1958–1960 · CBS

Have Gun, Will Travel

The one that went backwards: a television western turned into radio drama.

By 1958 the direction of travel was so settled that this series is genuinely startling: CBS took a successful television western and made a radio version of it, with John Dehner instead of Richard Boone, running the two in parallel for two years. It is the last significant American dramatic series created for radio, it is very good, and it exists because a network still believed — correctly, for another eighteen months — that there was an audience listening.

On radio

Radio from 23 November 1958

On television

Television from 14 September 1957

The overlap

The only major American series to travel from television to radio

60 recordings · Hollywood

CBS network broadcasts, 1958–1960, held by the Internet Archive. John Dehner played Paladin on radio. Public domain (US network broadcast, copyright not renewed); no Creative Commons or non-commercial terms apply.