Suspense Upgrades

Today in Suspense history...
December 23
1943 Back for Christmas
1948 Holiday Story
1954 Premonition
1956 Back for Christmas

Suspense_1948-10-14_A_Little_Piece_of_Rope_wLucilleBall UPGRADE-3.mp3
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On this day in Suspense history...
December 24
1951 'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Suspense_1948-10-21_Give_Me_Liberty_wWilliamPowell UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Newspaper clippings were posted earlier.


Thank you again for your support through the years and at this special time. Greybelt the Younger arrives here this evening from his European adventures... we'll be at Midnight Mass and then Thursday afternoon we head down for the funeral events of what started last Saturday. Yesterday I got all kinds of administrative things done. It was curious that so few of them require certified death certificates now... but then I realized if you're stopping payments to someone, then they're perfectly happy to do that even with something written on a dirty napkin! Luckily during her medical crisis in Spring 2018 I had closed and consolidated accounts and implemented the power of attorney documents. That could have been worse but the attorney who prepared them did a great job having them filed at the Register of Deeds years before so all I had to do was supply information as to book numbers and page numbers and a registry phone number and avoided all kinds of mailings and getting notary and signature guarantees. As I'm doing it all I'm thinking how bewildering this all must be to someone who has never been in business or taken a basic legal or financial planning course or even read a book about it. I'm annoyed by the process and the phone hold times and all of that, but they must be plain overwhelmed. I got it all done in less than a day. Most of our relatives are gone or "lost" so that part has been easy, very few to call. I called the nurses who worked on that floor and one of those calls was harder than the other but we got through it. Having been through this before, and this is our last of our four parents, the day after the funeral is often physically the worst as the adrenaline shifts from off the charts extreme to just high. I really could have used karate class last night, as the diversion and exhaustion would have re-set my sleep pattern and refreshed my mind, but we're cancelled until January. The NC weather will be warm today so the powerwalk and the garage karate will help tremendously.

We cleaned out her room at the home last Saturday, as we had cleaned out her independent living apartment 18+ months before, too, so we have these advisories for the elderly among us:
1) eat the bacon now and then and stop complaining that it's not good for you; you're over 90 for gosh sakes
2) wear something in your closet today that still has tags on it -- some of those things are Christmas gifts from 10 years ago -- please wear something new -- and in front of the people who bought it for you -- at worst, cut off all the tags and at least let us think you wore it once
3) it's okay to be in your 80s and open packages of new underwear that have been sitting in the dresser for years -- go for the gusto in life -- please stop wearing the stuff with the holes in them -- new underwear can improve one's attitude and give an extra spring to your step
4) have dessert more often -- or skip a meal and just have dessert. It's okay. The people who told you not to do that aren't here any more.

There are more, but it's time for breakfast...

Thank you all again and Merry Christmas!
By the special Cobaltian powers invested in me, I hereby declare that all calories are null and void for the next 48 hours.

Thanks greybelt.

Isn't it amazing what a little bit of preplanning will do.
Best regards


Art

Suspense_1948-11-04_DeathSentence_wJohnGarfield UPGRADE-4.mp3
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Newspaper clippings were posted earlier.

This was Garfield's second appearance on Suspense. His first was 1945-05-10 Reprieve. He was scheduled for Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses but that appearance was cancelled because of his inclusion in Red Channels. Producer Elliott Lewis held the script aside hoping that minds would change at CBS, but they did not, and Garfield died in May 1952 of a heart problem, age 39. Lewis cancelled the planned Sorry, Wrong Number that was to end their 1951-1952 season, and instead starred in Concerto himself to end that season's presentations.

This day in Suspense history...
December 26
1946 Philomel Cottage
1947 Too Little to Live On

Producer Anton M. Leader brought back SWN for a performance at the end of 1948 in his lone season. The production was postponed from a few weeks earlier because of a political broadcast. SWN was always a publicity bonanza, and this was especially so in 1948 because of the release of the movie version with Barbara Stanwyck. (The movie is not online, but Amazon is selling a DVD for $4.99).

