Cavalcade: Gunsmoke (November 8, 1959)

“Cavalcade” is an episode of Gunsmoke, the old-time radio show, first broadcast November 8, 1959. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

A deputy sheriff from Virginia arrives in Dodge City with warrants for two murder suspects: a man named Alice who shot a bank teller, and Calvin Moore, wanted for a killing committed nineteen years earlier. As Marshal Dillon begins his investigation, violence erupts when someone attempts to murder the Virginia deputy, and a man is struck by a train in the rail yard.

Dodge City, Kansas; a restaurant, the marshal's office, Doc Adams's medical office, and the railroad yard

Characters: Matt Dillon, Chester, Miss Kitty, Doc Adams, Ed Hunter, Calvin Moore

Listen for: The tension between the old West and encroaching civilization; the moral complexity of self-defense when circumstances offer no witnesses; the marshal's methodical investigation of two fugitives; the ironic convergence of events that brings both suspects to light within hours of each other.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.