Dick,
Re your response to Miker's comment below:
"'I believe that Conrad was considered and rejected for the
TV show, but I wouldn't swear to it.'"
Neither Conrad, nor the other members of the radio cast were
seriously considered. They campaigned for the parts, but were
never contenders.
There are some pictures of the radio cast, in costume as
their characters from the show, which they had taken at
Knott's Berry Farm as part of their campaign to show that
they could meet the visual expectations audiences would have
of their characters. You can see some of them here:
http://otrsite.com/gunsmoke.html
"There's a story, possibly true, that after meeting with the
television producers, as he got up to leave, the armchair in
which he'd been sitting got up with him. In those days,
Arness must have been thin enough to stand alone."
As you can see from the pictures, Conrad at this point, still
in the prime of his early 30's, though undeniably stout, was
not as heavy as in his CANNON or JAKE AND THE FAT MAN days.
That story's probably apocryphal.
"Conrad did appear as Matt Dillon, sort of, in the fifties
movie The Ride Back. Though he was a sheriff and not a
marshal and his name was not Dillon, the western was based on
one of the Gunsmoke radio shows in which the lawman hunts
down an escaped criminal and then is faced with the ordeal of
bringing him back to justice. The star of the movie was
Anthony Quinn, who played the escapee, but Conrad is the
protagonist. At least that's how I, a Gunsmoke fan, remember
it."
It's a very good movie, and the screenwriter, Anthony Ellis,
is also the guy who wrote the original GUNSMOKE radio play.
Actually, although several critical pieces refer to Conrad's
Dillon analog as a "sheriff," he describes himself as a
marshal in the movie. The badge Conrad carries (in his shirt
pocket rather than pinned to his chest) is the same kind of
"star enclosed by a shield" design worn by Arness on the TV
version, and the set of the town at the beginning of the
movie looks like it might possibly have been the same set
that the TV show was using for Dodge City at the time.
It's availabe on DVD, if anyone's interested. You can read
more about it here:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0050899/
When GUNSMOKE first debuted on the radio, many critics,
noting it's unflinching realism and its convincing portrayal
of a dedicated, professional law officer on the frontier,
called it "DRAGNET on the Plains."
Which beings me to MY favorite hard-boiled radio detective
show, DRAGNET. I love the show in most of its incarnations,
partly because it's generally very well-done, whether it's
the noir-ish early '50's TV episodes, the 1954 Warner feature
that seems reminiscent of Warner's Depression gangster films,
the PBO novels, and even the pastel-looking, counter-culture
obsessed '60's/'70's revival.
But it never shined brighter than on its original medium,
radio. The clipped dialog, the narrative bridges, the expert
use of muted sound effects to give it a realistic ambience,
etc, serve to make it one of the finest radio dramas ever
done. In fact, if you play a DRAGNET radio episode
back-to-back with a GUNSMOKE, you'll see the influence
DRAGNET had on its western counterpart.
DRAGNET's success led to several similar shows during
dramatic radio's last few years. Two of the best were THE
LINEUP, set in a nondescript "great America city"
(which became San Francisco when the show moved to TV), and
the NYC-set 21ST PRECINCT, about the commander of a busy
Manhattan police station.
Finally, while I enjoyed the adaptations of Hammett and
Chandler on the SAM SPADE and PHILIP MARLOWE radio shows (I
prefer Gerald Mohr as Marlowe to Van Heflin, for what it's
worth), my favorite radio PI was created espcially for the
medium. YOURS TRULY JOHNNY DOLLAR, about a free-lance
insurance investigator was a fine show throughout its long
run, but its best years were in the mid-'50's, when it was
run as a five-times-a-week fifteen minute serial. With an
hour and 15 minutes to spin a yard, the writers were able to
stretch their story-telling muscles, and stretch them they
did.
Like Bill, I also recommend PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE, in which Jack
Webb played a metaphor-spouting waterfront character who,
ostensibly, rented boats, but was really an unlicensed PI.
Webb also did PI turns in JOHNNY MODERO - PIER 23 (a clone of
NOVAK), and JEFF REGAN - INVESTIGATOR.
JIM DOHERTY
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