Suspense Upgrades

by greybelt 11/20/2023, 9:34 am

Today's Suspense episode is Crossfire, an adaptation of the 1947 movie of the same name. It had an Oscar nomination for best picture and supporting actor nominations for Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame. This broadcast includes movie cast members Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, and Sam Levene. If you think this sounds like a Lux offering that focused on big Hollywood stars, the topic of the Crossfire, was likely "too heavy" or too gritty for that series. The original strategic plan for the hour-long Suspense included productions of the serious kind that the lighter entertainment and celebrity-driven Lux would likely exclude. This is a fine production with a compelling story. The screen actors do very well in their radio performance and are convincing. The production values with the superior Suspense music add much to the emotion and flow of the story. It is likely the best production of the hour-long period. The blogpost has important details about this production and the book that inspired it.
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Tomorrow's post of The Search is very important for the documentation of the series.

I have turned off automatic blogposts after tomorrow's episode until we get some more clarity about our son's medical situation. That will come today after some heart imaging. We have one of those grizzled ICU nurses who has been at Emory for the last 20 years. He's optimistic that from the uptake of the antibiotic and other tests he may not need surgical intervention. He's an interesting guy. He was in a failed family business where a member was taking money off the top, so he left. He went from job to job for a little while and was in a motorcycle accident. It was from the way he was cared for and the skills of the people who got him back to health that he got interested in becoming a nurse himself. He works 5 12 hour shifts a week and loves it.

by greybelt 11/20/2023, 4:36 pm

Big updates to the Black Friday cloud storage deals
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More details about IceDrive, Filen.io, Degoo and others. The pCloud deals are the same as originally reported. All deals seem to be available now.

by greybelt 11/21/2023, 8:14 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Search. This production was superior to most all of the hour-long shows. The story involves a stranded couple stuck in the company of an over-the-hill and alcoholic cowboy film star during a blizzard. The more drunk he gets, the greater the possibility of a violent outburst toward them. BUT... many collectors have avoided listening to this episode because the first 15 minutes are missing. Classic radio broadcaster Bobb Lynes has recorded a summary of the story's opening scenes, from the original script. It includes the key events and details needed to enjoy and understand the plotline. The blogpost also has a text summary of the opening scenes. Read the background and get access to the recordings at...

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The audio link at the blogpost provides access to three recordings. First, the recording of the surviving 45 minutes of the broadcast. Second, the separate narration by Mr. Lynes. Third, a combined recording of the narration followed by the surviving portion of the broadcast. We thank him for the contribution of his voice to this effort to restore and document the history of Suspense.

PLEASE NOTE: Daily posts of the Suspense episodes and commentary will not be possible in these next few weeks, but we will post when we can.

If you want to download the introduction to The Search as a 32kps mp3 file without going to The Internet Archive page, use this:
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I'll keep that file up for a couple of weeks or so.

Filen.io is a very good cloud service. If you join and get a free 10GB account, I get 10GB added to my account. I use it for these projects. Use this link [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

As mentioned above, the Suspense blogposts will be on hiatus as we travel and deal with all things related to our son's continuing stay in ICU. His neurological condition is improving daily and he's about to be handed off to the cardiology team. Their imaging has been postponed to after US Thanksgiving to Friday or Monday. Thanks to everyone who has expressed their support of us and him.

by bojim1 11/22/2023, 4:39 am

Thanks much for this one!

by wich2 11/30/2023, 10:17 am

Prayers continue here, Joe.

Blessed Holidays, all.

- Craig

by greybelt 12/4/2023, 8:02 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Blind Spot and stars Edmond O'Brien. He's an author-turned-bodyguard who fails to protect his employer, a famous pollster, from being killed. Police think it’s suicide. O’Brien’s character thinks it’s murder and the perpetrator might be right in front of him.

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It's good to be back! Posts will resume a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog. There will be another brief hiatus in six weeks or so.

This Thursday: the Auto-Lite series begins!

An update on our son:
As of Saturday, 12/2 HE IS HOME with his wife, after 16 days in ICU, and 14 days after cranial surgery for the aneurysm. He is in marvelous shape and sharp as always. If there is vision loss it is to the widest area of his peripheral vision, and that may clear up with time.

