Suspense Upgrades

Today's Suspense episode is Too Little to Live On and stars Ozzie and Harriet as two horrible people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. It's the second time this script was used on Suspense, and it's the better of the two productions. It's Ozzie and Harriet for gosh sakes! It's casting against type at its best!

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Today's Suspense episode is The Black Curtain, an expanded production for the 60-minute format. The history, philosophy, and the stormy behind-the-scenes maneuverings of the new format are highlighted in the blogposts of these next 2+ weeks.

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The production team was unprepared for the new format, and rushed some favorite scripts to be re-adapted to it. They had really big plans to duplicate the success of Lux as an hour show. They did not have an original new script until mid-February. Bill Paley had already concluded negotiations with Auto-Lite for them to sign a few weeks later. Bill Spier quit in disgust and jumped to ABC. Montgomery was disgruntled over the manner he was paid. The time slot the new show had was horrible, and on the west coast they ran it at 4:30pm on Sundays as a transcribed show... an even worse time slot than the rest of the country. Suspense is a managerial soap opera... read the blogposts for how it all unfolds... and unravels...

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

Today's Suspense episode is The Kandy Tooth, a two-part Sam Spade offering from 14 months earlier that is presented in Suspense's hour long format. It's a sequel to The Maltese Falcon. Duff is there as Spade and host Robert Montgomery plays Philip Marlowe in a phone call. Montgomery had portrayed Marlowe in a movie, making this the only time that Spade and Marlowe met. The original Spade broadcasts are still missing, making this broadcast popular among Spade fans. This is another indication of the scrambling to find material for the new format. At the end of the broadcast, William Spier explains the plans for the hour productions with great optimism for its future. About four weeks later, he leaves the series and CBS. He was likely angered over how the plans he described at the end of this broadcast were quickly undermined.

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Today's Suspense episode is Love's Lovely Counterfeit, and stars James Cagney. It's a repeat script, now expanded, that originally starred Bogie. Cagney is very good. It might be the best of the hour-long Suspense as it has greater depth and better context, showing that the 30-minute show suffered when it tried to squeeze the story into the 24 minutes or so that it allowed. This longer format tells the story better without resorting to fill in the extra time with throwaway scenes. It's worth the listen, but being the longer format, you have to set aside the time to really take it in to keep all the plot elements at top of mind as they work themselves out.

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It's interesting that Spier relied on his Sam Spade writers, in this case Jo Eisinger (using the pseudonym “Jason James”), to work on building some of these repeated stories out. In this case, Eisinger was working with the original Robert Richards adaptation, that added characters, scenes, and plot developments that Richards likely wished he could explore in the earlier broadcast but could not.

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Today's Suspense episode stars June Havoc in The Black Angel, the second time this Cornell Woolrich story was presented on the series. Originally broadcast in 1944 as "Eve," this is a fuller and better-developed production of the story, with more scenes and characters and a more satisfying and better ending. That means more attentive listening is required, and it's worth it.

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The story was adapted this second time by "Sebastian Moriarty," aka William Spier. Havoc and Spier would be married the next day after months of courtship. It was the third marriage for each (despite what newspapers reported at the time) and would last until Spier's passing in 1973.

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Today's Suspense episode is the 1948 production of Donovan's Brain. If you ever wondered if the staging could stand alone without Welles' commanding presence, the answer is "yes." A crew of Suspense regulars, led by John McIntire, offer a fine performance. This 1948 recording has richer sound than the 1944 ones, and allowing further appreciation of the role music played in this particular story and the overall success of Suspense.

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The two 1944 half-hour scripts were joined for one continuous broadcast, with almost no revision of the core drama. This was convenient this week because of the chaos behind the scenes. William Spier left the series. The breaking point was likely when he found out that CBS and Auto-Lite had shaken hands on a deal to return to the half-hour format in July, all done behind his back. The rug was pulled and the hour format was instantly doomed. Spier headed elsewhere (twice!... he went on his honeymoon with June Havoc, and then to ABC when they returned to Hollywood). The bottom line: the 60 minute Suspense was only five weeks old, and had not even broadcast its first original script! Oh, the yelling. Oh, the choice words. Oh, the betrayal. Oh, the threats. Oh, there's a script idea there somewhere.

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Today's Suspense episode is the 1948 hour-long staging of The Lodger. It stars Robert Montgomery. The supporting cast does its usual best. If you enjoy the original classic story by Marie Belloc-Lowndes, you might like this production. If you like the faster-moving Suspense, go to the 1944 production, also with Montgomery. Links to these and the Forecast production from 1940 are at the blogpost.

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The background stories for this episode, of course. It's produced by William N. Robson, his only Suspense producing credit until he emerges from the CBS exile in October 1956. We know what happened to him at CBS just three or so years after this very broadcast, which makes it odd to hear his credit for this episode. Anton Leader starts his producer gig next week. Variety reported on the Auto-Lite deal and the return to 30 minutes a few days before the broadcast. Robert Montgomery was in a money spat with CBS over shows that he both hosted and acted in, and that he should be paid big bucks, separately, for each. What's that Harry Chapin song? Oh yeah, "Dance Band on the Titanic."

