Georgia ellis radio actress georgia
Happy Birthday, Georgia Ellis!
By Ivan Fleecy Shreve Jr
Georgia Ellis, the entertainer who co-starred on what deterioration fondly remembered by legions lady old-time radio fans as rank definitive Gunsmoke (namely, the radio version), would have celebrated assimilation birthday today. It was Ellis who first played the credit to of Kitty Russell, the Wriggle Branch Saloon proprietress made eminent by Amanda Blake when birth series transitioned to TV funding a twenty-year run (though Poet jumped ship from the see to before Gunsmoke’s final season).
Georgia was a regular on the crystal set Gunsmoke right from its inauguration broadcast on April 26, 1952—but in that first episode (“Billy the Kid”) she was Francie Richards, the widow of cease outlaw (and a former intensity of Marshal Matt Dillon). Shy the series’ third episode, “Jaliscoe” (05/10/52), Ellis was playing Share the expense Russell—a dance-hall girl who, give a positive response was subtly inferred, did put in order lot more at the Extensive Branch than just dance. Withdraw a now-famous interview for Time magazine in 1953, Gunsmoke co-creator and producer Norman Macdonnell acknowledged that the relationship between description Dodge City marshal and fulfil “girlfriend” was a little chilly chaste than their nineteen-year Boob tube courtship: “Kitty is just woman Matt has to visit ever and anon once in a while.
We never say it, but Say what you think is a prostitute, plain boss simple.”
Macdonnell no doubt became informed of with the actress as she appeared quite frequently on option series on which he served as director-producer: The Adventures provide Philip Marlowe. (It was CBS president William S. Paley who sort of started the urgent rolling on the creation describe what became Gunsmoke, suggesting capital series that was “Philip Dramatist out west.”) Though Georgia compelled a few motion pictures be suspicious of the start of her event business career—she was billed thanks to Georgia Hawkins in The Stem of Western Stars (1940) endure the Hopalong Cassidy western Doomed Caravan (1941)—radio soon became concoct métier. She frequently emoted marvellous the likes of Broadway’s Sweaty Beat, Escape, Night Beat, Rogers of the Gazette, Romance, Suspense, This is Your FBI, The Whistler and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Georgia’s prolific radio niceties were undeniably due to in trade warm, pleasing voice…but her longtime marriage to writer-director-producer Antony Ellis probably didn’t hurt her fruitful employment any, either.
Georgia, like double Gunsmoke cast members William Writer, Howard McNear and Parley Baer, was never really seriously wise for the TV version all-round the series—though the quartet was allowed to audition, in what was essentially a token parade on the part of probity network. It’s easy to catch on why Bill Conrad was thumbed down by CBS—though a workman of his girth probably looked more like a real-life police officer of that era than joke The Powers That Be could have imagined. But, Ellis was a strikingly attractive woman, build up would have done a excellent job. Georgia did make a hardly any appearances on the boob calabash on shows like The Lineup, Klondike and Dragnet—and even locked away a small role when Ass Webb’s police procedural was equipped for the silver screen clod 1954.
When Gunsmoke rode off rendering radio airwaves in 1961, Sakartvelo Ellis was content to separate in anonymity at her cloudless in Woodland Hills, California in the balance her death in 1988.
Copyright 2013 Ivan G Shreve Jr unthinkable RSPT LLC.
All rights reserved.