Suspense Upgrades

I have not even had a chance to present the question to my "OTR voice expert" yet, but Keith Scott has weighed in. Keith is a voice actor but also an impressionist, and he sent this note on FB to me:

I'm inclined to agree with your Cobalt colleague. I listened to two shows, one with Ted Osborne and another with Reynold Osborn and they sound highly similar. I'm mainly used to his voice from the DR. KILDARE shows. I hope some confirmation about his name change surfaces at some point but at this point I'd be happy to concur. And in some Radio Artist casting books Ted also spelled Osborn without the final "e."

The Bucks County play seems like it was just a bunch of supporting actors from New York who just enjoyed working together so much they got involved with this play to enjoy each others' company doing something they loved. Every NY actor I interviewed in the 1970s said they loved radio but they really loved theater whenever they could do it. Radio acting and theatrical production together kept them sharp and gave them an edge in auditions.

Will keep you posted!

Today's recording is an upgrade of a file posted 2+ years ago. The spelling has also been corrected - it's one word, based on all the sources I have found, even if "mantrap" looks funny.

Suspense_1961-11-26_Mantrap_wDonMcLaughlin NETWORK UPGRADE-7.mp3
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An AFRS recording was posted about 8 years ago
Suspense_1961-11-26_Mantrap_wDonMcLaughlin AFRTS#857 FROM DISC.mp3
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This script was originally written for Inner Sanctum, 1950-12-18, Murder by Consent

A newspaper clipping was posted previously; these are new...

Thanks greybelt
Best regards

Art

Today's recording was last updated 3+ years ago.

Suspense_1961-12-03_LuckOfTheTigerEye_wLJanney&JLorring NETWORK UPGRADE-6.mp3
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8+ years ago an AFRS recording became available.
Suspense_1961-12-03_LuckOfTheTigerEye_wLJanney&JLorring AFRTS#858 FROM DISC.mp3
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No newspaper clippings can be found.


The Hehn OTR Fanzines page is up!! These newsletters were the lifeline for collecting in those early days. Some of these have not been available before. One of the curiosities was the Indiana Recording Club which covered more than OTR but just home recording in general.
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Thanks greybelt

Best regards
Art

Today's episode includes "Reynold Osborn" whom we believe more strongly is really Ted Osborne.

Suspense_1961-12-31_TheOldMan_wLJanney&ROsbourn UPGRADE-2.mp3
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No newspaper clippings can be found.


The Bucks County Playhouse production mentioned previously as including Reynold Obsorn, When the Beer Goes National, whom we believe is Ted, also included Paul McGrath of Inner Sanctum. More details are in these clippings.

The co-star, Frances Reid, was also on radio, in Portia Faces Life. Just three years later would be in the brand new soap opera Days of Our Lives, and have that role for 42 years! Here's a list of longest-running actors in soap opera roles -- many from radio's golden age.
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Today's episode upgrades an AFRS recording. Readick is back behind the microphone after his sudden exit for medical issues from YTJD in June 1961. Readick is on Suspense regularly to the end.

Suspense_1962-01-28_PleaseBelieveMe_wJLorring&RReadick AFRS UPGRADE.mp3
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A reprocessed network version was posted 2+ years ago
Suspense_1962-01-28_PleaseBelieveMe_wJLorring&RReadick UPGRADE PROCFINAL.mp3
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Newspaper clippings posted previously; this is new...

Got this note from radio researcher (and voice expert) Karl Schadow

After listening to all of the episodes that were provided, Reynold Osborn IS Ted Osborne. Reason he used that name is unknown... Have seen his signature as Theodore Osborn with surname spelled w/o the 'e' Moreover, somewhere I saw his name listed as Theodore R. Osborn. Will try to locate this reference.

If Karl sends any documentation I will send it along...

Yesterday I wrote to Bucks County Playhouse... hopefully they have some historical document in the dark, dusty archives...

was there a suspense show called the hand from 1960

For most of the downloads on Degoo posted this week, on 2 different browsers, the message "Unable to download file. Please try again." pops up.

Soorhands....If you have Firefox you can download it using Download Helper. I've gotten the same message

Some notes:

Firefox is at version 90.0.2. The ".2" fixed some quirky things that were happening and came out quickly. I regularly test Degoo on Firefox and Brave (Chromium is its base). When I was testing the security suite that DuckDuckGo was pushing, my download experiences turned bad -- pCloud pages wouldn't even render so I couldn't access my files! So be sure to check if there have been any changes in setting that some software makes when updating when these things happen. Degoo was a little buggy when it came to market but I have found it more reliable these past months.

The Hand was written by Mel Dinelli as a movie script. He sold it and it was never made. He adapted it for occasional girlfriend (when she was between marriages) Joan Crawford for Suspense. It was promoted for her upcoming performance on the series in 1949...


But what's written on the script cover?
"Unused - sponsor objections"


The story is more like an Inner Sanctum script with obsession over a severed hand, with the complications of mental illness and drug addiction. Auto-Lite didn't like that, and the big car crash that sets the story in motion probably did not go over well either. So they delayed her appearance for a week and pulled a prior Dinelli script out of the files for her appearance, redoing A Tale of Two Sisters from 1945 with a new title, The Ten Years.

Copies of the script floated around the hobby for years and a recreation was done in 2019.
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Mike Wheeler, who did the recreation was educated as a lawyer and found the courtroom ending to be implausible, so he changed it. We discuss it at our interview [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

There was an earlier production in the 1960s that I have been trying to get more details about. I had seen it in catalogs that were really old, but not in current collections. I believe it originated in San Francisco with a group of broadcast pros, likely to include Dave Amaral and possibly KCBS announcer Frank Knight, and others. They were working on broadcast recreations of Sam Spade and also Suspense; those are still around the hobby. But again, I'm not sure if The Hand was their work. The recording that has resurfaced this past year or so, from these older collections, was not the best. It's been cleaned up for clarity. I am not sure it ever made it to the air, but here it is...
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Today's recording is one of those clipped open versions from this era that sounds better than the complete recording. This is where I remind people of the benefit of being a "completist" in that you keep all the versions of recordings... so you never have to face the difficult choices and trade-offs involved in keeping only one  

Suspense_1962-02-18_OldBoyfriend_wEEric&JJulian (cl open no commls).mp3
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About 4 years ago this WROW version was posted
Suspense_1962-02-18_OldBoyfriend_wEEric&JJulian UPGRADE WROW
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Originally scheduled for August 20, 1961!

Newspaper clippings were posted previously for this broadcast date; this is new...


Tomorrow's post will be the last for about a week as we take a welcome break for some minor league baseball and some days in the mountains... When the posts begin again, there are still some late Suspense episodes to be posted. That won't take many days... then we go back to the beginning of the series and work our way through new upgrades once more... some of which have not had sound improvements for many many years.

If you're going to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention,
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I will get there on Friday afternoon. At 7pm there is a SPERDVAC presentation I will be doing with film expert Bob Tevis about what's going on and what's ahead for the organization in its new initiatives and new member benefits. And we'll have a video of a presentation of one of Bob's scripts that starred MANC guest Tony Dow. Yes, Wally and "the Beav" are the big guests for the convention.
Then on the Saturday morning, always focused on OTR presentations and recreations, there will be a presentation on Frank Lovejoy's career by Don Ramlow, Karl Schadow, and yours truly. It has been fascinating working with them on it.
The convention hotel has been sold out for months but there are still rooms at nearby ones.

Thanks greybelt

Best regards

Art

Yeah, I'm having the same issues with Degoo on both Chrome and Safari.

soorhands wrote:For most of the downloads on Degoo posted this week, on 2 different browsers, the message "Unable to download file. Please try again." pops up.

I have submitted a support request to Degoo. Will keep you posted. hubiC is working fine, so that is the best choice for now. The files are playing in Degoo, which is strange....

This is my last post as we head for a brief vacation, back at the end of the week.

This first episode is a new AFRTS version of Bill Robson's dig at the caricature of Joe McCarthy as an alcoholic on a rampage of crazy ideas. It only seems like a father calling around to see where his daughter is, tying up the phone as he pours his next drink to get him through his panic and his crazy ideas, and it turns out it was all in his head. It was not until decades later with the release of the Venona papers and other items from the KGB that the extent of the activity was starting to be understood (this might be very brief but interesting background [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] The blacklist information on the Suspense research page may be interesting in regards to Robson's plight. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  I checked there this morning and the YouTube link I had to some of the Army-McCarthy hearings is now dead, but I'm sure there is plenty that can be found on YouTube.

Where Nobody Ever Quits / Night on Red Mountain was a personal story of Robson's CBS blacklisting despite a long record of patriotic broadcasts like Man Behind the Gun and many others. Date Night takes aim at the easy target of Joe McCarthy, even though Robson's problems started a few years before in the House investigations and the publication of Red Channels.

The most fascinating document that gives insight into Robson's ordeal is his letter to Murrow. I made a poster of it that I bring for people to see at events [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  It's an incredible resource. The Suspense blacklist page has some background on Robson's statements and references to people in the letter. Things got better for Robson when Paley sent Daniel O'Shea (whom Elliott Lewis called "the vice president of treason") packing. Paley walked down both sides of the street in those times... it was he and Murrow who wrote the CBS loyalty test that was used to placate scared advertisers. It was O'Shea who had some kind of particular dislike for Robson, and we may never know what it was. But once O'Shea was gone, Robson was back.

But even without all this Scare-era background of those very confusing times, Date Night is a good story just on its basics. My rough count is that nine new scripts by Robson were done after the move back to New York. I think this is the best of those nine. Robson could not get his digs in unless it was a good script. And it was so subtle, that the number of people who actually knew what he was doing may have been limited to just him alone for a while! But we figured it out just 55+ years later....

Suspense_1962-02-25_Date_Night_wRosemaryRice AFRTS#914.mp3
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A network version was posted about 9 years ago
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Newspaper clippings posted previously; these are new...


I was allowed to listen to a tape of a 1970s private discussion with Robson about his times... and he said he was glad to have gone through it all because he would never have been appointed to head Voice of America under JFK if he hadn't. He had reconciled it all as part of the journey.


Suspense_1962-04-01_YouDiedLastNight_wSOrtega&RReadick UPGRADE-4.mp3
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Newspaper clippings posted previously; this is new...



Suspense_1962-04-08_LetThereBeLight_wIvorFrancis UPGRADE-3.mp3
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Ivor Francis' daughter, Genie Francis, became famous on the ABC TV soap opera, General Hospital. Hard to believe she's turning 60. It seems like Luke and Laura got married just yesterday...

Newspaper clippings posted previously; this is new...

ONE(!) Degoo link worked! Date Night AFRTS.

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