Boxcars711 Overnight Western "Frontier Town" - The Glory Trail (1949)

Boxcars711 Overnight Western "Frontier Town"
The Glory Trail (1949) *The Exact Date Is Unknown.

 

Frontier Town will forever reside in that twilight  of the Western genre of Golden Age Radio--between the highly self-conscious adult Westerns of the mid- to late-1950s and the rock'em, sock'em, shoot-em-up juvenile adventure Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s. It's obvious from this series that Radio westerns were beginning to lean in an adult direction--but not without some kicking and screaming in the process. Radio's Gunsmoke was already in development and Television was making impressive inroads into Radio's commercial audience. With hundreds of Hopalong Cassidy and other western hero film reruns airing night and day over Television, the race was on to find a more rivetting format for the great American western. Jeff Chandler opens the series billed as 'Tex' Chandler, in the role of Chad Remington. He acquires a sidekick in Episode #1: a garrulous quasi-scoundrel by the name of Cherokee O'Bannon, a man of obvious mixed breeding--and morals. Cherokee O'Bannon is portrayed by Wade Crosby in a somewhat over the top rendition of W.C. Fields