Arts
In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S. Paley, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a show about a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West". Robinson, in turn, asked their West Coast Vice President, Harry Ackerman, to take on the task. Ackerman, who had developed the Philip Marlowe series, worked with his scriptwriters to create two different versions of the show. The first, recorded in June 1949, was very much like a hardboiled detective series and starred Michael Rye as the lead character Mark Dillon; the second, recorded in July of that same year, starred Straight Arrow actor Howard Culver in a lighter, more Western version of the same script. CBS liked the Culver version better, and Ackerman was told to proceed. A complication arose, however, when Culver's contract with Straight Arrow would not allow him to do another Western. So the project was shelved for three years, until producer Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston discovered it while creating a Western series of their own. They wanted to create a radio Western for adults, in contrast to the popular kids shows such as The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. Gunsmoke, as their show would be called, was set in Dodge City, Kansas, during the thriving cattle days of the 1870s. It's lead character was renamed from Mark Dillon to Matt Dillon and they hired William Conrad in the lead role. The show ran from 1952 to 1961 and drew critical acclaim for it's unprecedented realism. Well known radio historian John Dunning wrote that among radio enthusiasts, "Gunsmoke is routinely placed among the best shows of any kind and any time." Today's episode is the 20th episode in the series and was originally broadcast on September 6th, 1952, the same day Canada's first television station, CBFT-TV opened in Montreal. Please enjoy "The Brothers" from Gunsmoke. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/otr-behind-the-mic/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/otr-behind-the-mic/support