The William Conrad story

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Ed here: I was always a big fan of William Conrad. My first introduction to gritty westerns was his radio version of Gunsmoke back in the fifties. I have twenty of those episodes and have listened to all of them over the past two weeks. They were as grim as radio got and far grittier than the tv version, which he was too hefty to star in. And on Rocky and Bullwinkle he was as much fun in the narratation as the moose and squirrel were in the adventures. His series Cannon was a typically bland Quinn Martin production but his size if nothing else made it a bit different. TCM Movie Morlocks (great site) has a piece about his almost-ascent as a director of horror films. He'd directed a memorable western The Ride Back among other films and he proved to be good in this niche as well.

Movie Morlocks:

William Conrad: The Lost Master of Horror?

Posted by rhsmith on June 3, 2011

Short answer: no. But dig… in 1965, the hard-working Hollywood character actor (THE KILLERS, SORRY WRONG NUMBER, -30-), TV director-for hire (HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL, BAT MASTERSON, 77 SUNSET STRIP), producer (AN AMERICAN DREAM, THE COOL ONES, COUNTDOWN), radio voice of Marshal Matt Dillon before GUNSMOKE came to television, narrator of THE FUGITIVE ("Name: Richard Kimball, doctor of medicine. Destination: Death Row…"), commercial voiceover artist and indefatigable BULLWINKLE pitchman released three feature films, rat-a-tat-tat, between January and May. Well-remembered less by those who saw these first run than by the generation that caught up with them on TV, TWO ON A GUILLOTINE, MY BLOOD RUNS COLD and BRAINSTORM have been lauded by genre archivists and cult film aficionados for their individual merits but never, to my knowledge, have the three been considered as a body of work bearing the signature of a back lot auteur. All three have been brought to DVD under the aegis of the Warner Archive Collection, making a reappraisal not only long overdue but deucedly easy. And yet that's not my goal today. Today I want to discuss how Warners seemed primed to push William Conrad to the world as a fright-maker nonpareil, putting him on par with William Castle, the "King of the Gimmick." Press releases hawking BRAINSTORM said as much, putting wheels in motion to build for Conrad a new reputation. And then… nothing. He never directed another movie.

for the rest go here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/06/03/w...