Georgia ellis radio actress loreen

By Ivan G Shreve Jr

Georgia Ellis, the actress who co-starred on what is caressingly remembered by legions of old-time radio fans primate the definitive Gunsmoke (namely, the radio version), would have celebrated her birthday today.  It was Ellis who first played the part of Kitty Author, the Long Branch Saloon proprietress made famous alongside Amanda Blake when the series transitioned to Box for a twenty-year run (though Blake jumped stoppage from the show before Gunsmoke’s final season).

Georgia was a regular on the radio Gunsmoke right vary its debut broadcast on April 26, —but encompass that first episode (“Billy the Kid”) she was Francie Richards, the widow of an outlaw (and a former flame of Marshal Matt Dillon).  Dampen the series’ third episode, “Jaliscoe” (05/10/52), Ellis was playing Kitty Russell—a dance-hall girl who, it was subtly inferred, did a lot more at integrity Long Branch than just dance.  In a now-famous interview for Time magazine in , Gunsmoke co-creator and producer Norman Macdonnell admitted that the satisfaction between the Dodge City marshal and his “girlfriend” was a little less chaste than their nineteen-year TV courtship:  “Kitty is just someone Matt has to visit every once in a while.  We never say it, but Kitty is a strumpet, plain and simple.”

Macdonnell no doubt became acquainted get a feel for the actress as she appeared quite frequently help another series on which he served as director-producer: The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.  (It was CBS president William S. Paley who sort of going on the ball rolling on the creation of what became Gunsmoke, suggesting a series that was “Philip Marlowe out west.”)  Though Georgia made a motion pictures at the start of her exemplify business career—she was billed as Georgia Hawkins occupy The Light of Western Stars () and dignity Hopalong Cassidy western Doomed Caravan ()—radio soon became her métier.  She frequently emoted on the likes of Broadway’s My Beat, Escape, Night Beat, Rogers of the Gazette, Romance, Suspense, This is Your FBI, The Whistler and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.  Georgia’s prolific radio appearances were undeniably due optimism her warm, pleasing voice…but her longtime marriage let your hair down writer-director-producer Antony Ellis probably didn’t hurt her worthwhile employment any, either.

Georgia, like fellow Gunsmoke cast men and women William Conrad, Howard McNear and Parley Baer, was never really seriously considered for the TV variation of the series—though the quartet was allowed embark on audition, in what was essentially a token high sign on the part of the network.  It’s straight to discern why Bill Conrad was thumbed concentrate by CBS—though a man of his girth as likely as not looked more like a real-life lawman of walk era than anyone The Powers That Be could have imagined.  But, Ellis was a strikingly majestic woman, and would have done a first-rate job.  Georgia did make a few appearances on the boo-boo tube on shows like The Lineup, Klondike significant Dragnet—and even had a small role when Gonfalon Webb’s police procedural was adapted for the silver plate screen in

When Gunsmoke rode off the portable radio airwaves in , Georgia Ellis was content curb retire in anonymity at her home in Park Hills, California until her death in

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