Suspense Upgrades

Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

They are different. Ever so slight differences in line readings.
AFRS 3:58: Why, she's appeared in London...

Network 5:13: She's appeared in London...

lasombra!
you are a star among mere asteroids!

THANKS very much!

Roma ended its sponsorship, and Suspense was essentially cancelled. The show just had to fill out the rest of the calendar with re-used scripts and hope a new sponsor would be found to save it. Otherwise its demise was certain.

The Roma years were broadcast on Thursdays after the 2x run ended. The first broadcast at 8:00 ET (performing at 5:00 PT in the studio) and the second at 9:00 PT on Thursdays, generally the biggest night for listening. Its Thursday time slot was now surrendered to FBI in Peace and War. Suspense took a single broadcast slot on Fridays, one of the lightest nights for radio listening. It was now at 9:30 ET and 6:30 PT, with just one performance time in the studio. No sponsor was forthcoming. But we know the rest... of... the story.

Suspense_1947-12-12_ManWhoCouldn'tLose_wDanDuryea UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Newspaper clipping was posted previously. Without a sponsor, the CBS publicity machine focused its attention on other programs, so the only clippings are timetables that don't always have show titles or lead performer. How quickly it all changed.


In going through reels of 1960s and early 1970s collections, it is interesting how certain recordings disappeared from circulation. These three days have found a west coast broadcast of Thing in the Window, a KQW aircheck of Argyle Album, and an AFRTS recording of Inferno. Sometimes these recordings stopped circulating because better sounding but different versions became available. Other times, the particular collectors who had them stopped trading because they lost interest or passed away or for other reasons.

Most of these 50 year old tapes have not been played in all those decades, and most of the time play smoothly. I've been surprised how few actually squeal and need special attention. The squealing is frustrating, but overall it's been fascinating. In most cases, many of those programs that seem to fall out of circulation for bad sound have been easy to clean up with processing software. So many tapes... so little time...

It's been interesting to see the reel contents listings with many mistakes for dates because there were no logs to refer to, or no dates at all, and mistakes in titles that were perpetuated for years because of bad handwriting! There were no file names permanently attached to an audio file, which can be taken for granted today.

Thanks greybelt
Best regards
Art

Today's episode is the last of the sustained 30 minute format before the hour-long Suspense took to the air. The performances in this period were all repeated scripts. This was last upgraded five years ago; another upgrade was found in July, but was not posted. This one was located five weeks ago replaces that one. It's been busy here in Suspense land!

Suspense_1947-12-26_Too_Little_To_Live_On_wOzzie&Harriet UPGRADE-5.mp3
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Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

There's no need to dig into the 60-minute series deeply here again. There is some new information at the end of this post.

Background on the 60 minute series
In The Suspense Collector's Companion 2020 edition, a chapter about it begins on page 92. (There will not be a 2021 edition because of all the stuff going on Suspense-wise... but there will be a 2022 one).

A previous post
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The SPERDVAC Suspense presentation from last year has the 60-minute portion starting at about the 12 minute mark
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Today's episode is less noisy than the commonly circulation one. Since they did not have original scripts at the beginning of this period, Spier went into the files for the other program he was famous for producing, The Adventures of Sam Spade, and pulled a two-part story from November 24, 1946 and December 1, 1946. The original audience who heard it was likely small. When it was originally produced, the Spade series had not gained the traction or prominence it had at this time. The series was on in Summer 1946 on ABC, and Spier moved it to CBS in October. CBS had bigger audiences than ABC, and post-war 1948 was part of the large pre-television peak audience size that radio was experiencing. It is paradoxical that the audience surge of 1947 and 1948 were the times when Suspense was having sponsor problems and its financial security was in question. Spier owned the Spade show so he could sell to whatever network he could convince to buy it. He shifted it to CBS in Fall 1946. Kandy was the 9th and 10th episodes of the CBS series. Spade enjoyed the radio audience surge, and this was a way to fill in with an hour-long script and get some carry-over interest in the new format of Suspense.

Montgomery has a cameo as Philip Marlowe, the character he played in the 1947 movie Lady in the Lake -- the first and only time the fictional Spade and Marlowe ever met.

Yes, there is a place named Kandy, and there is a tooth!
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Suspense_1948-01-10_TheKandyTooth_wHowardDuff UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Newspaper clippings posted previously.


Schedule problems haunted Suspense once more at this time. It appears that Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones had the Saturday broadcasts of the 60 minute episodes at 8:00pm ET/7:00pm CT/6:00pm MT. CBS Pacific Network, however, had transcribed broadcasts of the Saturday performance on Sundays at 4:30pm PT. That doesn't seem like a time that could draw a sizeable audience. The network was sticking with its Saturday and Sunday primetime lineups that was mainly comedies and music programs, most of which were sponsored.


The count of Suspense broadcasts based on the log and research to this point is...

944 episodes (excludes the 1940 Forecast production, since Forecast was a regular CBS series and the format of that Suspense production was never used again)

1088 performances (east + west + national)

13 missing one-time episodes that still elude us to this day with 14 performances

20 missing episodes that were repeats, with 23 performances

0 missing episodes from the Roma 2x period, with 26 missing performances

Total missing episodes is 33, total missing performances is 63.

Found episodes = 96.5%
Found performances = 94.2%

That is an amazing number of surviving recordings considering the length of the series and the various disruptions it had in its two decades because of management issues, sponsor uncertainty, format changes, change in recording and broadcast technologies, and changes in production locations.

Suspense_1948-01-24_The_Black_Angel_(Eve)_wJuneHavoc UPGRADE-3.mp3
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1948-01-24 Cincinnati OH Enquirer


1948-01-24 Los Angeles CA Evening Citizen News


1948-01-24 Rochester NY Democrat & Chronicle


1948-01-25 Pasadena CA Independent

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Original scripts started in the Suspense hour format near the end of February. This one was adapted from a "William Irish" story, the name Cornell Woolrich's publisher used so as not to flood the market with so many works under his real name. The title was used twice on Suspense: this storyline is a man dreams he commits a murder and realizes the murder was real.

Just 18 months later, with the return of William Spier as producer, the title was used again as his opening production. That storyline has a father seeking revenge for the death of his son by a hit and run driver.

Suspense_1948-03-13_Nightmare_wEddieBracken (diff plot than 49-09-01) UPGRADE-2.mp3
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Without a sponsor to prompt a big CBS publicity effort, clippings are short and sparse.


During the time when Anton Leader was handling Suspense (the end of the hour period and the beginning of the Auto-Lite run), Spier was producing The Clock for ABC and then returned to CBS for a year running Philip Morris Playhouse with a lot of Suspense-like stories. Leader was not well-liked while he was handling Suspense, but I consider his full year with the Auto-Lite sponsor one of the series best. He tried to bring in a different ensemble supporting cast, and he would tell documentarian John Schienfeld decades later that he should have paid more attention to his internal political relationship with CBS executive Guy della-Cioppa. Spier's final year as producer helped groom Suspense director Norman Macdonnell for bigger things. Della-Cioppa would gradually move on to television and produce Red Skelton Show, Lost in Space, and Ironside.

Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

Suspicion, adapted from a Dorothy L. Sayers story, was previously performed on 1942-08-12 and 1944-02-10. But wait... there's more! A conundrum awaits, and I could use your input...

Suspense_1948-04-03_Suspicion_wSamJaffe UPGRADE-2.mp3
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You'll see from the newspaper clips that Boris Karloff(!!!) was supposed to star in this episode... Sam Jaffee was a replacement! No wonder I could not find any clips about Jaffee... The Suspense crew members were makin' it up as they were goin' along, scrambling behind the scenes, or so it seems...

Is this really a repeat? Sayers story was done three times on Suspense, twice in a half-hour version, and then this version. Here's the situation...

Peter Barry, a regular writer for The Shadow, wrote the first adaptation of the Sayers story which was used twice, 1942-08-12 (missing) and 1944-02-10 / 02-14 in the Roma 2x period. The west version is missing. There is an AFRS version.
Our recordings of the 1944 version have not been upgraded for 8 years and remain so.
1944-02-10 east version [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
1944 AFRS version [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
The Roma 2x period used the Thursday broadcast in all of the AFRS versions that have been found so far. Was that the case here? C3DS... you're our only hope!

This hour-long version is a new adaptation by Irving Ravetch. He wrote many scripts for Escape and Suspense and then went on to a highly regarded screenwriting career. His big score was likely Hud with Paul Newman, but he had many other high visibility efforts.

So... is this a repeat?

The core story by Sayers is... BUT... this is a new play. We'll never know if Ravetch used the Barry script and then expanded from there. It's probably more likely that he started from scratch. Is there a nifty phrase that can describe this situation ?

I'm leaning toward saying it's not a repeat because it's a new adaptation. So it's "SSNA": same story, new adaptation. Just what we need... another acronym  Any ideas?

Peter Barry's background...
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this is curious...
I had never seen this Shadow short, more like a TV pilot, written by Barry, from the mid-1950s

Shadow expert and big OTR fan, and one of my mentors, in a sense, when I was a new collector, John Olson weighs in on the program and has more about Barry's career
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Background of Irving Ravetch
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I know Sam Jaffe from Day the Earth Stood Still, others may know him as "Dr. Zorba" on Ben Casey; he had a marvelous and long career.
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It was with this broadcast that Robert Montgomery ended his relationship with CBS. The announced end of the hour-long series was April 10, with the production of Crossfire.

It has been said that Montgomery and Spier got along, and their relationship wasn't the cause of Spier's leaving. Indeed, there were big mutual plans for the new format. Montgomery did not endear himself to CBS executives when he asked for double pay for the weeks he starred and the weeks he produced (if he ever really did produce in a traditional radio production definition). It was supposed to be working toward resolution and Paley strung him along and along in public. All the while he was closing the deal with Auto-Lite, out of view of most everyone, until it started leaking in the press, and that's when Montgomery left.

Suspense hobbled along for a few more weeks until May 15. The series returned in July return of the 30 minute format under Auto-Lite's sponsorship.

Thank goodness.

Thanks greybelt
Best regards
Art

These are two separate broadcasts of the half-hour "Suspicion" episode. The actor playing the doctor makes a blunder in the East Coast version that he doesn't in the AFRS (presumably the West Coast) version:

EC at 17:32:
"Tomorrow or next day, when he’s quite well, mind you, I’d like to have you….have him….come down to the office…"

AFRS at 15:49
"Now, tomorrow or next day, when he’s quite well, mind you, I’d like to have him come to my office…"

Interesting point about the hour-long version and its relationship to the half-hour version; I suppose you'd have to listen to the one right after the other to detect similarities in dialogue. I'm familiar enough with the half-hour version of "The Black Curtain" (done in 1943 and 1944) to recognize the hour-long version as being the identical script with some new scenes added in; likewise with the hour-long "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" adaptation.

THANKS so very much. This is the first time the AFRS recording we have comes from the Monday production.

This is so much appreciated. Glad things are going well in the C3DS lab -- with the new coffeemaker that Santa brought. Some of the night crew still likes their Jolt! cola. They'll be happy to know the vending machine is fixed.

I'll listen to the hour-long Suspicion and see what there may be in overlap.

What? The 60-minute era had a 30-minute program? Yes, to make room for a special program by the Anti-Defamation League.

The star? Bob Bailey's godmother. He used Bainter as his middle name. His showbiz parents were friends with her as they worked in theater and vaudeville on the west coast.

Suspense_1948-05-08_LifeEndsAtMidnight_wFayeBainter (30 min show) UPGRADE.mp3
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Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

(posted quite a few hours early)
This is the last episode of the 60-minute period. It's a "William Irish" story, but they can't fool us, that's Cornell Woolrich. It was a 1944 novel and a 1946 movie. The TCM intro to the movie is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Suspense_1948-05-15_Deadline_At_Dawn_wHWalker-JBeal UPGRADE-4.mp3
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Helen Walker was 28 at this time, with her role as the reporter's wife in Call Northside 777 bringing her some popular recognition. She would retire from acting just 7 years later. She died of cancer at age 47. A 1947 car accident played an unfortunate role in her career. Details are on Wikipedia [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

John Beal's stage and movie career lasted more than 60 years. In the summer 1948 CBS radio season, he played the lead in was in the cast of The Amazing Mr. Tutt. Are there any copies around?
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Critic Magee Adams laments the end of 60-minute Suspense. As collectors, we see Suspense all at once, and can see the Auto-Lite period being quite good, and occasionally impressive, but had not happened yet. He was comparing it to the Roma years, especially the end of the series in 1947, which was not as strong or consistent an offering as the series was in prior years. It is understandable why he might have liked the 60-minute format better. From the distance of 70+ years later, when we know the... rest... of the... story..., our opinions are from a different vantage with different information.

I have an Amazing Mr.Tutt from 1948 but it stars Will Wright.

John Beal is in the cast. 7-26-48 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks lasombra! -- I corrected the text that mentioned his role

Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

This is a missing AFRS version. If I'm recalling correctly, it's from disc collector Pete Sengler. He recently assembled a CBSRMT collection from nice sounding airchecks... took him years. There are three other similar projects underway that I am aware of. It is so intriguing that we have a cohort of younger collectors (rather than yours truly and many of us now older collectors on this thread) who heard CBSRMT live. They enjoyed it so much that it created a hunger for its roots back into our beloved OTR. It has inspired some, like James Scully, to venture out into new productions. He regularly posts brief podcasts [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and is beginning a serialized production "Burning Gotham" which builds on true events of 1835 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Today's program is AFRS of the sole network broadcast as we are out of the period of east-west broadcasts. I have heard rumblings down in C3DS that they are concerned about being downsized or let go. I've done my best to reassure them that there are still 1943-1947 AFRS & network pairs that remain to be dissected, carefully evaluated, and reported. I spoke to them plainly: "would there be a new coffeemaker in the break room or would we have fixed the vending machine for the Jolt! cola if we were closing the department?" There was no answer as they pondered the logic. By the afternoon there was a spring to their step again. Whew!

Suspense_1948-08-12_BewareTheQuietMan_wAnnSouthern AFRS#256 FROM DISC.mp3
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The network version sounds a little better. It has not been updated for more than 7 years. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]



Why were there no more east-west broadcasts? Auto-Lite was paying more for the show than Roma was, so you'd think they would pay for the two broadcasts to get prime time, but there was a technological factor. More stations could record network feeds and broadcast on their stations at a time of their choosing and not relying on the network to provide a choice.

On the production side, tape recording was starting to invade radio, with Bing Crosby as a primary catalyst. It's a fascinating read [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  For Auto-Lite, there was also a growing population of car radios. The radios were big because they had tubes, and often had a separate battery. But what better place to advertise car maintenance products than in your car. One the west coast, the show was on during driving time for many drivers, that is, if they could afford what was a luxury option for their new car.

The best I can figure is that the Lewis productions were the first to use tape, but it may have happened earlier in the Leader season when Joan Crawford refused to appear unless it was pre-recorded for 1949-06-02 The Ten Years. This is why the recording that circulates does not have commercials and is missing other elements. Years ago it had the label "rehearsal" because collectors were not aware of the process that was used (more on that below). Most copies of this performance have brief pauses between broadcast sections, but the real unedited recording has really long gaps in it for commercials and announcing that was broadcast live. No complete recording of the broadcast has ever surfaced.

Robson's claim in his first broadcast (The Doll) in October 1956 that Suspense made the switch to tape with that episode was pure hype to my ears. My understanding of his claim was they stopped using transcription discs for the final recordings with that episode. Okay, fine, I get it. That explains why so many episodes are missing network recordings and more AFRS and airchecks and home recordings start appearing in collections as the only surviving copies -- tape could be erased and recorded over.

The missing Sorry, Wrong Number episode of 1952 had its drama portion recorded on tape, and it was reported as such by the Los Angeles Times when the session was used as a publicity event (the info is on the SWN page of my Suspense research site). But a transcription was likely made of the final broadcast version, and it's likely that someone just took it while no one was looking which is why we don't have it.

Anyway, CBS started to record drama portions separately not long after the Crawford situation, and then have announcers, orchestra, effects, added live at broadcast time because union contracts actually made it cheaper to do it that way.

The use of tape in the Lewis era made it easier to work around guest star schedules. Have you wondered why all of the cast changes I find in the newspapers seem to end around Lewis' production time (if not before!)? Sure, there were still live broadcasts, gradually with lower frequency, but new recording technologies and procedures made it easier for Suspense to accommodate guests... just at a time when the budgets for really big guests were starting to diminish. Strange how things were out of sync in that way...  Eventually, all of Suspense became pre-recorded and the big stars mattered much less.

At this moment, after looking at the scripts I have, and thinking more carefully about Robson's carefully parsed words and and their intent that open The Doll, I think 1956-10-16 Prophecy of Bertha Abbott of the week before was the very last live broadcast of Suspense.

But my suspicion is that The Doll was not the first fully pre-recorded episode, but only the first fully taped program to air, and the one meant to be the beginning of the new production process and policy. I suspect there was a pre-recorded Suspense sometime in the Lewis-Macdonnell-Ellis years that has that honor. I only suspect, I don't know. Anyone have an insight about this?


Speaking of the research site, it has been updated, and now includes the "Suspense-a-Day" list of dates of all of the broadcasts. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Thanks for all the history greybelt. This is really interesting.