Suspense_1948-11-18_SorryWrongNumber_wAgnesMoorehead_v5 UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Thanks greybelt.
Best regards


Art

This day in Suspense history...
December 28
1944 A Thing of Beauty
1950 A Ring for Marya
1953 The Queen's Ring
1958 The Thirty Second of December

Suspense_1948-12-09_TheSisters_wRosalindRussell&LureneTuttle UPGRADE-3.mp3
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We're back from our trip for the funeral for my mother. It does not take much to keep it in perspective as people would express condolences and I would say "It's okay, she was 92, she had a good run" and then tell a funny story about her. That's not always the case. The funeral home had brochures around like "When You've Lost a Child" and the funeral Mass before us was for a 35-year-old. It's a relief for many of those in the funeral professions when they are able to work with families where the deceased is so old. They see so much of the human condition that is difficult and tragic. They often see a brutal aftermath of life's events.

So it's done, and what's left from a services perspective is a trip to New York in the Spring for cemetery inurnment where my father's remains were interred some 32+ years ago. The few relatives remaining, some elderly and unable to travel long distances, will be able to gather for that.

The funny tiny part of these couple of days is that I did not have my glasses with me when I got the certified copies of the death certificate. My unaided first glance at the causes of death was that I thought #2 item in the doctor's handwriting said "failure to DRIVE" ... but it was actually "failure to THRIVE" ... but that did make me smile a bit like when I mis-hear something and burst out laughing over it.

The nursing home chaplain, a young woman in her early 30s at most, was extraordinarily supportive and marvelous. Chaplains do tremendous work on the ground, anonymously, in harmony with churches and priests and ministers and rabbis and others focusing on common objectives while theologians argue and research and clarify and discuss things that often focus on differences. Both roles are needed, but while theologians write books, chaplains are often in the thick of things in a getting-hands-dirty kind of way, navigating organizations, belief systems, family turmoil and drama, medical tragedy, and much more. It takes a special gift to do the job well. Though we do not share the same faith she facilitated so many acts and services with parishes nearby that my mother got all she needed when she needed it and more, like she did for all the other residents. This chaplain, however, had never heard of the inspiring story of the "Four Chaplains" from WW2. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  I thought she'd find this incident to be quite fascinating. It's one of those historical events that get pushed aside as the years pass but can be rediscovered through our hobby.
The story was dramatized on Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1953.
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Does anyone have a better copy of it? If so, please post it in the "Sharing Shows from My Collection" thread or some other appropriate one.


There are a few Suspense recordings left to post, and then I'll switch to some other series here and there. I will make some Suspense show history posts now and then until some batches of upgrades appear as it seems they always do....


I will soon start a Casey, Crime Photographer thread as I pick up on my plans to write a book about the series. It will be a one-time publication. I had started it many times, and planned to publish it in 2016. Whoops! The Suspense project will have a new book every year... at least that's the plan!

Suspense project news
The motion pictures and TV shows that have some tie-in with Suspense are now at a web page that has links to their YouTube videos. Found some new links yesterday; I know that there are more yet to be found as this journey continues. Enjoy!
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This day in Suspense history...
December 29
1949 The Bullet
1952 Melody in Dreams
1957 Never Steal a Butcher's Wife

You will love the sound of this upgrade...
Suspense_1949-06-16_TheTrap_wAgnesMoorehead UPGRADE-3.mp3
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The author of this script is a Suspense one-hit-wonder, but Virginia Myers was a professional writer. This may have been the only script by her, ever, for use in radio. It could have been an unpublished short story "Answer Me," based on her papers and correspondence collection, that she decided to submit to Suspense instead.

Thanks greybelt.
Best regards
Art

This day in Suspense history...
December 30
1943 Finishing School
1948 Break-Up
1954 Odd Man Out

This episode was the beginning of a new season of Suspense. Tony Leader was fired. They say he asked for too much money after one of the series' highest rated seasons, an especially heroic turnaround after the loss of Roma and the hour-long-format debacle; Leader would say he was intensely disliked by one of the key CBS radio executives; others would say Leader was a micromanager and that annoyed some of the staff and the actors. In my mind, that one Leader season was the best of the series.

