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Suspense Upgrades

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Post by greybelt 10/15/2023, 10:38 am

Today's Suspense episode is Murder by the Book with legendary film actress Gloria Swanson. She plays a mystery writer who is asked to investigate the death of her doctor. Swanson is not good at the microphone, so be warned. This is the last of the Summer 1947 New York productions as Spier and others return to Hollywood after the broadcasts.

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The next episode is missing, Beyond Good and Evil, starring Vincent Price. Perhaps an AFRS recording can be found one day.

Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

THE BOLD VENTURE KICKSTARTER

On Friday I did a podcast with Carl Amari and Doug Hopkinson about it. The recording is about 20 minutes. We also go into Carl's history as a collector and fan and how he sold the Radio Spirits business in 1998 (25 years ago!). He talks about what happened since and how he was able to get the rights to the Ziv recordings so they could finally be transferred and made available.  

It is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and it is also at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Carl's reputation in the hobby was hurt when the new owners of Radio Spirits started sending cease and desist orders to collectors. As he explains in the podcast, he had sold the business, but even years later the new owners (MediaBay) kept using his image and name as their "founder." I found a 2001 Los Angeles Times article that quotes Carl -- but it wasn't him they spoke to -- he wasn't even there and had no position in the company. Some of the supposed quotes are so deadly to his collector reputation that even I can remember them, and I was still on OTR hiatus at the time! He never pursued a retraction, and MediaBay had no interest in doing so - they got their gunslinger bad guy quote, and that was what they wanted in hopes of making collectors shudder. One funny item in the podcast is that when Carl was in college on a 10 watt station he played a Mel Blanc's Fix-It Shop on the air and ended up getting a cease-and-desist letter from Mel's son, Noel Blanc! Carl has said that he has never sent a cease-and-desist letter to anyone, including for all of the Twilight Zone episodes he produced that are in wide circulation among collectors. He considers collectors to be fans, just like he is a fan, and it's better to cultivate the relationship rather than irritating or poisoning it. In the podcast, Carl explains how his show When Radio Was began. I thought that was quite surprising because it was partially initiated by CBS!

NOTE: It is funny that Carl sold that business so long ago that when you look at the date, Google was barely a year old at that time, and the digital audio revolution had not really started. That MediaBay ownership of RS is long gone, their stock collapsed, they were de-listed from the NASDAQ, and the shambles of a business that they left behind was purchased by Mark Tepper, who is also a fan. I seem to remember that when MediaBay fell apart, Mark was able to buy RS from them for pennies on the dollar. In my conversations with Mark, he has the same sentiments as Carl. I think Mark's legal hand may have been forced a decade or so ago by Conde Nast in relation to The Shadow license they had. Sometimes rights owners force licensees to report on "violations" or they can lose their licenses.

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Post by greybelt 10/16/2023, 6:04 am

Today's Suspense episode is Murder by an Expert with Lynn Bari. It is her only Suspense appearance as a dancer who tries to frame her brother-in-law for a crime that she thinks will solve her marital problems. Bari is very good in her appearance, and Hans Conried plays the soon-to-be-deceased husband.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

Successful weekend with tape transfers. Two "missing" AFRS Suspense versions, and an AFRS The Whistler that was derived from the HFC series. And then.... 27 full track Theater Five episodes that sound great. These projects are hard work of many but are yielding nice results!

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Post by bojim1 10/17/2023, 3:37 am

Joe....enjoyed your interview with Carl....Thanks much!

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Post by greybelt 10/17/2023, 6:37 am

Today's Suspense episode is Mortmain and stars Jerome Cowan in his only series appearance. He plays a jealous lawyer who frames his partner for a capital crime so he can steal his career and his romantic interest. It turns out to be a dumb idea, of course. Cowan was best known as the attorney prosecuting Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street and as Sam Spade's partner Miles Archer in Maltese Falcon. But his career was broader and longer than generally remembered.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Facebook has never restored the post about the Robert Mitchum broadcast. (Social site and FB alternative MeWe left it perfectly intact, but we are stuck with FB and its dense, haphazard, and arbitrary actions and lack of feedback just because it's FB and where "everybody is"). These Suspense posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

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Post by greybelt 10/18/2023, 7:49 am

Today's Suspense episode is Quiet Desperation with Walter Abel in his only Suspense appearance. It's not the best script, but Abel's performance elevates it to be almost entertaining. Abel's character is incompetent and despicable, played very well, especially in descriptive monologues, and we almost forget the implausibility of the plotline in the process. Well, almost.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

The new computer arrived yesterday and setup was shorter than usual. One thing that helps is being able to remove the prior computer's hard drive and put it in a casing that allows you to operate it as an external USB drive. This makes it easier to transfer any files you need. The enclosure was just $11! The brand was Sabrent.

