Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Six-Shooter: "The Capure of Stacy Gault" 11/8/53

People are in a panic when outlaw Stacy Gault rides into town. Britt, though, has some doubts about whether the stranger really is Gault.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Six Shooter: "Escape from Smoke Falls" 11/15/53

Britt gets involved in tracking down an escaped prisoner. This job soon ends up involving two other men who are ready to come to blows over a woman.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Six-Shooter: "Crisis at Easter Creek" 4/15/54

Britt is working on a ranch near the small town of Easter Creek when he finds himself roped into raising money for a new church organ. Everone in town has already contributed. Well, everyone but the denizens of a nearby outlaw haven.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Six Shooter: "Gabriel Starbuck" 11/22/53

An old friend of Britt is getting a bit too old to work as town sheriff, but refuses to admit it.


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Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter: "Helen Bricker" 1/24/54

The titular character is being shunned by the citizens of Yellow Crest because she is married to a man about to hang for murder. When those citizens decide to run her out of town even if it means burning her out of her home, Britt feels obligated to step in and help her—whether she wants his help or not.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter: "Double Seven" 5/13/54

Britt more or less gets drafted into acting as mediator between a large rancher and some small farmers. The rancher thinks the farmers are rustling his stock. The farmers think the rancher is trying to run them off their land and take it for himself. Britt needs to find out what's really going on. He also needs to make sure someone doesn't put a bullet in his back.



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Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter "Hiram's Goldstrike" 1/10/54

This particularly entertaining episode involves an eccentric prospector (enthusiastically played by Howard McNeer) who seems to have finally found a rich strike after 45 years of searching. The story segues smoothly from comedy to drama and back to comedy, with a superb sequence in which Britt and an outlaw confront each other in a pitch-black room. There’s a great twist near the end, leading up to a hilarious gag at the conclusion.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter: "Rink Larkin" 10/18/53

An 11-year-old boy refuses to believe his father was a bank robber—or that the sheriff who killed his dad isn’t a murderer. Ponset had befriended the boy before learning the full situation, so that leaves him with the responsibility trying to stop an angry and independent child from trying to kill a man.

Click HERE to listen or download.

My latest ebook is now available for the Nook

It took awhile to get it posted, but my latest ebook is now available for the Nook as well as the Kindle:

The Six Shooter: A Review and Episode Guide for the Old-Time Radio Show


Here's a link to the Kindle edition.

The Six Shooter: A Review and Episode Guide

I've written a review and episode guide for The Six Shooter, a Western that ran on NBC radio for 39 episodes in 1953-54. The series starred James Stewar as Britt Ponset, a "Texas plainsman who wandered through the western territories, leaving behind a trail of still-remembered legends."

Stewart played Britt in a laid-back, folksy manner that made him old-time radio's most purely likable hero. The premise of the show allowed anything from straightforward action to character drama to comedy. One week might find Britt stalking a killer through a dark canyon. The next week might find him judging a preserves-tasting contest. This show is one of the treasures of Old-Time Radio.

The link above is for the Kindle. It should be available for the Nook very soon--Barnes and Noble seems to have a much longer processing time for newly-published ebooks before they show up on their website.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter: “The Shooting of Wyatt King” 5/20/54

Jimmy Stewart’s laid back portrayal of Britt Ponset made it possible for The Six Shooter to range from adventure to tragedy to comedy throughout the run of the series. This episode has a little bit of everything in it, blending humor with great character moments.

An infamous outlaw is found badly wounded. When Britt rides into town, everyone thinks he must have done it and he can’t get anyone to believe that he didn’t. Even the outlaw gives him credit.

Britt couldn’t be more aggravated by getting accolades he didn’t earn, but when he discovers who really did the shooting, that only leads to more trouble.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Six Shooter: “Battle at Tower Rock” 2/21/54


By the 1950s, reel-to-reel tape had replaced wax discs as the means of recording radio shows and it became more practical to transcribe (pre-record) radio shows rather than do them live. This, in turn, made it possible for several movie stars to star in radio shows. They could record the episodes at their convenience rather than have to show up at the studio at a set time every week.

One fine example of such a show was The Six Shooter. Jimmy Stewart played Britt Ponset, a wandering cowboy who, well, wandered into an adventure each week.

Stewart narrated his adventures in a casual, folksy style that allowed the show to mix humorous tales and character studies in with more traditional Western adventure stories. “Battle at Tower Rock” is a fine example of this. Britt arrives at the town of Tower Rock, which is about to have its annual fair. The town is on edge, though, because the sisters who co-own the bank are feuding with each other and many other townspeople feel obligated to take sides.

Britt is roped into judging the preserves-tasting contest, which both sisters have entered. He soon realizes that no matter whom he picks as the winner, it’s only likely to make the matter worse. He’s put more on edge when the sisters’ husbands pay separate visits to him, each begging Britt to pick his wife as the winner—or she (either one) will be impossible to live with.

Britt is left with the challenge of judging the contest in such a way as to not have everybody making his life miserable. The story is full of humor and fun characters—a pleasant way to spend a half-hour.

Click HERE to listen or download.