Suspense Upgrades

Today's Suspense episode is the spooky HP Lovecraft story The Dunwich Horror. Ronald Colman stars in a Silvia Richards adaptation of the famous story.

Today's Suspense episode is The Bet and stars Lee J. Cobb. A artist traveling to South America meets a woman in an antiques shop. It always starts so innocently...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

He becomes infatuated with her. She's a rich man’s wife who loves his money but hates him. She invites the man over for a lush dinner with her sugar magnate husband. The husband makes fun of his artist life and says it has no value to others and bets him that he would not be able to last in a real job. He says he'll pay him the equivalent of $800,000+ in today's 2023 US dollars if he spends two years doing so, working for him without quitting first. How convenient the artist will be working in a lab where there are tropical disease organisms that could be used to murder that very annoying husband, allow the wife to inherit the money, without creating any suspicion. They just have to make sure the husband eats the diseased-infected sauce that the wife adds to the caviar. Hmmmm... Does Elsa Maxwell suggest Roma Sauterne for poisoned caviar? A glass would be so pleasant...

Today's Suspense episode is Murder Off Key and stars Zachary Scott in his only series appearance. The story explains one of the hazards of life in an apartment building: annoying neighbors. It gets worse. The woman with the bad singing voice is always practicing, and her tiny dog is always yapping. She’s a reliable and wealthy tenant so the landlord looks the other way when other tenants complain. She takes a liking to Scott’s character, and since she’s a rich widow, and he’s a single man, people start to talk that he’s looking for her money… especially after she’s murdered!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Verna Felton is really entertaining as the widow, Imogene Poindecker.

The story was written by Jean Russ Kern, a freelance scripter who also wrote for First Nighter and other programs. She was involved in news reporting and commentary for The West Indian Radio Newspaper, a radio service that broadcast news to countries and US and British territories in the Caribbean. It is likely they also supplied dramas as part of that service as she was described in the February 1946 Radio News as their dramatic script writer.

Today's Suspense episode is Nineteen Deacon Street. It stars Lloyd Nolan as a necktie sales rep. All he wants is an apartment where he can sleep after long days selling his wares. A landlady says she has no apartment for him, but after chatting with him and sizing him up, she decides to show him a room that she has been holding for a tenant who is away. It turns out the room has been untouched, and unlived in, for ten years! He finds a place that used to be a small theater, to display his ties, but they won't rent it to him... and that's been vacant for ten years, too! Who was the tenant of the apartment... and why is her disappearance related to that strange theater?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

NOTE: Go to the blog site and search for the pages for the December 1944 broadcast of The Lodger and the January 1945 I Had an Alibi... The recordings have been revised with "newly documented" coast broadcasts that are now available.

Today's Suspense episode features Nancy Kelly in A Week Ago Wednesday. Her character is having nightmares that her husband has plans to kill her. He’s not, but the dreams are so vivid and detailed that she is convinced he is. Eventually, she believes that the dreams are reliable premonitions. No matter how her husband behaves, there’s a sinister aspect to it and she convinces herself she knows his true motives. It does not turn out well.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Kelly’s performance is superb but for the first half of the program you realize how critical the Suspense music is to building the story and intensifying mood and background. The music of Suspense is often like a character in the story, and this episode is a good example of that. The underlying story is not among the strongest Suspense has offered, but the music raises it to be better than it is.

Today's Suspense is I Won't Take a Minute and stars Glenn Ford in an adaptation of a Cornell Wool… oh, wait… Lee Bowman stars in a Suspense adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story. Bowman’s appearance was not planned.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Newspaper reports said "A few hours before air time Ford couldn't get away from his movie set in time so Lee Bowman was called in to sub at the last minute." That wasn't the only problem. Truman Bradley had "a high fever and a hoarse voice," but worked his way through. A sound-effects artist "slashed her hand while crushing a berry box to represent the sound of a breaking door. So the program was sewed up with three stitches on the hand."

Bowman is great in the part and works well with Wally Maher who plays a skeptical cop. In the end… it’s a spy story! Woolrich’s style of stories where everything seems to go uncontrollably wrong and have to get resolved in the end fit the Suspense series like a glove. How they fit it all in about 24 minutes of story time is a wonder, but that pace is one of the things that makes the series so fascinating.

Today's Suspense is The Argyle Album and features Robert Taylor. A famous journalist who encourages his protege to succeed him. The older journalist is murdered, but has a huge album of notes, with a very recognizable argyle cover. The notes had evidence of a great international scheme that he uncovered and was about to report. There are dangerous interests who want to keep those notes from the light of day.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The Argyle Album was written by Cy Endfield, a screenwriter, and eventually a director and producer. This script eventually became a movie (links are in the blogpost).

