In the second episode of Friday Number Five for 2026 we embark on another journey through the golden age of radio, this time with William Conrad starring as Marshall Matt Dillon in a 1956 episode of Gunsmoke.

Friday Number 5 

EPISODE 21 | MAY 29, 2026

 

HOST

Owen Kelly

 

COMMENTARY

On months that have a fifth Friday we break from our normal schedule and produce something tangentially related to ideas of cultural democracy. This year, as we did in 2022, we delve into the history of radio to bring back some historical examples of comedies, documentaries, and serials that let us hear unfiltered aspects of the world as it seemed to our grandparents. 

Today go back to June 3, 1956 to listen to an episode of the western series Gunsmoke. An actor, Irving Henry, arrives in Dodge City. You may recognise this as a none-too-subtle play on the name Henry Irving, a famous British actor of the nineteenth century who, in partnership with Ellen Terry, made the Lyceum "the most important theatre in London". In his last years he continued to tour the provinces playing characters from Shakespeare, and died suddenly after a performance in Bradford in October 1905.

This all has relevance for the episode you will hear in a minute, which is simply called Shakespeare.

Gunsmoke takes place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, in the post-Civil War era and centers on United States Marshall Matt Dillon as he attempts to enforce law and order in the city. 

The series was broadcast on CBS radio and later became a long-running and very successful tv show. Dillon was intended as a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West", and Gunsmoke as a western series for adults. The writers emphasised the brutal nature of the so-called Old West. Charles Meston, the head writer felt disgusted by the archetypal Western hero and set out "to destroy [that type of] character he loathed". In Meston's view, "Dillon was almost as scarred as the homicidal psychopaths who drifted into Dodge from all directions."

The series began on April 26, 1952 and ended after 9 series on June 18, 1961. This then was adult entertainment from the time when families sat around the radio to listen together. To listen to it today is to time travel to a past with different assumptions, different values, and different expectations about people, culture, ethics and society.

 

REFERENCES

Gunsmoke: Shakespeare https://www.oldradioworld.com/media/Gunsmoke%201952-08-23%20Shakespeare.mp3

Old World Radio, a source of historic broadcasts https://www.oldradioworld.com

A list of Gunsmoke episodes on Old World Radio https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Gunsmoke.php

Gunsmoke on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunsmoke

About Matt Dillon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunsmoke#Matt_Dillon