He will return in the next 6-12 weeks for a heart valve replacement because of the damage caused by the bacterial infection from the dental cleaning . The aneurysm was the most urgent fix. Now he has to get his stamina back and keep healing from the surgery. This will give him the best circumstance for the cardiac procedure.

The aneurysm was caused by a bacterium we all are in contact with, because it is in our mouths. There are times when it can get into the bloodstream. Under certain conditions, it attacks the brain and the heart. They know for certain it was a dental cleaning on 10/31 where this happened. His symptoms were attributed to the flu or a flu-like infection. That was obviously incorrect. In a matter of days he ended up in ICU at Emory U Hospital.

Through digital imaging, outside and inside the operating room, doctors were able to map where the aneurysm was, create a silver-dollar-size hole in the skull, and it was dead center in that opening. It was stunning that they could do this. Not long ago they'd be looking at blurry x-rays and guessing.

We had a chat about what will be done next time he goes to a dentist and what others should do. For him, like others, he will need antibiotics before and after every procedure. But for everyone else, it seems that the way to prevent this is to rinse 2x with Listerine before you sit in the chair and then 2x after you stand up from the chair for each dental procedure. That's what he's picked up from chatting with infectious disease specialists who have passed through his door. Anyone can get this from gingivitis sufferers who neglect their dental care to obsessive compulsive flossers. It is very rare, but that is not much comfort when it obviously happened to him. There could have been precautions. It could have been an error. It could have just been wrong place wrong time and all of that "perfect storm" stuff.

Next up on his medical calendar is the dealing with the heart valve. Imaging shows that the bacteria damaged the valve and it is perforated, which is irreversible. Because he is so relatively young for that surgery, the options are not so clear yet, but they are positive and optimistic. We hear about pig valves being used, but that valve only lasts about 10 years and has to be replaced each time. This is why that procedure is done most always on older patients. At 33 that does not fit his need. He will get a mechanical device, and there are choices of device and procedure that need to be narrowed down. He needs something durable and longer-lasting.

There is time to ponder and examine these things over the next six to twelve weeks in myriad doctor appointments. Until then, we just are grateful he is still with us and an unbelievable and marvelous result so far. And it's Advent and Christmas, with a different and perhaps richer sense about it than other years had.

I need OTR to keep the mind busy. The blogposts pick up on what should be a daily basis until we get close to the next surgical date, and they will be put back on hiatus at that time. More reels arrived while we were away. I can get back to karate class where two of the young students I often work with were promoted while I was away. Looking forward to seeing them and helping them on their next steps.

by wich2 12/4/2023, 11:06 am

Dear Joe -

Re: REAL LIFE ~ Prayers continue from here. Thanks for the updates by FB Message.

Re: RADIO ~ Hope it will be a balm for you. I'm being trolled now, on the OTRR page, because I always stand up for New Fans and Better Access. I'll never understand folks who want to take the fun out of our little playground - and not to expand it, beyond the aging Old Heads.

(GANG ~ Sorry I haven't been here much lately; juggling lots. Interested folks can usually find me on FB.)

Bless your Holidays, all.
- Craig

by bojim1 12/5/2023, 2:49 am

Craig....I've seen the nonsense on FB. I don't know why these people are even in the group.Hang in there!

by wich2 12/5/2023, 6:17 am

Jim, that's much appreciated.

Well, I try not to be malicious... But it's hard sometimes, not to "speak Truth to Power." Because some folks don't seem to really love this stuff, or to be in it for the joy? I've been blessed to know too many Vets of the medium, who thanked us "young folks" for keeping the torch aloft for them - and they weren't about elitism, or Gollum-ness.

Merry, merry!

by greybelt 12/5/2023, 8:05 am

Today's Suspense episode is Life Ends at Midnight. Fay Bainter returns in this story about a no-good son who schemes to collect an innocent person’s life insurance. Details about that broadcast are at:

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This was the only 30-minute broadcast during the hour-long era. The other 30 minutes were used for a public service program.

Yesterday's post, The Blind Spot, had a bad link. It's been fixed in the FB post or you can go directly at the blog.

Tomorrow's post is a Cornell Woolrich story that worked well in the hour format.

