@pt100 said:

According to Dennis Weaver's bio, he almost didn't get the part of Chester Goode on Gunsmoke until he asked for a second chance to read the lines in a humorous, countrified accent and won the role.

He also claimed that one reason he adopted that persona for the character of Chester (the accent, the limp) is that it helped to keep him from being completely overshadowed by James Arness's towering Marshal Dillon character. He later regretted adopting the limp, that turned out to be awkward and difficult; and he occasionally goofed it up--either forgetting to limp, and bending his knee; or limping on the wrong leg (!).

@pt100 said:

According to Dennis Weaver's bio, he almost didn't get the part of Chester Goode on Gunsmoke until he asked for a second chance to read the lines in a humorous, countrified accent and won the role. The accent that Dennis Weaver uses here is similar to that overdone one in the film The Gallant Hours. It seems that after starting Gunsmoke, he just used much the same accent in the later film role. (His natural Missouri accent is nothing like these affected ones.)

And Chester is a motormouth worrywart. I wonder if the writers did this completely on purpose, based on his initial script reading during testing for the part; or whether they decided, after the character was firmly established, that they couldn't move away from that character in any way by modifying his personality.

Anyway, I think the character got rather tiresome and annoying after awhile. I wonder if that had anything to do with Weaver's leaving the show long before the series ended. Maybe he got tired of it, too.

I couldn’t stand his whinny, always sleepy poor table manners. I was glad when Festus came along.

I concur with all the above comments as much as I love the show and all the actors; I wish he wouldn't talk so much and come screaming and yelling, saying, "Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon" running full blast and he would just start talking and talking and talking... he never knew when to be quiet he had no social skills or boundaries! The only thing I loved about Chester only - was that he was a good shot with a rifle.. otherwise I could do without him on the show that is!!

@richmccollum said:

I couldn’t stand his whinny, always sleepy poor table manners. I was glad when Festus came along.

Yeah, but eventually I also got tired of Festus, his overdone accent and his hillbilly persona. But I guess viewers must have liked that back then. Maybe they thought it lightened the mood a bit.

As I recall, Ken Curtis also played at least two other characters on Gunsmoke before he got the role he's remembered for.