This episode has yet another Suspense connection to Orson Welles: Endfield was skilled at magic tricks and taught Welles and others how to do them. He was invited by Welles to the sets of some of his movie productions. This was was one of the ways Endfield developed his insights into film-making. It is possible that Welles’ relationship with William Spier helped Endfield get his script considered for Suspense.

The film has some actors baby boomers will recognize in their early movie roles: Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver) and John Banner (Sgt. Schultz) from Leave it to Beaver and Hogan's Heroes, as well as Marjorie Lord (The Danny Thomas Show). It also has William Gargan, a few years before his 1950s radio role in NBC’s Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator. Enjoy!

Today's Suspense episode is Double Entry and is the first appearance of Hume Cronyn on the series. It's a rather lighthearted episode that involves illegal gambling, “bookies,” and some embezzling to fund it all. And when they think they’ll be thrown in jail, something else happens that’s really good luck. Cronyn is joined by Keenan Wynn who delivers a good performance. Don't miss Wally Maher as the caller of the horse races. He sounds right at home in the part.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The author of the story is 26-year-old Robert Minton, a graduate of Princeton University who once won a scriptwriting contest sponsored by MGM. That award led to a year in Hollywood as a junior scriptwriter. He always liked scriptwriting, but his professional writing career began as a reporter for the New York World-Telegram where he also became their book reviewer. About six years after this Suspense success, he worked for the State Department as spokesperson for the Marshall Plan and later became the first public relations director of Radio Free Europe. The script was performed twice on Suspense but also on the Suspense TV series.

Today's Suspense episode is Pink Camellias, starring Marsha Hunt. It's a curious story where her character dares to use poisoning to get an inheritance of her annoying, demanding, and infirm Aunt (played marvelously by Verna Felton). There’s someone else in the house who is good with this poison strategy, too. And there’s another relative who’s after the money and the romantic heart of Marsha Hunt’s character. But how sincere is he, really?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It's a script by one of Suspense's "one-hit-wonder" authors who seems never to have written an aired radio script again. The author was Charmion McGuirk, and the script was adapted by Silvia Richards. McGuirk was 26 at the time of this broadcast. The blogpost has more information about her.

Today's Suspense episode is Angel of Death and stars Paul Henreid. He plays a man convicted of murdering his wife and her lover – without defending himself in court -- and without bodies being found -- and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. Did he hide the bodies? Were his wife and lover still alive but in hiding? Years later, he is released from prison, and since he can't be tried again for their murder, he seeks his ex and her lover to exact his deadly revenge. But there's another twist to the story to come.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The scriptwriter was Alan Cameron, a Los Angeles freelancer whose work was for mostly local programs. One of those local programs was a version of The Hermit’s Cave named “Haunts of the Hermit” on station KMPC. Cameron had a long career in radio production with stations and with ad agencies.

Today's Suspense episode is This Was a Hero and stars Phillip Terry in a Martin Ryerson script. Terry plays a young policeman who is considered a hero in town because he shot and killed an armed man attempting to rob a warehouse. The wife of the arrested man asks him to investigate the robbery because her husband was an innately good man who would not commit such a crime. As Terry's character becomes more involved with her, the truth behind the actual event can no longer be withheld.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Terry was coming off a notable appearance in the movie Lost Weekend with Ray Milland. He was also known in Hollywood as the husband (#3) of Joan Crawford. That marriage was unraveling at the time of the broadcast, and was in the major gossip columns. There may have been some extra publicity buzz around his Suspense appearance because of the unfortunate news.

This episode was missing until 2010 when an AFRS recording was sold on eBay. Years later, the recording came into the collection of Jerry Haendiges. He shared it on his streaming radio program just a few years ago.

Today's Suspense episode is The Pasteboard Box. Joseph Cotten stars in this disturbing play about a man who decides to murder his twin brother and assume his identity. Cotten plays both parts! Suitcases are used to dispose of the dismembered body, but can’t fit the head, so a pasteboard (cardboard) box is used instead. Cotten’s character spends a lot of time trying to get rid of that box!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This was scripter, playwright, and mystery writer Joe Grenzaback’s first and only Suspense script.

There was a strange and unfortunate intersection of news stories and Suspense. A Radio Life news item speculated that The Pasteboard Box was insensitive scheduling in light of the discovery of a child's torso in a Chicago murder just days before. That gruesome murder of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan and dismemberment of her body did receive some national attention and remains unsolved to this day. The stories are very different... and in Suspense, the killer is caught.

Today's Suspense episode is My Dear Niece with Dame Mae Whitty. Oh, how innocent it all seems.
This is the first of three scripts for Suspense authored by Elliott Lewis. At the beginning, you think may be so formulaic that it won’t really be interesting. Then you get to a surprising ending. That Dame May Whitty... she's so full of surprises...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Lewis uses a letter of an elderly woman writing to her niece about how she’s finally taking the niece’s advice to be more active, perhaps even looking for a job. She gets one that pays $50 a week ($833 in US$2023) but all she does is sit around and wait! A publisher wants to use a room her house to sequester one of their behind-deadline authors to work undisturbed. It’s not as innocent as it sounds… and she's in great danger.

