Re: Suspense Upgrades

by greybelt 2/11/2024, 8:39 am

The Suspense Project returns with a Cornell Woolrich story, The Lie. It's a fine performance by Mickey Rooney. He plays a wayward college student who is tossed out of multiple institutions for his irresponsible acts. When he suspects his father committed a murder, he thinks he can make restitution for all the trouble he's caused the old man by claiming he was the killer instead! Dumb idea! Now he's framed himself for the crime! Luckily, a police detective doesn't buy the story, and is steadfast in his effort to bring the real killer to justice.

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

It's good to have the blogposts back on their daily schedule. I'm still getting the discipline of the day back before life so rudely interrupted.

I was surprised with how good Rooney was in this episode. The story is a little weak in its final scenes.

Reel transfers started again. I was surprised to see a bunch of Family Theater from 1968 and 1969. These are usually full track transfers, and the press release is included in many of the reels. Those have the program on Mutual. But I can't find any references in newspapers or the trade magazines for new productions of the series at that time. The show went off the air in 1957. From checking logs, it seems they are a smattering of programs from the mid-1950s through the end of the first series. I was not aware it was being broadcast again on a network.

You never know what you'll find on many of these reels. But one thing always astounds me is the reels noted as "from disc" with some recordings that would be considered "bad" today. There was a Suspense AFRS recording of the 1944 Suspicion and it's packed with crackle and disc rumble. Those pioneer collectors did not have access to some of the equipment that later collectors were able to get. And then it is clear that for network Suspense, those discs were done multiple times. You can get documented disc copies with different sound quality. As all of the hobby's famous disc experts went along, they kept learning more and more and getting better equipment and learning more and more "tricks" for dealing with problems. While it is frustrating at times, getting multiple sets of recordings from one pair of transcriptions, even from the same recordist, seems to be worthwhile. The later transfers always seem to be a little better.

One of the episodes coming up this week is The Ten Years and the Joan Crawford "mic fright" that led to the first transcribed Suspense broadcast. There are notes all over Cobalt posts on this thread and I'm finally consolidating them. Editing is sometimes much harder than writing them the first time. I still like hearing that WCBS aircheck that was found of this episode that had the local commercials.

by wich2 2/11/2024, 9:53 pm

I was surprised with how good Rooney was in this episode.

Joe, I surprised to hear you say that! By most accounts, he was a bit of a pill sometimes, but I think his chops are dang strong, from before MANHATTAN MELODRAMA to BILL, and beyond.

I was surprised to see a bunch of Family Theater from 1968 and 1969 ... But I can't find any references in newspapers or the trade magazines for new productions of the series at that time.

As our scholarship gets better and better, I think we might see more and more cracks like that in the "IT ALL ENDED IN 1962!" wall. When reading the ETERNAL LIGHT book that Dave Goldin put together, there were similar late episodes.

- Craig

by greybelt 2/12/2024, 8:15 am

Today's Suspense episode is Death has a Shadow and stars Bob Hope. His Wikipedia profile has this line: “Hope had no faith in his skills as a dramatic actor.” This Suspense casting was for publicity opportunities, but not performance. The script's clumsy dialogue didn't help. Suspense scripts and dialogue were usually matched to the abilities of the guest star. More complex scripts would be reserved to movie stars who had lots of radio or stage experience. Something happened here and it did not turn out well. It's otherwise a good script that could use a few dialogue tweaks, and a more experienced dramatic radio actor rather than Hope's mostly wooden performance.

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Much was made in the press about Hope being required to sign a "no ad-lib contract." Such publicity hubbub occurred when other comedians guested on Suspense, too. There's no such clause. The standard contract required that all actors stick to the script and follow the directions of the director and producer without deviation. If they didn't they were fired without pay. If such a clause was typed in, it was just for show, because it duplicated the standard one.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

Tomorrow's post is a disaster of a show, The Light Switch, so much so that it took the C3DS to aid in convincing me and each other that we were not missing anything. The script could be really good. Usually Suspense scripts can have a plot issue with something that's not really plausible but you just go along with it as part of the fun. This one has missing details that make it seem like a rush editing job. Shame. Claire Trevor delivers a great performance.

Two clunkers in a row, Death has a Shadow and The Light Switch. We'll never know if they contributed to Tony Leader not being rehired, but they could have.

The Family Theater took another turn in curiousness yesterday. A December 1969 broadcast with Raymond Burr, Providence and the Pathfinder, that is not in the official Peyton Production log, but is mentioned in TV-Radio Mirror for broadcast on 1957-04-10. A different program was broadcast, and that's what's in circulation. The Peyton log goes through 1961 even though it is commonly accepted that the show ended in 1957. Obviously not. Love these pioneer collections... If anyone is "expert" in the FT series or wants the log, please get in touch to figure all this out with these late 1960s rebroadcasts. Most are in marvelous sound.

by greybelt 2/13/2024, 8:22 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Light Switch and stars Claire Trevor. Despite her fine performance, she can't save a confusing and deeply flawed script. It's a shame. The script has all of the elements necessary to be a superior one: envy, avarice, adultery, deceit, misdirection, delusions, fraud, and Wally Maher sings (unfortunately his character is drunk at the time)... and the pieces just don't come together... but you know they could given the chance. Read the blogpost and the spoilers before listening to enjoy it best. With some tweaks here and there, this could be a really good story!