Yesterday the research led into another rabbit hole about the author of Smiley, tomorrow's post. I keep trying to get ahead on posts and build up a backlog again. Failing... once more.... Scriptwriter Charles Glenn was an activist in the in-plain-sight Communist activities in Hollywood and was a reporter in their newspapers People's World and The Daily Worker. It's not known how much radio writing he did beyond this Suspense script and a Saint script mentioned in RadioGoldindex, but it is likely he was one of those writers whose work was uncredited and has not survived. He was not listed in Red Channels but was mentioned by a few persons in various early 1950s investigatory committees, including Silvia Richards. She was compelled to testify because of family matters. She was concerned about her ex-husband's refusal to testify and how that might affect custody agreements of their children. Anyone mentioning Glenn in their testimony was not taking a risk because he was so well known and out front for all to see. It was the mentioning of others who were not ideologues or only had a passing curiosity that they briefly explored then abandoned, suddenly finding themselves in an undertow that negatively affected their careers and their craft, that created made the period so difficult and tragic. (By the time Silvia testified, she was naming people who had already been named.)

All of the investigations would occur about five years after Smiley and the Roma Suspense heyday.  But you can sense it brewing just by doing a newspaper search on Charles Glenn in the 1940s. How strange: Who's in the press gallery reporting on these 1950s hearings in a newspaper? Charles Glenn, reporter for People's World! The swirl of post-WW2 crosscurrents of political philosophies is playing out in the background while writers and actors are producing some of their finest work... and some of that is on Suspense! As that famous curse says: "may you live in interesting times."

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Post by lasombra 10/18/2023, 9:08 am

Joe, the link goes to yesterday's show, 1947-07-31 Mortmain.

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Post by greybelt 10/19/2023, 9:36 am

Today's Suspense episode is Smiley with Donald O'Connor, cast against type, which makes his character all the more disturbing. He's a stalker, and his obsessions make you feel creepy, too. The author of the script is Charles Glenn, whose curious backstory is discussed in the blogpost.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

The Charles Glenn information is presented in the blogpost, but I did not post anything substantially different than I did at yesterday's forum post. It reads better now that it's been edited.

The recommended copy of Smiley in the blogpost is a nice sound upgrade compared to what has been typically around.

Just 14 more episodes in the Roma era to go... then I think all this work gets easier.

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Post by greybelt 10/20/2023, 6:59 am

Today's Suspense episode is Murder Aboard the Alphabet with John Lund. He's good in this role, but Joe Kearns steals the show as a ship's captain. His obsessive compulsive disorder is overbearing as he arranges his things in particular order, has the crew perform their tasks in alphabetical order... and he may be the one who is eliminating crew members by their last names, starting with "A"!

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

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Research and interview links re Suspense, Whistler, Big Story, Casey, and others [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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Post by greybelt 10/21/2023, 7:14 am

Today's Suspense episode is Double Ugly with Lloyd Nolan. He plays an unattractive man, bullied when he was a child, who finds a woman willing to marry him. Then he balks at every attempt she makes to lead a normal life... and he is driven to murder. The script that was originally broadcast on Columbia Workshop almost six years earlier.

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THANKS again to all who go directly to the blogpost to get the detailed background about the episode (since FB bots has blocked posts with accurate but frank details). Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.


Catching up! I can sense the finish line of the Roma era getting closer. As I type this note I'm almost done with Man Who Liked Dickens. Six more to go...

Ran into some research challenges for a couple of writers. The more common the name is, the tougher it is to discern if it's the right person. You have to check birth dates or education dates and anything else. Then you figure out the person would have been five years old when their script was on Suspense, obviously impossible, and then it's back to the drawing board.