It's good to be back! Posts will be daily and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog. There will be another hiatus in six weeks or so.

Thursday: the Auto-Lite series begins!

Still recovering from the days in Atlanta. Took karate class last night, first in three weeks. Let's say I'm a little sore.

There were a few disturbing posts on FB while the stuff with our son was playing out. One was about how the Suspense episodes were "over-processed." So I asked the innocent question "which ones?" I had the discussion offline. The person listed one episode. That one was never posted. Then a second. That one wasn't posted either. Then a third one. That was never posted as part of the project either! I suggested a clarification be posted. It was not. Their choice. I'll keep plodding along.

I got about 100 reels yesterday from the California collections. In it were a number of Suspense at 7.5ips. This is normally a sign that it was a disc transfer and should be in best possible sound subject to the condition of the disc. It had reel crosstalk from a bad quarter-track dub. Really? Yeah, really.

It was a reminder that there are folks in the hobby who confuse file format with sound quality. A WAV file is "always" superior to an MP3 file. Somewhere along the line you have to actually listen to the audio. I've gotten so many bad WAV files over the years. "But they're WAVs so they're better" I was told. That restaurant has bad food, but the portions are huge.

What has struck me throughout these pioneer collection reels is that their sound was not always as good as what we have now. They often suffer from disc rumble, faint electronic hum, disc surface noise, and tape hiss. These were all part of the technologies of the time and what they could afford. We have to remember that the technologies used to make the original discs were state-of-the-art for their time. That was 75 years ago! Then most of the collectors had consumer reel decks, not professional decks. A lot of the early collectors had things like the 3M Wollensak portable equipment and other brands. They were great for their time and their intended purpose (gee, let's make a tape for the kids birthday party). Some of us scraped and scraped so we could get better equipment like Teac. We dreamed of owning a Revox.

I've heard portions of what is coming from the Bold Venture transfers from the Carl Amari Kickstarter campaign. The person doing the transferring has a brand new custom made turntable with today's technology. So the defects you get from the discs are on the discs and not compounded by the nature of the audio equipment used by the pioneer collectors of 50 years ago! Yes, 50. We have to remember that. Collectors of 50 years ago were transferring recordings made 75 years ago.

The other thing I am finding is the amount of stuff that's off-speed. Recordings are always best when played on the original equipment on which they were made. Long ago I ran into transcriptions where the first 15 minute portion was at one speed and the second was at a slightly different speed because the studio had two transcription cutters. When collectors got recordings, consumer reel decks had a +/- factor in the accuracy of their speed. So if you had two decks of the same model and brand and one was 1% fast and the other was 1% slow, you started to create a defect in the copies you were making. It could easily compound once the copies started to be traded around.

The point of all this is that many of the Suspense broadcasts that are in less than pleasing sound in circulation were in the same sound quality 50 years ago. It's been frustrating. But...

As a "completist" I've been finding copies of broadcasts that fell out of circulation because of their sound quality. Because the collectors did not have logs or the information about east and west broadcasts, only one of those shows would be broadly circulated. Collectors thought they had two copies of the same broadcast, and just took the better sounding one. And of course, we know that the early collectors really looked down on the AFRS recordings. Taking things like commercials out took away from their warmest memories of the era. I get it. It's only in recent years when the network copies of recordings seemed to dry up that we realized how important AFRS recordings are in filling in some very important gaps. I took a reel out yesterday that was all AFRS Gunsmokes, with AFRS numbers, that was likely never circulated to a notable degree. It's all late-series shows. I hope they're as good as my mind imagines.

So getting back to the Bold Venture thing. The sample I heard is rather incredible. The show production was on tape. Because the Bogarts were going overseas for The African Queen shooting in Britain and Africa, they were not in the Ziv studio often but they were there for very long days. They would record complete shows but they also did a lot of recording individual lines and conversations for scenes of other episodes. The scenes and lines of other actors would be added later. The discs are so clean (you can strain to hear disc groove noise lightly in the background) but you can hear the different background noise of the spliced tapes and the studio! That kind of sound "defect" could never be heard during broadcast. And it was so subtle, collectors of BV tapes could never hear them either because it would be attributed to tape hiss! You can hear Bogie and Bacall breathe! These sounds were always there on the syndicated discs, but they could not be detected.

