Suspense Upgrades

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

These two recordings are the last of the Suspense upgrades I have at this time. I am working on more, of course, and will let some accumulate before I start posting again. In the meantime, I will be posting Suspense history and curiosities as I stumble into them. Sometime next week I will start posting YTJD and Whistler items (still not sure which one will be first).

Suspense_1959-05-03_The_Amateur_wJackieCooper UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Suspense_1959-07-19_AnOccurrenceAtOwlCreekBridge_wVincentPrice (network no commls clipped end) UPGRADE.mp3
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Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanking you for your hard work & generosity somehow seems to fall short for all your contributions......

It's something I love and sharing it makes it all the more fun and special

About 35 years of listening to OTR and I still know almost nothing. The background really adds depth to the story. Thanks for passing along what ever you can. And thanks for another fantastic round of sharing.

The other evening I caught up with John C. Alsedek who produces the revival of Suspense. Our conversation is about an hour and the topics are many, including the importance of CBSRMT in his desire to create radio dramas, the show's production, the joy of working with actors and their schedules, and the other programs that influence his efforts (if you guessed Night Gallery and Twilight Zone, you're right!)

You can find the shows at
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The discussion can be downloaded in two formats
32kps mp3 (small file, 14mb)
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OR
128kps mp3 (large file, 54mb, much better sound)
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John will be a panelist with me and collector and Suspense researcher Don Ramlow at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention on its Saturday morning schedule.
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I look forward to listening....Thanks!

Seriously, no kidding: Sorry, Wrong Number, the OPERA!!
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buy it at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Sorry, Wrong Number

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I have some bad news...
That Sorry, Wrong Number opera was the second, not the first attempt at turning the play into a high-brow event.

Lucille Fletcher wrote one, too, in the late 1970s with composer Jerome Moross! He became a close friend of hers while she was married to composer Bernard Herrmann. This is a description of a 1982 performance from the New York Times:

"Jerome Moross's ''Sorry, Wrong Number'' also had a focused subject and tone, but its overlong libretto by Lucille Fletcher and Mr. Moross's single-minded cinematic suspense music made Stephanie Low earnestly strain at her vocal lines; the final murder was a bit of a relief."

Low was an accomplished opera singer of the time. So now we learn that the opera I posted earlier was not SWN's first!

That comment "the final murder was a bit of a relief" is the way a lot of people feel after listening to SWN, and honestly, that's part of the craft of Fletcher's work. Listeners become impatient with Mrs. Stevenson's antics in the story. That conflicted feeling of it all being over, but realizing it is a murder, is why the story has such great disturbing personal and guilt-inducing effect on the listener. As a radio play, it works and is why the play was so striking in its time. As an opera, it gets tedious, and does not create that chilling effect.

Sadly, this was Moross' final work after decades of success composing for ballet, theater, motion pictures, and original classical works.

But there's good news...
There are no recordings available of this effort and somehow I don't feel really bad about saying that.

And I thought the disco version of Romeo & Juliet was a crime against humanity.

Please no... don't give anybody any ideas about a disco version of "Dead Ernest"

The "Suspense Collector's Companion - 2019 Edition" is up at Amazon!
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If you're going to MANC get your copy there and I'll sign it!

Description:
“Radio’s outstanding theater of thrills,” Suspense, off the air for nearly sixty years, still fascinates and delights fans of radio’s golden age. Dr. Joe Webb, long-time collector of old radio’s programs, offers research and perspective about the series, a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of its sponsors, 1948’s failed attempt at hour-long programs, and numerous entertaining facts about the series. Get new insight into the fourteen episodes that elude collectors to this day, including one of the strangest presentations that was likely a “roast” of producer William Spier that starred two actors… who didn’t exist! Discover quirky details of its most famous presentation, Sorry, Wrong Number, that became a movie, and an opera... twice! Read about Suspense scripts adapted into movies, authors who penned superb radio scripts… and then disappeared… how a Suspense episode inspired a serial killer, and much, much more. The Suspense Collector’s Companion is a reference and entertaining guide to the different eras of “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills” that fans, new and veteran collectors, will enjoy.

THANK YOU to everyone at Cobalt who has "suffered" with me as I do my "real-time" research here and for your scrutiny and suggestions and your encouragement. This is better than last year's book, expanded, with more detail where it matters.

Update to book news:
The Kindle version has been released and is just a buck when purchased with the hard copy.

If you will be @ MANC [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the Suspense panel with researcher Don Ramlow, new Suspense producer John C. Alsedek and yours truly will be at 10am Saturday. The audio will be recorded. It would be great to get some pictures of fellow Cobaltians at the event. I get in on late Friday morning.

Suspense updates news:
As soon as Whistler updates are done in late September or early October, I'll move on to YTJD which I think take us to November. Then I'll be able to start with more Suspense upgrades. There are about 15 upgrades so far, but more are on the way. Finally got a decent sounding copy of the 1945 Sorry, Wrong Number.

This is interesting:
Actor John Garfield got caught up in the whole un-American activities committees, and it is claimed it ruined his career. It was claimed it took such a toll on his life he died at age 39 from a heart attack (it may be just a claim as he was diagnosed with a "ruptured heart muscle" five years earlier). He was scheduled to do an episode of Suspense, called Concerto for Killer, and a rehearsal was recorded on 1950-10-21. The show never aired because CBS executives did not want Garfield associated with the show. Garfield died in May 1952, and about 2 weeks later, on 1952-06-09 Elliott Lewis did Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses, the same script, likely as a quiet homage to Garfield, and possibly to snub his nose at CBS execs who quashed the original plans for the 1950 broadcast. The broadcast replaced another performance of Sorry, Wrong Number, which was withheld to be the first broadcast of the Fall 1952 season.
OR.... it could have been that Moorehead was not available, and Lewis grabbed the unproduced script out of his back pocket to fill in.

I'm trying to track this down more authoritatively. If anyone has any insights into this it would be greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, I will not be at MANC because of the hurricane and how it will affect flights. Yesterday, John C Alsedek had to cancel because of some medical obligations for someone he assists that came up unexpectedly. But there will still be news from him @ MANC, and Don Ramlow will do the panel solo. I'm working on the Powerpoint slides for the panel.

A note about the book: If anyone ordered "The Missing Suspense Episodes" from Amazon in the last month, that's not the right book. Please send me a private message. The correct book to order is "The Suspense Collector's Companion."

greybelt wrote:Thanks all... his near-obsessive-compulsive interests are focused elsewhere but he has helped his old man many times in the OTR efforts.

Today's episode has no newspaper mentions.

Suspense_1961-10-15_Seeds_Of_Disaster_wBernardGrant UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Thank youo for all these upgrades.  Somehow I had missed this thread.

Phil

Got them all up to date.

In going through this thread I saw reference to an earlier 40 pages, said the links were still good.  So I'm off on the "Great Lost 40 Search".

Thank you and everybody have a "great Suspenseful day".
Phil

Don Ramlow covered for me @ the MANC event and had a very good presentation.
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Thanks to one of the attendees I was able to listen in!
The link is for a 32kps MP3 file -- some parts may require close listening. At one point, someone asked a question that said there was an error in my book about Frank Lovejoy. The questioner misinterpreted the text -- as soon as I heard it I started texting John Abbott (YTJD researcher) who was in the audience and John helped clarify. THAT was hilarious!! Imagine how far we have come where someone can stream a feed of a presentation using a smartphone, over the Internet, and I could listen, and then text a different person at the originating location. The streaming service automatically created a recording which we obviously now have. Marvelous stuff!

Don's Suspense book is done and he is working out details with how it will be published. It will be over 700 pages -- and he actually had to leave a lot of things out! He started on it 20 years ago, and in the process met many of the actors and writers of the series. He has some very interesting things to say about them and his many conversations about their careers and Suspense.

He covered "my" topic about the progress in research about the missing single-performance episodes. We made great strides this year, much of it having to do with Don's work in getting scripts. So it was "his" effort behind "my" topic for many of the items.


John Alsedek could not attend, but the news from him was that the missing episode "The Hangman Won't Wait" has been performed for his Suspense revival series and will be posted any day -- I'll link when it's available.

In the end, Don didn't need me or John and it was a very informative presentation with some really good audience questions.

AFRS recordings are important to the preservation of Suspense. This online spreadsheet workbook documents the known AFRS/AFRTS numbers of episodes of the series.
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The second page of the workbook takes an educated guess at the numbers of some of the missing episodes. There are times when AFRS numbers were not consecutive and were downright flaky. The numbers for the missing episodes had enough existing episodes with verified numbers that could be interpolated with high confidence.

Has the probability of the "Misfortune in Pearls" script being performed on 1/17/56 as the episode "The End of the String" been addressed? The synopsis for both episodes in Martin Grams' book is identical.

Thanks for the lead -- let me check it out -- I have the script

THIS IS WHY I LOVE COBALT!!

Yes indeed it is the same script!!

Chasedad -- please send me a PM

Nothing pleases me more than for my chapter on "Missing Episodes" to go out of date! Thanks again Chasedad!

Here is the updated chart -- down to 13 single performance missing programs!