Suspense Upgrades

Today's Suspense episode is The Morrison Affair and stars Madeleine Carroll. Her character marries a physician who is called to wartime service. Her desire for a child is great, but she does not become pregnant in the time before he leaves. A series of events leads to her kidnapping an infant and claiming the boy is theirs. Fake documents are created to support the ruse. When the husband returns he is always suspicious of the child’s paternal origin, believing she had an affair while he was away. When an accident occurs that imperils the child's life, he realizes that the boy is not hers, either!

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Today's Suspense episode is The Big Shot with a fine performance by Burt Lancaster. He's working for some gold miners who are running a scam to keep government officials from learning about their operation. This is a good one where the scammers are scammed and the scammers who scammed them are scammed, too! The original story is by Brett Halliday, the creator of detective Mike Shayne.

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There's a really strange AFRS recording of this episode where they gave it the opening and closing of Inner Sanctum! Details are at the blogpost.

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Today's Suspense episode is Hitch-hike Poker with Gregory Peck. He's a college student hitch-hiker who is offered a ride in a luxurious limousine. Things go downhill from there into a murder plot!

Peck seems too old to be a college student, but campuses had many discharged military who were attending on the GI Bill, which raised the average age of students. Hitch-hiking was more common since only half of US households owned a car. Peck may sound too mature, but he's otherwise very good in the role.

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Today's Suspense episode is Celebration with Robert Young and Virginia Bruce. It starts as a superb script with an innovative approach of two intertwined first person narrative threads. The plot is based on a true story, but all the storytelling and acting is squandered by the likely meddling and interference by Auto-Lite execs or their ad agency to force an implausible happy ending that challenges and strains the common sense practical intelligence of the audience. Listen anyway. The performance and the music are excellent for the first 97% of the production.

The script was used again in 1957 under William N. Robson when Suspense had no sponsor. That production was truer to the real-life story that was the basis of the original script and did not strain listener credulity, but shocks in a way similar to Sorry, Wrong Number.

The blogpost details the 1929 Wisconsin news story that was the basis of the script. That reporter became a successful Hollywood scriptwriter.

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Today's Suspense episode is The Man Who Wanted to be Edward G Robinson, a repeat of the amusing “novelty” episode where Edward G. Robinson gets to play himself and someone who really really wants to be him. That is, his on-screen persona! The story is by Lesley Raddatz who worked in the CBS script department and later had a long career as a prominent broadcast trade magazine journalist and with TV Guide. It seems to be his only radio script.

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Today's Suspense episode is Night Cry with Ray Milland. He plays an older cop with adjustment disorder when it comes to using modern policing. Eliciting confessions with fists and threats, his specialty, is now frowned upon. This time he went too far, killing an innocent suspect. He covers up the misdeed, pretending the man is suddenly “missing” while he continues the investigation. It’s a good story with a surprise ending worth waiting for.

This William L. Stuart novel became the 1950 Otto Preminger noir movie Where the Sidewalk Ends (answer: the gutter and the sewer) starring Dana Andrews. The novel was adapted for Suspense by radio scripting pro John Dunkel.

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With this episode, Harlow Wilcox joins Suspense. It's likely that the Auto-Lite agency wanted to make their ad copy lighter and more playful. He had a lot of practice with that for Fibber McGee and Molly and others. The ads now had an even greater contrast with the dramas, which the agency folks hoped would make them memorable, by Cornelius!

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Today's Suspense episode is A Little Piece of Rope and stars Lucille Ball. Her character is running a scam on men who have unsavory interests... but she soon she runs into a serial strangler who is terrorizing women and is sought by the authorities. How does she report him to the police yet not reveal her own lucrative illegal enterprise? It's one of her best appearances in the series.

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Today's Suspense episode is Give Me Liberty and stars William Powell. He's a thief who won't tell authorities where he hid $3 million in today's US dollars. He thinks doing the jail time is a small price to pay to be rich when he gets out of prison. When being transported to a prison, the train derails. He fixes things at the wreck scene so investigators will think he perished in the accident. He escapes, but he's still in handcuffs... and no matter what he does or whom he meets, he can't get out of the restraints. It's a marvelous performance by Powell that starts calm and confidently, builds into impatience, continues at a slow boil that becomes an eruption of frustration.

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Today's Suspense episode is Death Sentence and stars John Garfield. His character disrupts the business of a big gangster with the imprisonment of a key member of the gang. In retribution, he's told he's got just seven days to live. He flees the city in hopes of avoiding the hit man, and while away he meets an alluring woman... who's also fleeing the same gangster! That's unfortunately convenient for the hit man and his underworld boss.

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This is the first appearance of Raymond Burr on Suspense.

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Today's Suspense episode is Muddy Track and stars Edmond O'Brien. His character takes an easy job of answering the phone and taking bets for a gambling racket. Then he learns the reason he got the job was so his boss can frame him for a murder.

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Today's Suspense episode is Sorry, Wrong Number and stars Agnes Moorehead. THIS IS THE FINAL TIME SWN IS BROADCAST LIVE. Future SWN broadcasts are new pre-recorded performances.

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The 1960 New York broadcast was a replay of the 1957 Hollywood production, with newly recorded "New York" introduction and closing. The 1957 broadcast was the final new performance of SWN. The 1952 performance was the first recorded on tape and the session was used by CBS as a big in-person publicity event... but that recording is still missing.

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Today's Suspense episode is The Screaming Woman by Ray Bradbury and stars Margaret O'Brien. Parents and other adults keep telling a young girl that she's only imagining a woman's screams coming from under the ground. The kid's got spunk... she knows the screams are real and won't give up until she finds the woman... but her grown-up detective instincts and her childhood innocence put her in great danger.