Beginning with this episode, Spier is back from his CBS hiatus trying to save The Clock for ABC (couldn't be done), and then producing Philip Morris Playhouse for CBS as a Suspense-like program, even using some scripts that were previously used on Suspense! The Morris gig ended with that one season.

For Spier's return to Suspense for the 1949-1950 season, he came back as producer but not director. I guess his return to the helm smoothed things over with any disgruntled acting and production folks. Norman Macdonnell became director, just a few years away from what would become his stunning success with Gunsmoke. Macdonnell would take over Suspense in full for a few months after Elliott Lewis left when Auto-Lite pulled the plug on its sponsorship in June 1954.

Suspense_1949-09-01_Nightmare_wGregoryPeck (diff plot than 48-03-13) UPGRADE-4.mp3
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This is one of three times where Suspense used the same name on different scripts.

Newspaper clippings were posted previously.

Thanks greybelt
Best regards
Art

This day in Suspense history...
December 31
1951 Rogue Male
1961 The Old Man

Suspense_1949-10-06_The_Defense_Rests_wVanJohnson UPGRADE-2.mp3
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The author, Rowland Brown, had a very curious Hollywood career. The film in his IMDb listing that was most familiar to me was Angels with Dirty Faces.
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Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

Happy 2020 Cobaltia! Please see a special note at the end of this post...
Suspense_1949-11-17_Red_Headed_Woman_wLucilleBall&DesiArnaz UPGRADE-3.mp3
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The American Radio Theater site has posted a production by their friends at Wayback Theater. It's a Suspense script that was rejected by Auto-Lite, The Hand by Mel Dinelli.
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As best I can tell, this script was submitted to Tony Leader, Suspense producer for one year (the best of all Suspense years as far as I'm concerned) for the long-awaited Suspense debut of Joan Crawford. She refused to appear live, but the use of recording tape had started in the other programs, but this would be the first time Suspense would be using it.

Dinelli and Crawford were long-time close friends, and there are many pictures of them together at various Hollywood gatherings. From the dates of the pictures, it appears that she and Dinelli would be together whenever one of her marriages had ended.

The Hand was submitted to Suspense specifically for the Crawford appearance. It was rejected by Auto-Lite for unknown reasons, but it is easy to speculate that any or all of its plot elements, such as drug addiction or the gruesome car accident could have led hypersensitive ad execs to reject it. The story is more "Inner Sanctum-ish" than Suspense, and that may have been an issue, too. It's likely that this is the reason for that Crawford's broadcast was The Ten Years, a rework of an earlier broadcast The Two Sisters also penned by Dinelli, that became her Suspense debut.

The existing recording of The Ten Years has no commercials because it is from the transcription played in the studio at the time of broadcast. Union contracts at the time specified higher payments to musicians and others for recordings that would be played later. This was likely an agreement to compensate them for future use of the recordings without having to pay additional fees later; all the payments were upfront. The drama portion of the script would be prerecorded and edited, and the transcription would play while the music and announcing and ads would be done live. No recording of the full broadcast of The Ten Years has been found.

I had forgotten that I had this newspaper clipping from 1956 that indicates Dinelli was still shopping The Hand script around, this time as a horror movie. Dinelli was good at morphing his concepts for different mediums. The best example is his stage play The Man which was not finished but he used it as a radio play To Find Help and then finished the stage play and it opened on Broadway as The Man and the became the movie Beware, My Lovely and then became a successful stage play again as The Man in productions around the country. It was also performed on television multiple times in the 1950s, in the US and translated for television performance abroad, as well. I can find no indication that The Hand ever made it to the silver screen.


This recreation has a different ending than the original Dinelli script. Mike Wheeler, who produced this effort, has a legal background and felt Dinelli's ending was implausible, so he changed the circumstance of it but not the result. At the time of the script's writing, courtrooms had an air of mystery about them, and would be a point of high drama and authority, which is probably why Dinelli used it. About 10 years later, courtroom dramas would be common on television, with series such as the legendary Perry Mason, The Defenders, and the later Law & Order, would make courtroom procedure more familiar, and make the acceptance of Dinelli's ending by the audience less likely. He has a good case that listeners today would be more skeptical of the original ending. It's worth noting that this is an early version of the script that was rejected... we don't know if The Hand would have been edited or revised before broadcast to make the ending more effective or not.

