Wednesday 4/10/24
Here is a strange commercial--colorful times, those 1970s. We have William Conrad, sheriff Matt Dillon from radio's Gunsmoke, doing a spot at the salad bar for Bonanza--not, mind you, the TV Western--with a woman who looks very uncomfortable. Was that how she was supposed to play this or was she just that uncomfortable? Obviously this isn't Miss Kitty. (Delmonico's, by the way, was where you went to eat on Gunsmoke.)
It's also odd to me that William Conrad--who was in so much on TV and radio, and starred in so much--would take on work like this. He would have had no financial need.
Maybe he just wanted to say a soupcon of crouton?
Conrad turns up in Tales of the Texas Rangers, which I've been spending a lot of time with of late, for the simple reason that he was in basically every radio drama for a time there. I think people would be surprised how many times in their life they've been listening to William Conrad--or Bill as he was sometimes billed--and not known it. He and Orson Welles were like the kings of the narrators, but you wouldn't think either was a king of the salad bar, necessarily. Perhaps Welles was offstage choosing the wine.