I recently had a situation where two superb disc dubbers helped assemble a Suspense episode. One had the part 1 disc, the other had part 2, and I would be responsible to join and process. Their turntables and stylii cartridges were different. They were both on speed. The background noise and the sound quality were different. One had more disc rumble from their turntable than the other. One recording was brighter than the other. Neither had any sound processing applied. Both were fine disc transfers on a standalone basis. But the differences would be obvious when joined. It took a bit of work, but I did process them separately, and got them to sound the same.

Enough rambling. Still getting back into the swing of things. Still sore from class. Last night was 22 years since my first karate class. I had trouble walking for three days, just from the pre-lesson stretching in that class. Was fun talking about that last night...

by wich2 12/5/2023, 7:31 pm

Joe -

With you right down the line, re; quality, sources, etc.

And anent that, Ted Davenport just posted a lengthy screed on the OTRR page. Essentially saying:

"I would never lower myself to listen to Net and/or Free stuff. And if people don't start sending me more money, I am taking all my marbles and going home."

Rodney Bowcock loudly "hear, heared" him:

"Maybe I'll deal with somebody if I really like them. But no wide sharing anymore."

-1. This is all B.S. Ethically, NONE of this "owns" this stuff; its Creators do.

- 2. Folks like this are blind to being washed over by history. 1970 is just not coming back.

- 3. It would be so sad - if not so annoying.

I wish good folks would counter this more.

Happy Holidays,
- Craig

by greybelt 12/6/2023, 9:04 am

Today's Suspense episode is Deadline at Dawn, easily one of the top three hour-long productions. It's a Cornell Woolrich story and stars Helen Walker and John Beal in their only Suspense appearances.

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Beal’s character has stolen money from a client. His conscience gets the better of him and he wants to return it. When he goes to his client’s home to do so, he finds his client has been murdered. He knows he may be blamed for it and has to gather evidence of his innocence before the police arrive at the scene. It's a good story and a worthwhile listen.

The hour-long Suspense series is over. The backroom deals and maneuverings of CBS executives, production staff, ad agencies, and others, might have made a better story than some of the broadcasts!

Tomorrow's post is the first surviving one of the Auto-Lite series. (The first Auto-Lite broadcast is still missing!) Posts are daily and released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

I went back to that recording that I thought had crosstalk -- it was station drift! Some of the recordings I transferred yesterday were actually airchecks from WDNC. They had fallen out of circulation. You can see some listed in RadioGoldindex. The station is from Durham, NC, about 20 miles west of where I am. It was a CBS affiliate until the early 1990s and is now a sports station.

As for "free" stuff, much of that is how new fans of classic radio find out about the hobby. It's kind of like graduating from eating hamburgers to realizing that steak is better. The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection is free. Would anyone turn that down? This Suspense project is "free" (costs me a lot of time but that's called a wonderful retirement, where time is a blessing). Shame on anyone who dismisses the hard work of volunteers. Join it and don't disparage it. Promote it and promulgate it.

There is a lot of "free riding" in all groups. But the free riders need to be cultivated into supporters and participants. They often believe they have no skills and no time. And they may not! That's okay. Those things change as their interests and their time commitments evolve over their years. How do you attract them? Their sole purpose might be to attract others who can contribute.

What strikes me in reading the correspondence between pioneer collectors of the 1960s that is occasionally found in the reel boxes, is that they really believed that each program they found might be the last that could be found. It's stunning to see early copies of Hello Again report on the latest discs that someone found in an attic or in a radio station closet or warehouse.

Now the sense of mission is quite different. Digital technology allows people of limited financial means to engage in preservation efforts that would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars and massive amounts of time.

One of our greatest enemies in classic radio fandom and preservation is the erosion of context. There were two things that made this quite clear. My favorite series is Casey, Crime Photographer. There may be very few people who will be able to understand its vernacular dialogue and cultural references in 75 years. Today's listeners miss a lot of them already. Some of you remember my Casey blogposts where I documented many of them because I knew I was missing them! The other thing was the Wisconsin radio station that just dropped classic radio from its schedule and made some horrible and misinformed remarks about its cultural relevance and appropriateness. It was not surprising it happened. What could be done? Nothing. This is why the free availability of these programs, and even mildly competent historical context about them is so very important. Don't disparage "free." It's one of the greatest engines of preservation one can muster. The volunteerism behind it, and the private funding of it in terms of time is a gift to each other and generations to come.

Now... another mug of tea...

by greybelt 12/6/2023, 10:26 am

Breaking news

Collector Frank Rosin has passed away. He was really important in our hobby. Some details are at
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including a link to my interview of him.

There was a time when KIRO in Seattle was recording Suspense for playback at a better time for their area. This is where some of the episodes that were not in the Pacific Pioneers discs came from. It may also be where some of the west broadcasts in the Roma period were from. University of Washington had many discs but no one to record them. Frank did that in the 1970s and many of them, like early Whistler shows, were put into circulation because of Frank.

He was one of our hobby's most generous collectors.

by wich2 12/6/2023, 2:40 pm

Amen, friend Joe.

Sad. Deeply sad...

When people ossify over time, and forget that they were young and green once...

That they probably first heard our beloved material free on-air, or in a library lp; or cheap, on a truck stop cassette...

And that they in all likelihood had older, more experienced folks help light their new path for them...

The 1970s are not coming back. But we can build a decent future, by solid work in the present.

Fight the good fight - and not just here.

Merriest,
- Craig

by greybelt 12/7/2023, 9:12 am

Today's Suspense episode is Summer Night by Ray Bradbury and stars Ida Lupino. This is the second broadcast with Auto-Lite sponsorship. The first broadcast, The Last Chance with Cary Grant, is still missing.

It's not fantasy or sci-fi like much of Bradbury’s work, but about a serial killer with a surprise ending. Lupino delivers a fine performance.

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This first Auto-Lite season, under the direction of Anton M. Leader, has some fine performances and script selections. He was not good at the inside game of corporate politics and seemed to have some difficulty with keeping the support ensemble together and happy. This led to his ouster after the season, but bad backroom stuff did not seem to infect what the listeners heard. Enjoy it! It's a great Suspense season!

Posts are daily and released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

Guess who went to work yesterday. The guy who had brain surgery to remove an aneurysm less than three weeks ago! It has been stunning to even talk to him. He was working at home, responding to emails that piled up over the last weeks. He's not ready to drive beyond "down the road to the store" yet, walks a little more distance every day. His energy is getting better. The doctor follow-ups are starting next week and then the cardio surgeon plots out the next big step days after the turn of the calendar. I'm guessing that these blogposts will take a two-week hiatus around the Jan-Feb cusp. Many folks have written to me about valve replacement surgery and managing the post-op blood thinners that he will need the rest of his days, which we all hope will allow decades of a full and active life. Thanks again to all for your support.

The first Auto-Lite show is still missing. I do hope an AFRS recording shows up one day. You never know why a disc is missing. There was no east and west broadcasts, so that reduces the chances. It could have been grabbed for internal use and never returned (many of the Sam Spade discs went to legal teams in some litigation re Hammett and the show's production and never returned), or given to an ad agency for some reason. The first Auto-Lite script was used only that one time.

As for the authorship of that first script, the newspapers and the script itself are sloppily documented. It seems to be a Lou Lusty story, but the adaptation is confusing. One script says it was ~~Joel Malone~~ Larry Marcus, but there is a newspaper clip that has Les Crutchfield. The scripts are not always reliable because final rushed revisions were not always contained in the file copies we have, but were entered into the announcer's. An AFRS copy might not help, as credits were often edited out.

This is my favorite Suspense season. Leader was a great producer. He ended up having problems with CBS, especially executive Guy Della-Ciappa, that led to his not being renewed. He also seemed to alienate some members of Spier's ensemble by making them audition and making a search for new talent. It could have been that Leader was "too New York" in his demeanor and the culture clash did not endear him to the previous regulars.

Ain't Frees really good as the signature voice?

by bojim1 12/8/2023, 3:47 am

Always love to hear good news! Very Happy

by greybelt 12/8/2023, 7:23 am

Today's Suspense episode is Deep Into Darkness. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. plays a wrongly-convicted man who served time in prison for killing a man. When he’s released, he learns that man is very much alive. He believes he can exact deadly revenge on that man and others who framed him, without further penalty, because he's already paid the price for the crime! Fairbanks delivers a fine performance.

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The script is by the creator of Father Knows Best who also wrote for the Harris-Faye show!

Posts are daily and released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

by greybelt 12/9/2023, 8:08 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Yellow Wallpaper, and stars Agnes Moorehead. She plays a wife overwhelmed with the stresses of life. She is sent away for a rest cure, and becomes fascinated and obsessed by the wallpaper in her second floor bedroom. Moorehead delivers another fine performance. But the original story is not a horror story at all. This adaptation sends much of the essence and intent of the original story to the background.

It was, a shocking and controversial story when it was published in 1892. It is mainly about the social position of women in society. Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman became one of the foremost social commenters of the period. The Yellow Wallpaper took on the fledgling field of psychology and rattled many of the assumptions behind its early treatments. The story remained controversial years after its publication, and to this day is often required reading in colleges and universities literature and sociology programs.

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Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

by greybelt 12/10/2023, 8:42 am

Today's Suspense episode is An Honest Man, where Charles Laughton plays a easily befuddled sandwich maker who has no trouble "borrowing" from the store's cash register. It's a plan to bet on a horse so he can restore his reputation of honesty. Of course, the horse loses. How does he get out of this mess?

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Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

by greybelt 12/10/2023, 11:40 am

HELP!
In my notes i have Suspense AFRS#254 as 1948-10-14 A Little Piece of Rope but I cannot find an AFRS recording

Did I have it? Or did I mean to write "known to exist"
I've searched my files everywhere.

by kdmarket 12/10/2023, 7:46 pm

you did not have that recording

by greybelt 12/11/2023, 7:28 am

Thanks for the help with realizing I don't have that recording. Sad

We're on page 41 of this thread. After we reach 45, the forum software shuts the thread down at 40, and locks it. Then it starts a new one with 41-45 becoming pages 1-5. So if one morning you go looking for the thread and can't find it, that's what happens. I think we're up to 4 locked forums when that happens.

Today's Suspense episode is Beware the Quiet Man and stars Ann Sothern. She plays a young wife who believes that she has successfully prevented her husband from learning about her affair. That is, until she meets a big-talking detective in a bar whose sense of confidentiality ebbs with each sip of his drink... and that she may be the target of his investigation... paid for by her husband. William Conrad is superb as the detective.

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Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

I mention this in one of the upcoming posts: Tony Leader's episode titles are not very good compared to William Spier & Kay Thompson. Otherwise, the productions are very good. This is my favorite season of Suspense.

by greybelt 12/12/2023, 7:27 am

Today's Suspense episode is Crisis and stars Martha Scott. She plays a worried mother whose son has a severe life-threatening fever. She has no help because of a widespread flu epidemic, and has to face the problems alone. Her mind wanders and she envisions a vile, violent, and unhappy life for her son and all those who encounter him. Would everyone would be better off if she let him succumb to this very illness?

It's an oddly edgy script by veteran writers Gwen and John Bagni, one of their most surprising ones. It’s written in a manner that her wandering thoughts seem to be the story's events. It occasionally lapses into soap opera, then rattles you with some disturbing sequences. Despite its flaws, it ends up being challenging and superior to most other radio dramas of its day.

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Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

by greybelt 12/13/2023, 8:40 am

Today's Suspense episode is Song of the Heart and stars Van Heflin, one of the most talented actors to be on Suspense. The script is by Elliott Lewis, and it's enhanced by Heflin's wide ranging skill. He stars as a lonely, bitter young man who believed that quietly disposing of the overbearing aunt who raised him would lead to a better life. The aunt turns out to be wiser and more generous than he ever believed, and that's what gets him in the Whistler-esque surprise ending.

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Heflin's finest performance on the series, Three O'Clock, would be delivered in March 1949, about six months after this broadcast.

Posts are on a daily schedule and are released at 5AM Eastern US time. Please tell fellow classic radio enthusiasts about the blog.

by wich2 12/13/2023, 11:38 am

The Man had the Goods.

For me, Radio's best Marlowe (and one of THE finest, in any field.)

Merriest,
- Craig

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