The recording can also be accessed at Mike Wheeler's site for Wayback Radio Theater [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  Some fans may be familiar with their work to recreate the missing episodes of Great Gildersleeve. Those, and other recreations like missing Sam Spade, The Whistler, Mysterious Traveler, can be accessed at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

American Radio Theater has recreated some of the missing Suspense episodes and they are at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks for The Hand! Excited to listen to like - Mel Dineli wrote many of my favorite episodes and a couple years ago I went to the Thousand Oaks Library to take a look at the script to The Hand. Excited to hear it performed.

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

This day in Suspense history...
January 2
1947 Tree of Life

Suspense_1950-01-05_INeverMetTheDeadMan_wDannyKaye UPGRADE-2.mp3
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The script has the title "I Never Met the Dead Man" and the program title is announced that way.
So many newspapers have "a" rather than "the"  that I wonder if some initial publicity had "a" OR that at some point the title had that slight difference. At the end of the prior week's broadcast, they do not announce a title but do announce Kaye's appearance.


RadioGoldindex has a typo in the author's name. It's William Bruckner -- RGI has "Buckner" and "Ruffner" -- He also wrote Lady Killer which was first performed on Philip Morris Playhouse and then on Suspense. PMP also featured a script Widow for New Years' Only but that is not available. These are relatively early in his career and may be his only credited radio scripts. He went on to a successful career in television writing in the 1950s and 1960s. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks greybelt

Best regards
Art

Thank you!

This day in Suspense history...
January 3
1946 The Angel of Death
1948 The Black Curtain first episode of the hour-long format
1956 The Eavesdropper a missing episode
1960 Zero Hour

This is a nice upgrade in sound quality...
Suspense_1952-05-05_Frankie&Johnny_wDinahShore UPGRADE-2.mp3
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Dinah's appearance on Suspense was a great source of publicity for the program and for her...

Thanks greybelt
Best regards
Art

This day in Suspense history...
January 4
1945 I Had an Alibi
1951 Alibi Me (one-hit wonder writer Therd Jeffrey)
1954 On a Country Road (one-hit wonder writer Walter Bazar)
1959 Don't Call Me Mother

Suspense_1961-07-30_YouCanDieLaughing_wEJuster&LHaines UPGRADE-6.mp3
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Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

Sad news for Cobaltia and OTRdom:
Stewart Wright (otrwashh) has passed away.
The Facebook page of OTRR and some of the forums had comments asking if anyone had heard from Stewart recently.
Larry Albert, who has taken over Jim French's productions, had heard from Stewart on a regular basis. SW had prepared detailed logs of the Jim French series such as Harry Nile, Imagination Theater, their Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and others. SW would also talk to Jerry Haendiges every couple of weeks. Jerry also reported that he had not heard from him. I had a Cobalt private message into him that was not answered as well.

Yesterday, after it was clear no one had heard from SW, Larry called the Lakewood, CO police. They reported that Stewart died of natural causes just before Thanksgiving.

As best as we can tell, he had no family other than a brother, and no one knows anything about him, and may have predeceased him -- no one knows! There are no obituaries or other traces of him in the news.

What happened to SW's research materials and collection is not known at this time. His logs can be downloaded at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  The last updates to his logs were in May 2019. They are worth downloading now. I am hoping to get confirmation that SW's logs will remain available there.

When I know more I will pass it on.


This day in Suspense history...
January 5
1943 Nothing up My Sleeve
1950 I Never Met the Dead Man
1953 The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Part 1
1958 A Week Ago Wednesday

There is also a version of today's episode that circulates with commercials edited out.
Suspense_1962-05-13_Hide&Seek_wJBeck&WRenfield INCLUDES COMMLS UPGRADE-5.mp3
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This is the last Suspense upgrade for now, but I will post some items related to the series now and then until I get some more recordings to review. For the last 10 years, every time I say that there are no more recordings to review, another batch surfaces.

I will be starting a Casey, Crime Photographer thread sometime this week. In the meantime, I have a lot of stuff to catch up on and get off the desk...