Frontier Town

FRONTIER TOWN

   Dr. Sixgun and Luke Slaughter were radio westerns
that aired during the Gunsmoke years,
yet seemed stuck in a different time dimension;
it was difficult to classify them as juvenile or adult,
mostly because they were simply... bad.
   Frontier Town at least had the excuse
of starting during the same year as Gunsmoke,
and thus not having the benefit or burden
of knowing it as a paragon and matching it.
   Moreover, it was a charning and likable show
while Jeff Chandler played the lead.
Chandler had a man's voice--robust, earnest, substantial--
and it gave gravity to a show that was to a large degree
weightless and whimsical.
   Frontier Town changed Chad Remingtons in midstream--
Chandler rode out with the 23rd episode,
and Reed Hadley rode into the 24th.
Reed's delivery was bizarre and stylized--
he seemed to be playing The Lone Ranger,
and sometimes he would bend the end of his lines
like he was Beckham. Like Rye Billsbury,
his was a 'handsome' radio voice, and he knew it.
(Listen to Reed and Rye--who starred in the first Gunsmoke audition--
and you will hear how these two self-impressed actors
revelled in the lotioned smoothness of their voices.)
   Whereas Chandler had provided a vocal ballast
and anchored Frontier Town near the ground,
Reed's ridiculous rendition removed it from reality even further.
No longer was there any counterbalance
to the sidekick's inane W.C. Fields impression,
the silly singing cowboy plotlines,
and the equally antiquated organ music.
   Besides Jeff Chandler, Frontier Town's one other saving grace
was that it used wordplay as much as gunplay.
There are puns aplenty, probably more for you to grin or groan over,
than in any other western.