Miss Kitty squeezed out of season 20?

She was definitely unhappy with the "beating" Miss Kitty often took. That, and the death of Glenn Strange (a close friend) tore it.

I wrote a 20th-season script with her as a significant dramatic character. She probably would have come running for that single episode.

i saw a interview where she said that if she had known that it WOULD have been the last season she would have stayed.

She'd just been raped and beaten and shot in "Hostage!" two years earlier, but she didn't want to do it again -- not to that extreme -- in "The Guns of Cibola Blanca." She apparently left in an "I quit"/"you're fired!" situation, the public statement was that she resigned.

They hadn't done a location episode in a while which used the entire cast (it was shot in Tucson) and it would have been great to have her there (the actress stuck in as an abuse-replacement is obviously in scenes written for Kitty). But I can't really blame Blake for balking.

She said there were no hard feelings at all, and visited everybody on the set when they shot Season 20. And she also admitted she was tired of the LA-to-Phoenix commute, and that she beginning to get short-tempered with the wardrobe mistress, so she knew it was time to go.

Still, I wished she'd been there till the end. Even if it was in a limited capacity. I can only imagine how much better "The Wiving" would have been had Miss Kitty been kidnapped with the saloon girls and not Hannah.

And, yes, she publicly said she would have stayed if only she'd known it would be the last year (it was still in the Top 10 during the first half of Season 20, but dropped quickly in the latter half after producer Leonard Katzman left). So it could have gone on, as HOW THE WEST WAS WON later proved.

--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA