Suspense Upgrades

Today in Suspense history...
December 16
1943 Wet Saturday
1948 No Escape
1954 Pretty Girl
1956 Eyewitness (Howard Duff's return to Suspense)

Today is an East-West pair where the broadcast geographies are certain. This episode was posted recently, but these are upgrades.
Suspense_1947-02-13_The_Thirteenth_Sound_wAgnesMoorehead EC (mentionsFBIiP&W@end) UPGRADE.mp3
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Suspense_1947-02-13_The_Thirteenth_Sound_wAgnesMoorehead WC (noFBIiP&W mention@end) UPGRADE.mp3
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Newspaper clippings for this episode were posted earlier.


This news item notes the change in broadcast time for the series since the Roma sponsorship ended.

This was a curious item I stumbled into and I don't remember how. The broadcast for December 5, 1947 was The Clock and the Rope. But this clipping says For Love or Murder by John Shaw. That script would not be performed until December 8, 1949, and star Mickey Rooney! (What a coincidence -- two former child stars picked for the lead role in this script). I can find no other newspaper incidence of For Love or Murder being announced for this date with Cooper.


The newspaper could not have picked this information out of thin air, they had to have had a press release to base their news insert on. It seems that there was a change of script and they held onto it for two whole years. I wonder if this was a Spier selected script in 1947 and it got lost in the shuffle with Roma cancellation, the 60 minute show, Spier leaving, Leader taking over, and then getting back into the queue with Spier's return.

And perhaps this reason...
After the Roma sponsorship was ended, may CBS executives were acting (and leaking to the press) as if the show was canceled. The show had big budget cuts... the separate East and West broadcasts ended and the show was shifted to a different night as sponsored programs got the preferred audience times (FBI in Peace and War was the beneficiary of the Suspense shift to Friday). All of the episodes became repeats. They had contracts to honor with its guest stars, but by repeating scripts, they could save money. It was usually the case that the second use of a script was at a lower rate. The final Roma show, One Hundred in the Dark, had no star and used the Suspense regular supporting cast. The next four weeks were all repeats: Pit and the Pendulum, Clock and the Rope, Man Who Couldn't Lose, and Too Little to Live On.

And speaking of John Shaw...
Two years ago, he turned 100 in a nursing home in Rhode Island. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
The family posted a video of his party on Facebook. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
He passed away not long after, as noted on his Facebook page that his family maintained [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
He prepared his own obituary in advance almost 15 years before -- it's an interesting read as it mentions his radio and TV credits -- it's in the photos section, as is a telegram that he received about one of his scripts being accepted for Philip Morris Playhouse... at the time when Spier was producing that series. Shaw had written Statement of Employee Henry Wilson and Murder by an Expert for Suspense when led by Spier, and then did three scripts that I could identify through newspapers listings for PMP. Spier probably liked Shaw's work and likely held onto the script if he felt that Cooper might have not been right for the role in 1947. Indeed, a mystery...

Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

Today in Suspense history...
December 17
1951 The Case History of a Gambler
1961 Yuletide Miracle

Suspense_1947-12-12_ManWhoCouldn'tLose_wDanDuryea UPGRADE-2.mp3
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Thanks greybelt
Best regards
Art

There were no broadcasts of Suspense on this date in its 20-year history.

Today is an upgrade of the first installment of the short-lived hour-long version of the series. Listen at the end where they detail their hopes for this new format and the authors they will feature.
Suspense_1948-01-03_BlackCurtain_wRobertMontgomery UPGRADE-2.mp3
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Newspaper clippings were posted previously.
As we know, the entire idea of the hour format fell apart rather quickly. Spier was having problems with CBS and left. It took "forever" to get a fresh script (until late February) and the stories lost the fast-paced tension that made Suspense so popular.

Thanks greybelt

Best regards
Art

Today in Suspense history...
December 19
1946 The Thing in the Window
1947 Wet Saturday

Suspense_1948-07-22_DeepIntoDarkness_wDFairbanksJr UPGRADE-3.mp3
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PERSONAL NOTE: Recent challenging medical events with my 92-yr old mother have led to the nursing home to advise us that we should spend some last times with her. Somehow she went from hours to live to 20 months later. This is the reason for this early post. Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers for her and our family, but please especially pray for all of the caretakers of those in nursing homes who take care of our elderly in very thankless tasks every day.

Thank you!

Thanks, Greybelt.

Best wishes to you greybelt and your family. Treasure those precious moments you will have with your mother.

Thanks greybelt.

It's never an easy time to say goodbye. We've 3 parents and never had a chance to say goodbye. They were all sudden.

Best regards
Art

The entire Cobalt Community will band together to offer support, love and prayers for you and your family, my friend. There may be more caring people somewhere congregating on the web, but I surely have not come across them.

When there is prayer in numbers, the blessings are sevenfold.
All our personal best wishes.
Jeff

Cherish every moment with your Mom....Prayers....

