Sometimes blundering, sometimes shooting: Old-time radio listening, 8 November

November 8, 2:03 PMOld-Time Radio ExaminerJeff Kallman

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James Stewart as Britt Ponset. (NBC.)

The Six Shooter: The Return of Stacy Gault (NBC, 1953)

He’s been presence enough in network radio to this point, whether making dramatic turns in the like of Lux Radio Theater; or, in his impeccable turn as the sort-of citizen-narrator who served as the conduit for a plethora of musings on the Bill of Rights (We Hold These Truths), written and directed by Norman Corwin and featuring some of entertainment’s titans (including, but not limited to, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Brennan, Marjorie Main, Edward G. Robinson, and Orson Welles).

But James Stewart has taken until 1953 to find a leading-man old-time radio niche. When he does, it proves as memorable as it proves perhaps criminally short-lived, in one of the better if slightly flawed Westerns the medium has yielded yet.

Stewart was never better on the air than in this drama of Britt Ponset, frontier drifter created by Frank Burt. The epigraph set it up nicely: "The man in the saddle is angular and long-legged: his skin is sun dyed brown. The gun in his holster is gray steel and rainbow mother-of-pearl. People call them both the Six Shooter." Ponset was a wanderer, an easy-going gentleman and---when he had to be---a gunfighter.

Stewart was right in character as the slow-talking maverick who usually blundered into other people's troubles and sometimes shot his way out. His experiences were broad, but The Six Shooter leaned more to comedy than other shows of its kind. Ponset took time out to play Hamlet with a crude road company. He ran for mayor and sheriff of the same town at the same time. He became involved in a delighful Western version of Cinderella, complete with grouchy stepmother, ugly sisters, and a shoe that didn't fit. And at Christmas he told a young runaway the story of A Christmas Carol, substituting the original Dickens characters with Western heavies. Britt even had time to fall in love, but it was the age-old story of people from different worlds, and the romance was foredoomed despite their valiant efforts to save it.

So we got a cowboy-into-the-sunset ending for this series, truly one of the bright spots of radio. Unfortunately, it came too late, and lasted only one season.

---The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group.

The Six Shooter came well past radio's best years and was an unusual and at times fetching western . . . Stewart was a superb radio actor, overcoming the drift of some scripts into folksy platitude . . . [but] the series as a whole just lacked the fine edge to be found in radio's two best Westerns, Gunsmoke and Frontier Gentleman . . . Despite Stewart's great prestige, the show was largely sustained. Chesterfield was interested, but Stewart declined, not wanting a cigarette company to counter his largely wholesome screen image.

---John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.)

Regardless, The Six Shooter will wield an influence. A few years later, network television will find a hit in a show that plays the mature Western theme for laughs and gets them in abundance enough---ABC's Maverick.

Tonight on The Six Shooter: Locals are alarmed because outlaw Stacy Gault is rumoured coming to town, and Ponset (Stewart) is alarmed when they want to string up a loner who just so happens to hit town at the hysteria's beginning.

Additional cast: Eleanor Audley, Parley Baer, Forrest Lewis, Barney Phillips. Announcer: Hal Gibney. Music: Basil Adam. Director: Jack Johnstone. Writer: Frank Burt.

FURTHER CHANNEL SURFING . . .

Information, Please: Half a Quartet (NBC, 1943)---Half of the U.S. Senate's legendary "B2H2" quartet---who earn the nickname when they sponsor a bill (also given the same nickname) pressing for American participation in what would become the United Nations, in due course, gets a chance to sit on the spot with a legendary old-time radio brain panel today. Sens. J. Lister Hill (D-Alabama) and Joseph H. Ball (R-Minnesota) join regular panelists John F. Keiran (sportswriter, The New York Times, credited with coining "grand slam" as a tennis term) and Franklin P. Adams (retired longtime newspaper columnist, whose doggerel about B2H2---Sens. Harold Burton [D-Ohio] and Carl Hatch [D-New Mexico] completed the quartet---is read on the air). Who says politics can't be mad fun? Moderator: Clifton Fadiman. Announcer: Ben Grauer.

The Green Hornet: The Hornet Drops a Hint (ABC, 1945)---A suave, usually cunning gangster, freed from prison, has an intriguing proposition to ponder that might help him get even with the Hornet (Bob Hall), who helped imprison him in the first place. Typical of the series. Kato: Rolland Parker. Lenore Case: Lee Allman. Axford: Gil Shea. Additional cast: Unknown. Director: Charles Livingstone. Writer: Fran Striker.

Our Miss Brooks: The Workhorse (CBS, 1948)---Overloaded with work preparing the mid-term exams is nothing for Connie (Eve Arden), compared to being overloaded with suggestions for hobbies. Cheerfully typical entry and that's a good thing. Mrs. Davis: Jane Morgan. Walter: Richard Crenna. Conklin: Gale Gordon. Boynton: Jeff Chandler. Harriet: Gloria McMillan. Announcer: Bob Lamond. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Writer/director: Al Lewis.

The Marriage: Ben's Shady Client (NBC, 1953)---Ben's (Hume Cronyn) law firm may not be too colourful, but neither are they immune to the occasionally dubious client---even if he means big business for the firm---that makes a man stare vacantly during dinner. Underrated light comedy of manners, at times approaching highbrow, but an intriguing vehicle for a pair of stage legends. Liz: Jessica Tandy. Emily: Denise Alexander. Barney: Larry King. Jake: Ed Begley. Additional cast: Ed Lattimer, Ann Thomas. Director: Edward King. Writer: Ernest Kinoy.