Today's Suspense episode is The Long Shot. It stars George Coulouris. It also has Joe Kearns playing a boring and annoying travel companion so very well that you come to hate him as much as Coulouris' character does.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

An Englishman places an ad in the newspaper hoping to find a fellow countryman to drive from New York City to San Francisco. A down-on-his-luck gambler answers the ad in the hopes of leaving town and escape the debts he’s piled up. Kearns and the story get annoying... and that's the point; choose your travel companions wisely. Stick with the story, it has a better ending than you might expect.

Today's Suspense episode, Too Little to Live On, stars George Murphy and Nancy Coleman. A dentist with a failing practice, and his wife, are having a frustrating time. They're taking care of his infirm Uncle Ed as they had promised to do. They would be thanked by becoming the inheritors of his estate. Scripter Robert Richards certainly sets up a story that can be equally at home on The Whistler as it is on Suspense.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

They never thought Ed would last as long as he had, and each day grates on all of them. The dentist, who has the legal authority to write prescriptions as Uncle Ed requires, chooses pill medications that look very similar in appearance. Of course, this is Suspense, so it’s pretty clear that a mix-up in the prescriptions will become part of the plot to get rid of the cranky uncle. He’s more cunning than they are… and tests the medications on his dog! When the dog dies, Uncle Ed has enough energy to get out of the house and report his heirs to the police… or does he?

Today's Suspense episode is The Lucky Lady by Ruth Bartlett Nemec. It was her only Suspense script. The “Lucky Lady” was not a person, it was a cat named “Suzie” that inhabits a boarding house of young actresses. A former actress, Leonora Plimm, ran the house, and promoted the belief that if “Lucky Lady” scratched you, it was good luck for your next audition. When one resident got a new role, they claimed that it was because "Suzie" scratched them, and then others would try to have the cat scratch them, too. Then… one of the young woman winds up dead… A dull handyman, George, is the sympathetic character in the story who is set up as the unfair target of suspicion of the death. We know that George and his fear of cats is there only to divert our attention while events play out to find out the identity of the real killer.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Nemec was a Florida native who worked in local radio after college graduation and then was recruited to CBS in New York for a brief time to help in program development. In her life, she became a well-known patron of the arts in philanthropic initiatives. She had a love of theater and wrote many plays for local productions. This is likely her only network drama script, and it plays on her experiences in the theater and its practitioners.

NOTE: For many years, there have been mistakenly east and west labeled recordings of this broadcast, but they have been the exact same recording. We now have both coast recordings and have identified the points of differentiation and the source of the AFRS recording.

Today's Suspense episode is Consequence with Jimmy Stewart. How can the "aw, shucks" nice guy get involved in a plot where he steals his dead friend's identity, deserts his wife, and runs away with his girlfriend? Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. How could you do this to us? We know why. It's the Suspense policy of casting against type... and it works great! And also Jimmy was paid $4,000 -- that's $66k -- for this performance. Yes! There's a copy of his contract linked at the blogpost. It's a marvelous insight into the inner workings of Suspense and big-time radio drama.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Today's Suspense episode is The Black Path of Fear. This is a new production of the Cornell Woolrich story, adapted by Robert Tallman. This time it stars Cary Grant. He delivers a fine performance. The prior August 1944 broadcast starred Brian Donlevy.

The basic plot is that a gangster’s ex-chauffeur runs away to Central America with the gangster’s wife. Of course, the gangster’s henchmen track him down while problems with the local police greatly complicate matters. It's another "everything's going wrong" Woolrich story that resolves itself despite some tragedy in the process.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Today's Suspense episode is No More Alice and stars Paul Henreid. A psychiatrist picks up a hitchhiking man who escaped from prison and hides him. He says he wants to “study him.” Well, he really has another idea. He wants to exert his psychological influence on the man so he will kill the doctor’s wife and free him of his unhappy marriage. But the convict makes a mistake and murders someone else… uh oh. The plan just isn’t working. Nothing good will happen next. You know the doctor will only dig himself deeper into trouble.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This episode almost starred George Brent for whom Henreid replaced. Brent is one of five guests I know of who were announced as stars for an upcoming Suspense episode but never appeared on the series. The others were Rita Johnson, Louis Jourdan, and, believe it or not, Alfred Hitchcock and Arthur Godfrey!

