise Neill in Buffalo, New York, she was a telephone operator before taking up acting. Nicknamed "The Young Greer Garson," she became best known for her 19-year stint as the fictitious "Kitty Russell." Miss Kitty was owner-operator of the Long Branch Saloon, from which she dispensed wisdom, whiskey, and — though not overtly — boarding room keys and "fancy" women. (In early episodes of Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty is an employee of the Long Branch although it is not clear what her duties are.) Like Perry Mason and his secretary Della Street, Kitty and Dodge City's U.S. Marshal, Matt Dillon (played by James Arness) seemingly carried on a cloaked relationship, most of which is left to the viewers' imagination.

Blake's Kitty presumably departed Dodge City at the close of the series' 19th season, sans an on-screen farewell. Character actress Fran Ryan (Hanna) assumed ownership of the Long Branch for the 20th and final season, with little mention of Kitty. In the first of three CBS post-series movies (Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge), Kitty tells Hanna (Ryan) that she left Dodge to return to New Orleans, as she was no longer willing to watch Matt continue to cheat death. (A flashback was created by cleverly integrating footage from a 1970 episode where Kitty left Dodge but returned by the epilogue.) The actress left in 1974 because she wanted more free time and missed her friend and co-star Glenn Strange, who played Kitty's barkeeper, Sam Noonan. Gunsmoke continued for one more year before CBS canceled it after its twentieth season, much to the surprise of the entire cast, including Arness.

In 1968, Blake was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. This was six years before the legendary John Wayne was inducted in 1974 and more than a decade before co-stars Arness, Ken Curtis, Dennis Weaver, Buck Taylor and Milburn Stone were in 1981. Blake was the third performer welcomed into the Hall, after Tom Mix and Gary Cooper, who were inducted in 1958 and 1966 respectively.

Because of her continuing role on Gunsmoke, Blake rarely had time for films. She did once appear in a comedy routine with the legendary CBS entertainer Red Skelton She was also a panelist on the long-running Hollywood Squares and Match Game '74.

After Gunsmoke, Blake went into semi-retirement at her home in Phoenix, taking on only a few film and TV projects. A lover of animals, she joined with others to form the Arizona Animal Welfare League in 1971, today the oldest and largest "no-kill" animal shelter in the state. In 1980, Blake was diagnosed with a form of mouth cancer. In 1985, she helped finance the start-up of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and devoted a great deal of time and money in support of its efforts, including travels to Africa.

Blake reportedly was a one-time board member of the Humane Society of the United States. In 1997, the Amanda Blake Memorial Wildlife Refuge opened at Rancho Seco Park in Herald, California. The refuge is a PAWS sanctuary for free-ranging African hoofed wildlife, most of whom were originally destined for exotic animal auctions or hunting ranches.

In March 1982, Blake, a former two-to-three packs a day smoker, spoke against smoking by testifying for new warning labels for cigarette packages, before a United State House of Representatives subcommittee: "I am a victim of oral cancer, a victim of cigarette smoking. When my doctor told me I had cancer of the mouth, I didn't believe it. I had never even heard of cancer of the mouth, yet I had it." She told the subcommittee: "I believe that I would not have smoked had I seen a label on a cigarette package or in a cigarette ad that said 'Warning: Cigarette smoking may cause death from heart disease, cancer or emphysema."

Blake died on August 16, 1989 at Mercy General Hospital in Los Angeles, California of oral cancer. The exact cause of Blake’s death is unclear. It was widely reported in the news media that she had died of AIDS and had contracted HIV. Blake was diagnosed with mouth cancer and underwent surgery in 1977 (and seven years later was a recipient of the American Cancer Society’s Courage Award). According to her doctor, Sacramento, California internist Dr. Lou Nishimura, she had throat cancer at the time of her death. Miss Blake's death certificate, however, listed the immediate cause as cardiopulmonary arrest due to liver failure and CMV hepatitis. A report by television station KRBK in Sacramento, where Blake was a longtime resident, quoted her friends as saying that her death was related to AIDS. In response to this report, Dr. Nishimura said that Blake had suffered from AIDS symptoms for about a year but that he did not know how she had contracted the disease. She had been married, however, on April 28, 1984 in Austin, Texas to Mark Spaeth (27 July, 1939 - 27 May 1985), who died of complications from AIDS on May 27, 1985.