The Voice That Was Too Big for Television
If you grew up with Gunsmoke, you know James Arness: tall, quiet, and unmistakably Marshal Dillon. But before Arness ever put on the badge, another man owned the role. He had never been seen in it, because he had only ever been heard.
His name was William Conrad, and his voice came first.
A voice that was everywhere
Conrad was born John William Cann Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 27, 1920. He started in radio at about 17, announcing at KMPC in Los Angeles. At the busiest point he was working on 10 to 15 radio programs a week, and he later estimated that he had been in at least 7,500 broadcasts.
When World War II came, he became a fighter pilot and was commissioned in 1943. He left the Army Air Forces as a captain, working as a producer-director for the Armed Forces Radio Service.
The marshal you could hear
Gunsmoke arrived on CBS Radio in 1952, with Conrad as U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon. He played him for the whole run, 480 episodes through 1961.
Here is the part that surprises people. The producers did not want him at first. He was on so many shows that his voice was too familiar. But his audition, by one account, "could not be dismissed," and the part was his.
Then television called, and not for him
In 1955, Gunsmoke moved to TV. CBS did not cast Conrad, and it did not cast his radio co-stars either, despite a campaign to change their minds. The Museum of Broadcast Communications notes that by then Conrad had become a heavyset man, far from the image his voice had created, and that he stayed bitter about losing the role for years.
You may also have heard that John Wayne turned the part down. That version is a popular story. The producer, Charles Marquis Warren, said he had only asked Wayne as a joke, that Wayne showed no interest, and that Wayne recommended Arness. Wayne did introduce the first television episode, and he predicted that Arness would become a major star.
Conrad kept playing Matt on the radio until that series ended in 1961.
What he did with the rest of his career
This is where the story turns, because Conrad did not fade. He kept working, and in ways most of us never noticed.
- The narrator. From 1959 to 1964 he narrated The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. For that job he did not use his deep radio baritone. He used what has been described as a brisk, high-pitched, nasal tenor. Then, from 1963 to 1967, his voice opened the ABC series The Fugitive, narrating all 120 episodes starring David Janssen.
- The director. He directed episodes of Klondike, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, Route 66, Have Gun - Will Travel and 77 Sunset Strip. His credits also include two episodes of Gunsmoke itself, between 1963 and 1971. He had been shut out of the show as an actor, and he ended up behind the camera on the same series.
- The star. In 1971, the heavyset man who had lost a role because of how he looked became a leading man. A TV movie introduced Frank Cannon on March 26, 1971, and the weekly series Cannon premiered on CBS on September 14, 1971. Conrad was 50 years old, and he turned 51 two weeks later. He weighed about 230 pounds, and the show openly leaned into it. Cannon was a gourmet cook who joked about his own girth, and a tuba played in his theme. Cannon ran until March 3, 1976, and ranked in the Nielsen top 20 for three seasons in a row.
The lesson
William Conrad died on February 11, 1994, at 73. He was elected to the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1997.
I like his story because it flips the usual one. A man was passed over for the role of a lifetime, and in the years that followed he became the voice of a cartoon, the narrator of a manhunt, a director, and finally a leading man at 50. He was heard long before he was seen, and in the end, he was both.
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