Today's Suspense episode is The Lonely Road and stars Gregory Peck. He plays a man married to an older woman, a successful concert pianist. He falls in love with their maid (gee, that never happens in radio scripts) and plots to have her kill his wife while he is away, waiting for that deadly deed to occur. Then he has a change of heart and hurries home to save her. Well, so he thought… It’s a good story and Peck performs quite well.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

When an opening scene has him working on a bear trap, it's pretty obvious it will play a role in the story. Falling in love with the maid, sure, we expect that. But, really, a bear trap? Really? Hey, it's Suspense. Stranger things have happened.

Report on the X-915 broadcast on SUSPENSE 11/8/1955, was a repeat performance different cast, of a 1952 CBS audition titled ACTION EIGHTY written by William Froug.

See Goldin:

73216. Action Eighty. March 26, 1952. CBS Pacific net. "Project Sailfish". An audition recording. "Action 80" is a board of directors "supervising tomorrow" (no explanation of the meaning of the name is given). A science fiction story about Commander Richards of the U.S. Navy who is ordered aboard an experimental atomic submarine for her first trial run. There has been an attempt at sabotage already, more are expected. The submarine is captured by an unidentified enemy, and so are the atomic warheads aboard. Ed Begley, Lawrence Dobkin, Dan Cubberly, William Froug (writer, director), Leith Stevens (composer, recorder). 31:34. Audio Condition: Excellent. Complete

I wonder if other CBS auditions were rebroadcast on SUSPENSE?

Today's Suspense episode is Out of Control and stars Brian Donlevy. The story is an adaptation of a Baynard Kendrick novel that features his best-known character, a blind detective named Duncan Maclain. Many of the listeners would have been familiar with the character and the series of novels, as well as two movies with Edward Arnold as Maclain, and therefore looked forward to this radio production. Out of Control was the sixth novel in the Maclain series. Kendrick’s creation of the character was based on his continuing personal experiences with World War I veterans who were blinded in their service.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Maclain helps a woman at a posh resort. She is being blackmailed, but she’s not really a helpless innocent in the scheme; a murder follows. One funny line in the production involves the two German Shepherds that Maclain has. He travels with one for company and for assistance, and the other is his trained police dog which (at about 9:20) he says he reserves for his “dangerous assignments.” That line is an amusing foreshadowing of the adventure radio series for which Brian Donlevy became best known, Dangerous Assignment. That NBC series would not begin for another three years.

Today's Suspense episode is Post Mortem. And... it's a Woolrich story that’s a comedic mystery with Agnes Moorehead as part of the fun. Joe Kearns is great in this one, too!

A woman is surprised to learn from news reporters that she won $150,000 ($2.5 million in US$2023) in a sweepstakes. She says she never entered the contest… but remembered that her deceased husband did… and realizes that the winning ticket might still be in the suit pocket of the recently-buried man. She has already married again to the insurance agent who sold life insurance for the first husband. Her new husband is stridently against having the body exhumed. Why? Hmmmmm... we have our suspicions...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

According to Suspense and Escape blogger Christine Miller, Woolrich biographer Francis M. Nevins was not very pleased with this at all, calling it the “worst of all of Suspense’s Woolrich based plays.” What? This Robert Tallman adaptation is actually very entertaining and engaging. It's one of the series' hidden gems. The end is shocking... well, almost... and that's funny in itself.

Today's Suspense episode is The Name of the Beast. Vincent Price plays an artist (Dorrance) who is obsessed with completing a picture of a murderer, even if it means he has to help cover up the crime to do so. He started the painting, and his model (Elmer, played by Elliott Lewis) agreed to return for another sitting. The next day, that man fails to return and the artist goes looking for him. He finds him in a cheap motel, but he’s covered with blood. It doesn’t matter that he may have killed someone. It’s more important to put first things first, and finish the painting! Oh, and there’s some stolen jewels in the story, too, added for good measure...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Some parts of the story are a bit overdone with some stretching of plausibility, but Price is very good and the story is creepily entertaining. The author is Robert Tallman.

Today's Suspense episode is The Night Reveals and stars Keenan Wynn. This is the third broadcast of the Cornell Woolrich story about a fire inspector who believes his wife is a pyromaniac. The adaptation was by Sigmund Miller.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The first broadcast of this script was in Spring 1943 and has not survived. The second became the second broadcast under Roma sponsorship. The fact that it was already being used again is a sign that William Spier and others thought highly of the script. It was used a fourth time in May 1949.

Its use on this particular date could have been a rehearsal scheduling problem for Wynn, so they switched to a more familiar script for the production crew. Or, the originally announced script, Return Trip, was not ready for broadcast. Return Trip would be delayed for almost three months before it was finally broadcast with Elliott Reid.

Whenever there was a scheduling hiccup, Spier reached into his file cabinet of favorite scripts, and this was one of them.

One of the coast network broadcasts has survived. The AFRS version is from the missing network broadcast for the other coast. There is also a home recording of the surviving network broadcast.