Yesterday I worked on The Story of Markham's Death. It has a funny scene at about the Mystery Writers of America. Their Edgar Award is give for best mysteries; until 1960 they had a category for radio drama, and the awardees are at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Listen carefully at about about the 9:15 mark of Markham's. In the background. you can hear an Edgar Award being given to Sam Spade for best radio drama with William Spier’s name mentioned. That series won an Edgar a few months prior to this broadcast. It's a funny scene, funnier when you see the list of winners and that Suspense would win one for 1947. That was awarded in 1948 after Spier left the series!

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Post by greybelt 10/22/2023, 5:59 am

Today's Suspense episode is a new production of The Argyle Album. The 1945 Cy Endfield script starred Robert Taylor. This broadcast stars Edmond O’Brien who has a stronger presence to the role. A year after this broadcast, the story became a movie, The Argyle Secrets. O'Brien's characterization is more authoritative than Taylor's and is my preferred performance.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

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Research and interview links re Suspense, Whistler, Big Story, Casey, and others [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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Post by greybelt 10/23/2023, 7:51 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Twist with Michael O'Shea. It's an entertaining story about a comedy writing team that achieved great success. They're not friends, but they're not individually skilled enough to make it alone. Their collaboration is about to end when the gag writer partner says he is leaving to get married and start a new life. O'Shea is paired with Sidney Miller, and they're great together.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

So very close... writing the last three Roma episode summaries today. Yesterday finished up Subway and was disappointed by it. The script just doesn't seem to fit the series. X-Ray Camera would never be allowed today. The story amounts to the planning of a terrorist-like act, using a gullible, innocent person to blow up a targeted person and taking whatever innocent lives happen to be nearby in a subway when it is between stations. How sensitivities have changed... Roma was interfering in storylines for supposed offenses that were far less, but this was okay. It shows how the context of the times can be so important in understanding these storylines.

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Post by greybelt 10/24/2023, 7:44 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Visitor with Donald O’Connor, just a month after his appearance in Smiley. This is the second performance of The Visitor, originally broadcast in May 1944 with Eddie Bracken. A young man who returns to his home town after he had been presumed dead. Most are delighted, but others believe he is an impostor who is up to no good. O'Connor is good, and worth the listen.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

The Roma period is all done. One Hundred in the Dark will be posted on November 2.

Then we get into the brief period of sustained half-hour broadcasts. The east and west broadcasts end. While that's going on the behind-the-scenes drama of creating a 60 minute version of the series begins.

For the 41 weeks of the Roma 2x period, we have 19 east-west pairs
For the 2 weeks of August 1943 and the 164 Roma 1x period, we have 103 east-west pairs
This includes when AFRS supplies one of the missing network recordings
Thanks so much to C3DS for the heroic effort to reveal the AFRS hidden gems!

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Post by greybelt 10/25/2023, 6:43 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Blue Hour with movie star and radio veteran (!) Claire Trevor. The former co-star of Big Town is back on Suspense in an often amusing B-movie style script with gangsters, a reporter (Wally Maher), a nightclub owner (Hans Conried) and a diamond.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

The Great Horrell has been updated with the recently found AFRS recording
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Post by greybelt 10/26/2023, 6:57 am

Today's Suspense episode stars Kirk Douglas in The Story of Markham's Death. (Don't confuse it with Mr Markham, Antique Dealer!). Kirk Douglas plays an author with severe writers block. To cure it, he takes a vacation in post-WW2 Britain for inspiration. He finds a hidden, unpublished and innovative Poe manuscript. He takes it home, plagiarizes it, and wins a Mystery Writers of America award... the Edgar Award... named after Poe! And then things take a dangerous turn...

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Listen after the 9 minute mark and in the background you can hear the Sam Spade series winning an Edgar Award at the Mystery Writers dinner... and hear William Spier's name... which it did! Suspense won an Edgar the following year.

Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

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Post by greybelt 10/27/2023, 6:48 am

Today's Suspense episode stars Richard Ney in The Man Who Liked Dickens. (If you've heard this on Escape, the Suspense version has a different ending!) This story, and one of these broadcasts, was an influence of Stephen King in his writing of the novel Misery. Ney would eventually leave acting and become a highly regarded financial advisor and author.

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Thanks again to all who go directly to the blogpost. But sometimes that doesn't prevent bots from them down for supposed community guidelines of Google's Blogger service. These violations are never identified. Overnight, the blogpost for The Visitor was suspended. That blogpost is so innocuous! I changed a couple of words and it was restored within a few minutes. That's this time. There's an upcoming one for the episode X-Ray Camera which has a plotline that would be considered very gruesome today. I'm convinced it would not be allowed on the air today. I'm not sure what will happen with that one, so I will be posting that with a backup link for that day. The FB post for Death at Live Oak has never been restored, but is available as originally written at the social media service MeWe. FB has never specifically identified what was claimed to be objectionable.

Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

Ah, fun with the bots... so annoying.

Yesterday I started to write up the hour-long Suspense. The first production, The Black Curtain was good. I realized that because I've heard the story before, that I kept wanting the story to move faster. The new adaptation added characters and dialogue but there's an impatience that's newly in the mix. As a writer, if you had a complex story for Suspense you had to distill it down to key scenes and key people, and the story had to move. For most episodes, it was the pace of the action and the development that engaged the listener, heightened by the music, enriched by the narration. We know the experiment disintegrated pretty quickly, and Bill Paley helped it fall apart. It is chronologically tragic that the series was so impaired it could not participate in 1948's radio listenership peak.

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Post by greybelt 10/28/2023, 6:47 am

Today's Suspense episode is Self Defense and stars Marsha Hunt. She's a manipulative woman, tired of being married just for the money. While he's away for an extended business trip, you know she'll be "making plans." It's a Whistler-like story made more so by Gerald Mohr in one of his few Suspense appearances.

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Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

Tonight, Saturday 10/28/2023 at 9pm Eastern time, the SPERDVAC virtual convention has an hour with me and Keith Scott. Attendance is free. They are using Zoom webinar for the event. Log in early at SPERDVAC.com as it seems Zoom has an update to their software or you may need to have it set up. About 10 minutes early should work in all cases.

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Post by greybelt 10/29/2023, 8:00 am

Today's Suspense episode is The X-Ray Camera and stars Dennis O'Keefe. Its storyline would be considered insensitive in today's times and would likely be sanitized or rejected. That aside, the overall story and production would not be one of series' shining moments, anyway.

Detailed description of the storyline makes it possible that the blogpost will be blocked at some point. Google's Blogger, like FB, blocks posts based on key words, not context. At least Blogger has what seems to be a predictable review process and once-blocked items are restored once a review is requested.
THE REGULAR BLOGPOST LINK
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Post by greybelt 10/30/2023, 9:44 am

Today's Suspense episode is Subway and stars June Havoc. It's a somewhat different story, with the author being a multi-time winner of script contests for the radio series about a home-town physician, Dr. Christian. Havoc's character has envy in her heart when she meets a former classmate whose career has been on the rise through entitlement without having to go through the hard knocks of life. That envy changes to evil as she plots a terrible act... all while together for only minutes on a subway ride...

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Post by greybelt 10/30/2023, 10:39 am

The interview at the SPERDVAC Virtual Convention is at
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for the next 7 days.
I am waiting for details about how it will be made available to others, so please limit to our group for now.
We had a marvelous time!

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Post by greybelt 10/31/2023, 5:01 am

Today's Suspense episode is Dream Song and stars "radio's bad boy," Henry Morgan. In April 1947, Morgan won a Peabody Award for his comedy program in the same round of awards that recognized Suspense for its productions. Morgan was one for radio's most creative and difficult personalities, skilled in satire, and annoying to broadcast and sponsor executives.

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Morgan was known to make fun of sponsors, raise their ire, and when they realized he also raised their sales, they would back off... for a while. Many of us boomers remember him more for his appearances on prime time game shows in the 1960s such as I've Got a Secret.

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With the help of the archivist at the Westport Country Playhouse and Karl Schadow, we have figured out the inside jokes in the names June Havoc used in Riabouchinska (Armina Fargay) and One Hundred in the Dark (Theresa Marshall).

Armina Marshall was a director at the Theatre Guild in New York City and was a founder of the Westport Country Playhouse.

The “Theresa” part of the name is likely from Theresa Helburn, a cofounder, stage manager, playwright, producer for the Theatre Guild.

Still working on the "Fargay" or "Fargey."

Finished writing up the 60 minute Donovan's Brain. Incredible amount of chaos going on behind the scenes. The production was quite good with McIntire in the lead. If you want to avoid the "Orson Welles effect" and get the straight underlying story with really good radio actors, the 1948 version is really good. The sound quality is much better than the 1944 Welles productions, so you can appreciate the role the music plays when the audio is so much richer. There was no re-write of the DB scripts. It was already an hour long play, unlike some of the other prior stories that were being re-adapted for the hour shows.