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Today's Suspense episode is Beyond Reason, the first original story of the hour-long format. It stars Ruth Warrick and Robert Ryan. His sleep-inducing performance actually made listening to this bad production interesting. Could he maintain a luckluster effort for the entire hour? He was successful. A 30 minute production might not have improved it, either. If Spier was still there, would this script be rejected? Or would he have been able to save it? Why couldn't this be one of the missing Suspense episodes?

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The blogpost for The Black Angel was deactivated by Google Blogger bots for "community guidelines" violation. As usual, the supposed violation was never specifically identified. The email notice mentioned a violation of "spam policy." I suspect it was caused by links for the prior broadcast recordings and the "Eve" blogpost. It was resubmitted for human review and was reinstated six minutes later. If you recall, I was all set for "X-Ray Camera" to get yanked for just describing the plotline. It was never flagged. Still waiting for FB to reinstate "Death at Live Oak," which is unlikely. Blogger and FB competitor MeWe did not block that one. So strange. Just when you think you've got it all figured out.

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

Today's Suspense episode is The House by the River, another swing and a miss script that the Suspense ensemble cast members do their best to save but cannot. It's adapted from the 1921 novel of British author A. P. Herbert and adapted by Irving Ravetch. The website oldtimeradioreview.com, which has some excellent episode reviews and musings of Suspense, X Minus One, and other series, suggests just skipping the episode and watching the 1950 Fritz Lang film noir movie instead. Its screenplay was by Mel Dinelli. The film is available for viewing at YouTube and the Internet Archive.

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Herbert had a fascinating career, serving in WW1 and WW2, as a member of Parliament, and also as a writer for the famous humor magazine Punch in the early 1900s!

The next hour-long broadcast is much better. Its story is best known as a Bogie movie, released just a couple of years later.

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Today's Suspense episode is In a Lonely Place, a popular 1947 novel that became a 1950 Humphrey Bogart film. It stars Robert Montgomery. It is faithful to the novel, while the film changed to a less ominous ending. The story is a bit predictable and fits into a familiar pattern for Suspense. We know that Montgomery’s maladjusted character will turn out to be the bad guy. The presentation is good, worth a listen, but you won’t be swept away with excitement and want to listen again. There are moments when it’s clearly filling time. But it's much better than the last two broadcasts.

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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.

Today's Suspense episode is Nightmare with Eddie Bracken. This title is the first time it was used, each for different stories. It's done well, worth sticking through the "padding" for the format for a very good Cornell Woolrich story. The backstory is even better. It was adapted by Alfred Palca, one of the Hollywood Blacklist writers... and producer Anton M. Leader's brother-in-law. One of Palca's movies was refused distribution if his name was in the credits. Instead, he listed Leader as producer and another relative as writer. Full details are at the blogpost!

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The Woolrich story became two different films. The first was 1947 Fear in the Night, an early appearance of DeForest Kelley. Nine years later, it was released as Nightmare with EGR and Kevin McCarthy.

Today's Suspense episode is actually two re-presentations of past shows, Wet Saturday and August Heat. Wet Saturday was presented just three months before with Boris Karloff! (It's still a missing episode). This is another indication of the lack of preparation for the hour-long series. Now that the hour-long format's days are coming to a close, what incentive was there to keep finding new scripts? Might as well repeat two half hour stories. But wait... there are broadcasts still worth noting, but just not yet...

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These are good stories, with August Heat the better of the two. Enjoy!

Today's Suspense episode is Night Must Fall and stars Robert Montgomery. This was the story used in the 1937 film that raised Montgomery's profile in Hollywood and led an Oscar nomination. Five of the cast members in this production were in the original 1937 movie that starred him.

Montgomery plays a drifter who accepts a job working in the home of a wealthy family. The body of a young woman is found, he is a suspect in the investigation  for her disappearance and murder.

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Montgomery's producer relationship with Suspense has just one more episode to go.

Today's Suspense episode is Suspicion, a Dorothy L. Sayers story about a cook who may be a poisoner. This is the third production of the story on Suspense. The script was adapted by Irving Ravetch who may have referenced one of the earlier scripts by Peter Barry to build the story out to the hour format.

This particular broadcast may have been notable for its originally planned star, Boris Karloff. Sam Jaffe replaced him when Karloff was not available.  Science fiction fans know him for his supporting role in Day the Earth Stood Still and television fans know him as “Dr. Zorba” in the popular medical series Ben Casey.

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This episode was the final with Montgomery as producer. He would not appear on Suspense again until 1949. The next episode, produced solely by Anton Leader, might be the best production of the hour long format.