Friday, March 29, AD 2024 4:16am

Gunsmoke on Radio

 

Gunsmoke  had a nine year run on radio from 1952 to 1961.  The radio show had a much different feel than the later television show, grittier and more morally ambiguous.  William Conrad played Dillon,  a much lonelier, angrier, tired and driven Dillon;  Howard McNair, later to achieve fame as Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith show, played Doc as something of a broken down hack, Dodge being his last chance;   Miss Kitty Russell, played by Georgia Ellis, is a saloon girl, and it is strongly hinted she is also a prostitute who Dillon “visits” on occasion;   Parley Edward Baer, who later played the mayor of Mayberry, played Chester Proudfoot Wesley, the limping deputy of Dillon.  Tame by our decadent standards, I imagine in the fifties some parents turned it off when it came on, or shooed the kids from the room.  As entertainment it holds up quite well and many of the episodes can be found on YouTube.

 

Bonus:

Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.

Western Maxim

Dillon gets divine assistance in a fight over water.

 

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SouthCoast
SouthCoast
Sunday, January 15, AD 2023 12:42pm

I listened to Gunsmoke as a little girl, back in the Eisenhower years. Loved it. Still hear it from time to time on internet radio sites. The moral ambiguity did carry over a bit on the earliest TV shows. There is one episode in which the Marshall is seen in a bedroom with Miss Kitty, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling his boots on.

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