Initial Gunsmoke scripts gave him no name at all his lines were simply slugged to be spoken by "Townsman". In Meston's view, "Dillon was almost as scarred as the homicidal psychopaths who drifted into Dodge from all directions."Ĭhester's character had no surname until Baer ad libbed "Proudfoot" during an early rehearsal.
As originally pitched to CBS executives, this was to be an adult Western, not a grown up Hopalong Cassidy.ĭunning writes that Meston was especially disgusted by the archetypal Western hero and set out "to destroy character he loathed". Many episodes were based on man's cruelty to man and woman, inasmuch as the prairie woman's life and the painful treatment of women as chattels were touched on well ahead of their time in most media. Meston relished the upending of cherished Western fiction clichés and felt that few Westerns gave any inkling of how brutal the Old West was in reality. Macdonnell later claimed, "Much of Matt Dillon's character grew out of Bill Conrad."
Dillon as portrayed by Conrad was a lonely, isolated man, toughened by a hard life. During his audition, however, Conrad won over Macdonnell after reading only a few lines. Though Meston championed him, Macdonnell thought Conrad might be overexposed. With a powerful, distinctive voice, Conrad was already one of radio's busiest actors. Conrad was one of the last actors to audition for the role of Marshal Dillon. Very early episodes still in the archives reveal two episodes with Marshal Mark Dillon as the lead, not yet played by Conrad. It starred William Conrad as Marshal Matt Dillon, Howard McNear as Doc Charles Adams, Georgia Ellis as Kitty Russell, and Parley Baer as Dillon's assistant Chester Wesley Proudfoot.
NEVER PESTER CHESTER SERIES
The radio series first aired on CBS on Apwith the episode "Billy the Kid", written by Walter Newman. Dunning notes, "The show drew critical acclaim for unprecedented realism." Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas, during the thriving cattle days of the 1870s. Macdonnell and Meston wanted to create a radio Western for adults, in contrast to the prevailing juvenile fare such as The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. The project was shelved for three years, when producer Norman Macdonnell and Writer John Meston discovered it creating an adult Western series of their own. Culver's contract as the star of Straight Arrow would not allow him to do another Western series. CBS liked the Culver version better, and Ackerman was told to proceed.īut there was a complication. The first was very much like a hardboiled detective series and starred Michael Rye (credited as Rye Billsbury) as Dillon the second starred Straight Arrow actor Howard Culver in a more Western, lighter version of the same script. Robinson instructed his West Coast CBS Vice-President, Harry Ackerman, who had developed the Philip Marlowe series, to take on the task.Īckerman and his scriptwriters, Mort Fine and David Friedkin, created an audition script called "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye" based on one of their Michael Shayne radio scripts, "The Crooked Wheel". Paley, a fan of the Philip Marlowe radio serial, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a hardboiled Western series, a show about a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West". In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S.
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