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Today's Suspense episode stars Claude Rains and Vincent Price in The Hands of Mr. Ottermole. The original 1931 Thomas Burke mystery short story was groundbreaking and influential in its time and is considered a classic. Its solution is pretty obvious early on, but what captivated readers was the psychological elements of the story. A serial killer turns out to be in charge of the investigation of his very own deeds. Such plots are much more common in recent decades, meaning modern readers or listeners may not be as impressed. It's a worthwhile listen knowing the story's history.

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John Garfield stars in a fine noir-style story by Lou Lusty and adapted by Les Crutchfield. Garfield plays a detective whose effective work at turning a gangster over to the police, and annoys the thug’s boss. He’s so annoyed that he tells Garfield’s character he has just seven days to live. He flees to Las Vegas in the hope of eluding the boss’ hit man. There, he meets a woman named Helen, and it’s clear they are falling in love… and then he learns that she was the gang leader’s girl, and she’s under a death sentence, too!

Variety had a very positive review in its 1948-11-05 edition

The combination of John Garfield and Lou Lusty’s gripping gangster tale Death Sentence would whet the interest of studio story scouts on the prowl for fresh approaches to dramatic action. It was a tight and punchy script that Lusty fashioned for Garfield, and it came off with all the suspense that the title implies. Not until the last bark of Garfield’s Roscoe was the tension eased for the nail-biters around the home sets... Garfield was in his usual capital form as the pigeon marked for death by the gang boss... Tony Leader's direction was sharp and moving...

Other comments in the review encouraged movie producers to take Lusty’s script and adapt it to the movie screen. It didn’t happen, but it wasn't often that critics offered such an enthusiastic review.

This is the first appearance on Suspense for Raymond Burr. He had a long and successful radio career prior to his landing his famous role in the Perry Mason television series. Burr appeared on Suspense many times, even after the television series began. He did his best to get many of his radio peers into that series, and they can often be seen in supporting and bit parts.

The day after this broadcast, William Spier returned to CBS as producer of Philip Morris Playhouse. Few recordings of his year running that series have survived. He used some prior Suspense scripts, employed some of the freelance Suspense writers, and some scripts of PMP would be used later in Suspense. Many of the Suspense actors and production staff worked on that series. PMP was not renewed after Spier’s season, and he would replace Tony Leader in Fall 1949.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
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THE CAST

JOHN GARFIELD (Tommy Cochran), Gloria Blondell (Helen Ludlow / Operator), Raymond Burr (Lou Cromwell, alias Maxie Dunn), Wally Maher (Brad Cummings / Operator), Ross Forrester (Mugsy / Man), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)

COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone [Ken Harvey] (Hap), Ann Morrison (Mary), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer)

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Today's Suspense episode is a new performance of The Sisters and stars Rosalind Russell. The story is about two strange sisters whose needs and desires compete and intertwine. One lives in the attic; the other is goes out in public and is just plain nefarious. The original 1944 production starred Agnes Moorehead and Ida Lupino, but this pairs Russell with one of radio’s greatest actors, Lurene Tuttle.

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Today's Suspense episode is No Escape with Jimmy Cagney. The script by radio veteran Larry Marcus was designed to entertain but also to enhance the corporate image of Auto-Lite as it delivers a public service announcement. There is a marketing message in commercials and in subtle aspects of the drama that well-maintained vehicles are important to highway safety. That, of course, needs to be combined with attentive and alert driving skills.

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Marcus had to compromise entertainment factors make room for a relevant message without becoming preachy. That message ends up crowding out the dramatic entertainment. Cagney delivers a good performance despite the these issues.

Cagney's character gets an undeserved award for driving safety because he actually caused a tragic and fatal accident before the ceremony. He covers it up, and the lies and evasion he creates gets to him. He hoped his involvement would be attributed to some other cause. His story crumbles and suspicion builds about him. He finally admits his fault.  

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Today's Suspense episode is Back for Christmas, but it's referred to as Holiday Story, perhaps to cover up the behind-the-scenes production chaos. The blogpost has the details of what that chaos was: an announced script by screenwriter Myles Connelly called "Rich Man, Poor Man." It was announced as starring Ronald Colman, who was then replaced by Herbert Marshall. The story was promoted as having a "non-violent storyline" in keeping with the spirit of the modern day Christmas season. The script was never produced. Perhaps rehearsals went poorly, or perhaps it was just an unworkable idea. To quickly fill the gap, Back for Christmas was pulled from the file cabinet and put into broadcast production. It was a familiar story to the cast and staff, and all of the musical bridges were already available. Newspapers were never alerted to the story change. In the opening sequence it was called "a holiday story" to make it seem it wasn't just another repeat performance in the newspaper timetables that might repel listeners and send them elsewhere on the radio dial.

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As best as can be determined, the Connelly script was never produced on radio, or television, for that matter. It still languishes in a script archive, never heard by any audience.

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Today's Suspense episode is Break-Up with William Bendix. The story about police corruption is one of the better cast-against-type performances of the series. Bendix delivers a fine performance. Some may be surprised by it.

The story is by a crime and police reporter, Thomas Walsh, who gave up that career and used his experiences to become a prolific mystery writer in the 1930s. This story was adapted by two radio pros. Joseph Ruscoll's most famous radio script was The Creeper from Molle Mystery Theater. He worked with producer Tony Leader frequently on Murder at Midnight. The second adapter was Walter Brown Newman who was nominated for Oscars for screenplays three different times in three decades.

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