This day in Suspense history...
December 20
1945 Double Entry
1955 The Cave
1959 A Korean Christmas Carol

At about 1m30s into the recording, Paul Frees says that episode is "the famous short story, The Yellow Wallpaper." This story was not "famous" in the way entertaining short stories are "famous." It was, instead, a shocking and controversial one when it was published in 1892. Before we get to the history of this story, here are the links to the recording and the newspaper clippings...
Suspense_1948-07-29_YellowWallpaper_wAgnesMoorehead UPGRADE-2.mp3
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And now... the rest... of the story...

After the publication of The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892, its writer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, became one of the foremost feminist and socialist writers of that period. The Yellow Wallpaper took on the fledgling field of psychology and rattled many of the assumptions behind its early treatments. By the time the short story found its way onto Suspense, more than 50 years after its publication, general memory its social influence had waned. This was the only time the story was presented in US radio's golden age. It would not be on radio again until the 1980s in non-US productions Vanishing Point (CBC) and Fear on Four (BBC). In all of the times it aired, it was presented as a horror story, not as a piece that questioned early treatments of psychological disorders or as commentary about issues related to women in society. The episode was adapted by Silvia Richards, who was active in these issues in the 1940s and 1950s, and likely one the few writers for radio who was familiar with Gilman's work and influence. Silvia was the wife of Suspense writer and editor Robert L. Richards until their divorce in the late 1940s. Both became blacklisted writers in the Red Channels turbulence. In her Suspense work, Silvia worked mainly on adaptations, such as The Bluebeard Of Belloc, Nobody Loves Me, The Earth Is Made Of Glass, The Screaming Woman, Catch Me If You Can, The One Millionth Joe, Betrayal In Vienna, The Track Of The Cat, The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Green and Gold String, and Escape's Something For Nothing. Her work was presented on other series, too. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  

The Wikipedia page that gives background and context to the original short story is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The complete text of the original story...
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The SparkNotes summary
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(back in my high school days, we had "Monarch Notes" and "Cliff Notes"! SparkNotes is the Barnes & Noble version)

Almost 20 years after its publication, the story was still controversial. Gilman explained her reasons for composing the story in a short piece in the magazine she edited...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" (1913)
This article originally appeared in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner.

       Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

       Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and--begging my pardon--had I been there?

       Now the story of the story is this:

       For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.

       I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.

       Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of power.

       Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.

       The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate--so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.

       But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.

       It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

A current-day analysis of the story is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And now you know... the rest... of the story...


Mom continued her decline the past two days and is being kept as comfortable as possible. She did open her eyes somewhat, though very briefly, when I said I was headed home, so we stayed a little longer. Her time is near but on a timetable that chooses itself. Many staff came by to see her today and it seemed she knew they were there. The recent quick turn of events is something we've been prepared for but lives are lived and you can't always get the dual logistics to match up. Our son, her only grandchild, is away. We connected with Greybelt the Younger while he was at an airport in Estonia on his way to Latvia in his young annual tradition of vacation visiting some Christmas markets every year before joining us on Christmas Eve. Even if he changed his travel it would be unlikely he could get back in time before she passes. At the suggestion of the head nurse for that floor, who had done this with other families, we left my iPhone on speaker for him and left the room so he could have a private goodbye. Sometimes we hate the new technologies and the habits it seems to create, but this is clearly one of the happy benefits where someone on minutes notice sitting in an airport boarding area using free wifi and a smartphone can participate in a suddenly unfolding family drama that affects them deeply. There are families there dealing with much more stressful situations for longer times, and also residents who have outlived their families, so we understand that there is nothing special about our circumstance and that others face these situations every day, and that this is our turn to do so. Thanks so much for your prayers, but Mom is okay at this stage as it all follows along the way it is playing out for her. Say them in gratitude for the staff and all who care for the elderly in skilled nursing everywhere who labor unrecognized in the background in thankless tasks for a greater cause.

Will keep you posted.

My prayers and best wishes for you during this difficult time greybelt!

Thanks greybelt.

Best regards

Art

This day in Suspense history...
December 21
1944 The Brighton Strangler
1950 Christmas for Carole
1953 'Twas The Night Before Christmas
1958 Out for Christmas

Suspense_1948-08-05_AnHonestMan_wCharlesLaughton UPGRADE-2.mp3
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Newspaper clippings were posted earlier in the thread.


My mother passed away at 1:40am ET USA time Saturday, December 21, 2019.
Eternal rest grant to her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
God bless all who took care of her and all of you for your prayers and encouragement.

Postings will be sporadic over the next few days, but there will be some just to get the mind away from the crush of logistics. Thank you again to all.

Thanks greybelt.
Sorry to hear about your Mom, but at least there is no more suffering.
Best regards

Art

One's passing is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Godspeed to her spirit and continued prayers of support to you and your family, my friend.

Jeff

I am very sorry to hear this. I lost my mother decades ago now, and  it is not something you ever truly get over. God's blessing to you. - Tom

I'm very sorry to hear about your mother. May she rest in peace with God.

So sorry about your loss. Hoping you're surrounded by friends and family who loved her.

Sorry to hear of your loss Joe.....

This day in Suspense history...
December 22
1942 Two Sharp Knives
1949 Double Entry
1952 Arctic Rescue
1957 Dog Star


Suspense_1948-10-07_Night_Cry_wRayMilland UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Thanks greybelt.

Best regards

Art