Letter of the Law: Gunsmoke (July 15, 1956)

“Letter of the Law” is an episode of Gunsmoke, the old-time radio show, first broadcast July 15, 1956. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Marshal Dillon receives a court order to evict Brandon Teak from his land over a registration technicality, even though Teak has built a home there with his pregnant wife Sarah and claims to have a deed. When Dillon travels to Wichita to question Judge Rambow about the order, he discovers that a man named Lee Sprague—who owns adjoining land—brought the eviction to the judge's attention.

Dodge City and Wichita, Kansas; the frontier territories of the American West in the 1880s.

Characters: Matt Dillon, Kitty, Chester, Brandon Teak, Sarah Teak, Judge Rambow, Lee Sprague

Listen for: The tension between law and justice as Dillon grapples with enforcing a technically legal but morally questionable eviction order against a reformed man trying to build a family life.

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.