As I go through this era, there are many reasons why the hour shows failed, aside from the double-dealing of CBS head Bill Paley and the awful time slot (8pm Saturday Eastern time, transcribed Sunday broadcast for much of the west coast, including Los Angeles, at 4:30pm Pacific time).

1) The pace is different. The 30 minute Suspense moved at a pace that engaged listener attention. There were no frills to the broadcasts in terms of plotlines. They got to the point and immersed you in drama, music, and effects.
2) The hour-long shows may have told and set up stories better, but there was more character development that was not always necessary, more scenes that did not necessarily move the story, and more characters, which made it easier to lose track of the story line. Radio relied on voice differences for characters, unlike theater and television where there were always visual cues as to different characters. More radio characters, more actors. More time, more need for plot affirmation to help listeners keep track, and they didn't always get it.

Technically, some of these hour productions are superb. Practically, they take a while to get to the point, and when they do get there, you may not remember how they got there.

That said, the hour-long Cagney Love's Lovely Counterfeit is much better than the half hour Bogie one. The ending of The Black Angel is different, fuller and makes more sense, but it sure took a long time for it to develop.

There are signs throughout that they wanted Suspense to have the same features as Lux. They never realized how different the shows are. No one listened to Lux to get a thrill from the stories. Sure, there were some productions that could do that. They listened to hear the stars, recall a movie they saw, or decide to see a movie if it made the rounds of the theaters again. There were breaks in the production to catch a breath. Suspense was always a more demanding listen than Lux, and in the 60 minute format, you wear the listeners out. Lux was a lighter listen, and a chance to fantasize about being in Hollywood surrounded by all the glamorous stars.

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Post by greybelt 11/1/2023, 5:02 am

Today's Suspense episode is Ray Bradbury's Riabouschinska. The script sat in a file drawer since it was bought for Suspense in April 1946. When Roma cancelled their renewal, William Spier started to empty the script backlog. This is another case of Kay Thompson pushing for a script to be produced, and a promising young talent to promote. Mel Dinelli adapted the story.

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Guest star June Havoc uses pseudonym "Armina Fargay," Truman Bradley misspeaks the title as "Riaboushinskee." Roma was also cancelling big guests to save money: this week was supposed to be Lucille Ball in a reprise of Dime a Dance!

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Post by greybelt 11/2/2023, 2:52 pm

Today's Suspense episode is the last of the Roma series, One Hundred in the Dark. Why did they pick it? Is it a "lucky" episode? Find out why! The episode has a big cast of our favorite radio pros.

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June Havoc uses pseudonym "Theresa Marshall" in this episode. Learn about the inside reference she's making... and there's an image of the cast's signatures on the AFRA broadcast report!

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Post by greybelt 11/3/2023, 6:18 am

Today's Suspense episode is Pit and the Pendulum with Jose Ferrer. The script that was originally produced in New York before Suspense became a big Hollywood franchise is produced again. Like that first time, it stars a well-known Broadway actor. Ferrer's Hollywood successes were about to begin. This is a sustained, low budget, post-Roma presentation that still benefits from the music and production techniques and flourishes developed during the Roma era. It's well done. The Roma era ended the east-west broadcasts, and Suspense switched time and day slots. The fine support cast is still there. Suspense is cancelled... but there are rumors of a different kind of return...

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Post by greybelt 11/4/2023, 6:58 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Clock and the Rope, and stars Jackie Cooper, again. In this odd period Suspense is both cancelled and the hour-long version is awaiting approvals, Spier is using previous scripts he believed were superior and also saving new scripts for a series return. This script was first performed in May 1946. Good story... and Cooper is good in it.

The "bumped" script was For Love or Murder which would not be aired until TWO YEARS later when Spier was back as producer.

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Post by greybelt 11/5/2023, 7:00 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Man Who Couldn't Lose and it stars "the heel with sex appeal," Dan Duryea. He is superb in the part, combining the amusing and despicable characterization in his demeanor, voice, and speech patterns perfectly. He's such a hate-able character that you can’t stop listening to make certain he gets the justice he earns and deserves in this outlandish plot and entertaining Emile Tepperman story.

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Tepperman was a prolific radio scripter, with numerous scripts for Inner Sanctum.

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