Here are about 260 episodes of Gunsmoke
In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S. Paley, a big fan of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe radio serial, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a hardboiled Western series. Robinson contacted his West Coast CBS Vice-President, Harry Ackerman, who had created the Philip Marlowe series, to take on the task.
Ackerman and his scriptwriters, Mort Fine and David Friedkin, created an audition script called "Mark Dillon Goes to Gouge Eye". Two auditions were created in 1949. The first was very much like a hardboiled detective series and starred Rye Billsbury as Dillon; the second starred Straight Arrow actor Howard Culver in a more Western, lighter version of the same script. CBS liked the Culver version better, and Ackerman was given the green light to proceed.
But there was a complication. Culver's contract as the star of Straight Arrow would not allow him to do another Western series. So the project was shelved until three years later, when Norman MacDonnell and John Meston discovered it while looking to create an adult Western series of their own.
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. Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas during the thriving cattle days of the 1870s. Dunning[2] notes, "The show drew critical acclaim for unprecedented realism."
The show was distinct from other radio westerns, as the dialogue was often slow and halting, and due to the outstanding sound effects, listeners had a nearly palpable sense of the prairie terrain where the show was set. The effects were subtle but multilayered, giving the show a spacious feel. John Dunning writes: "The listener heard extraneous dialogue in the background, just above the muted shouts of kids playing in an alley. He heard noises from the next block, too, where the inevitable dog was barking." (Dunning, 305) Dillon as portrayed by Conrad was a lonely, isolated man, toughened by a hard life. Meston relished the upending of cherished Western fiction clichés and thought that few Westerns gave any inkling of how brutal was the Old West. Dunning writes that Meston was especially 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." (Dunning, 304)
Dunning writes that Dillon "played his hand and often lost. He arrived too late to prevent a lynching. He amputated a dying man's leg and lost the patient anyway. He saved a girl from brutal rapists then found himself unable to offer her what she needed to stop her from moving into... life as a prostitute." (Dunning, 304) Some listeners, such as vintage radio authority Dunning, have argued that the radio version of Gunsmoke was far more realistic than the TV series. Episodes were aimed at adults and featured some of the most explicit content of their time, including violent crimes, scalpings, massacres, and opium addicts. Many episodes ended on a somber note, and villains often got away with their crimes. Nonetheless, thanks to the subtle scripts and outstanding ensemble cast, over the years the program evolved into a warm, often humorous celebration of human nature.
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/111327712/gunsmoke.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111328877/gunsmoke.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111329882/gunsmoke.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111332283/gunsmoke.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111333334/gunsmoke.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111334407/gunsmoke.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111335383/gunsmoke.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111336320/gunsmoke.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111337462/gunsmoke.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111339377/gunsmoke.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111342358/gunsmoke.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111344654/gunsmoke.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111347354/gunsmoke.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111348380/gunsmoke.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/111349612/gunsmoke.part15.rar