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The blogpost details what's wrong and how it can be fixed, especially if a modern-day OTR re-creation group wanted to take the opportunity to right this terrible wrong and delight Suspense fandom. Thanks very much to the C3DS (the Cobalt Dialogue Difference Detection Squad) over at Cobalt Club who helped decipher out this mess of a script. Their heroic work throughout this project is greatly appreciated. It has allowed the proper identification of east and west broadcasts in the Roma era and determined the source recordings that AFRS used in those years. They also assisted in this episode's analysis. Their code names "chasedad" and "lasombra" hide their secret identities as multi-decade classic radio hobbyists and devoted researchers.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

Thanks to lasombra and chasedad, aka the C3DS (Cobalt Dialogue Difference Detection Squad, who ply their work in an underground double-secret high security lab with their main equipment being a Keurig coffee maker and some beakers and Bunsen burners to re-warm their coffee when needed. It is so secret that even Congress doesn't know about it but funds it under "miscellaneous audio cryptography research." When they are paid, money goes into an offshore Bitcoin account that I heard rumors is automatically split into Swiss francs, gold, and freeze-dried beef stew futures held in multiple currencies. You don't mess with these people, because you might have to clean it up and buy them new lab coats.

The Family Theater stuff continues with more "new" shows. But there are strange things on the reels that perhaps someone can help with. Found two Galaxy Magazine recordings that claim to be interviews with extraterrestrials warning about the Space Age and such. They sound like they are from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The best that I can describe them are as early podcasts. I don't know if they were broadcasts or released as LPs. They sound like broadcasts recorded with a mic in front of a speaker. Has anyone heard of these before? I will clean them up for listenability.

by greybelt 2/14/2024, 8:07 am

Today's Suspense episode is Consequence and stars Jimmy Stewart. It's a good story and worth hearing a favorite series guest star present it once more. A different script was originally planned for this date, but that was held until the last episode of the 1948-1949 season for Joseph Cotten. Today's blogpost has links to the prior broadcast and background about the episode's writers.

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

It turns out that pair of "Galaxy" recordings had no relation to the magazine. Thanks to collector Max Schmid we were directed to this link [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] where it turns out the recordings are part of the mid-to-late 1950s interest in UFOs. How these recordings ended up in the reels of radio programs that are being transferred is unclear. I suspect they were part of UFO "fandom" and may have been distributed via limited private pressing of records.

The write-up of The Ten Years still refuses to coalesce. Some days this stuff just requires brute force to get done. Today is sledgehammer day.

The Death has a Shadow blogpost was blocked for a few hours as "spam" according to Google's Blogger bots. A few changes to prepositions suddenly made it acceptable a few minutes later. How strange.

by greybelt 2/15/2024, 8:52 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Night Reveals, the fourth time the Cornell Woolrich story was presented on the series. While it was a fill-in for some behind-the-scenes chaos, it gave Fredric March a chance to reprise his starring role in the first production of the script on 1943-03-02. That broadcast is still missing. The story is much less chilling than it was in its day when modern methods of fire fighting, fire detection and prevention were still being developed. In its time, the broad population had wider personal familiarity and fear about the tragedies that fires could cause. This story was unsettling to its contemporary listeners.

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The chaos behind the scenes related to the rejection of the script originally planned for this date because it was too gruesome and the challenges of Joan Crawford's refusal to appear in a live broadcast. The story about it all is in tomorrow's blogpost.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

The Consequence blogpost was taken down because of community guidelines violation. I changed innocuous words with synonyms and it was reinstated. How strange and confusing.

The Ten Years post made progress and should be finished today. I realized one of the motivations for the chain of events. If Joan Crawford was going to appear she wanted the same adulation as Agnes Moorehead. Joan's script should be a movie, too. Joan's script should be a best selling record set, too. As I was reading the press releases and such sent after the recording session in early May, it was Crawford constantly crowing (hey, alliteration!) about how she was the one to modernize the backward live show policy of CBS and Suspense and that it was her personal money that lifted them from the dark ages to have the same production benefits that movies had and it was radio's fault for creating the fear of microphones when pros like her had to repeat the scenes to learn the right tempo and nature of their performance which could not be learned in rehearsals. Yes, it seems Joan was the Master Thespian of her time [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The rejection of The Hand seemed to create a fair number of issues on the publicity side. On one hand (pun unintended -- did not realize I did that until hours after writing!) you could say that CBS just took the draft press releases they had prepared about the broadcast, crossed out "The Hand" and wrote in "The Ten Years." They made it seem that this was a brand new script even though it was a re-use of a prior Dinelli script. The newness kept being emphasized. It almost seems they were under deadline and using the releases that were prepared was the best way to meet it. It's only after the Crawford recording session that we learn that "The Hand" was rejected and why. All of the infighting was in April. Everything after the May 7 recording date is PR stunts, most of them by Crawford and her agent. My favorite is still the buying of the rights to the script by movie producer Jerry Wald. It was Wald who produced Mildred Pierce where Crawford got her Oscar. At best, "The Ten Years" is a B-movie. He probably handed Dinelli a dollar bill, which is all you still need today to say that you had entered into a contract. She seemed to do everything possible to build interest in the June transcribed broadcast.

I've wondered if by this time if Leader knew he wasn't coming back and that June's broadcasts would be his last.

by wich2 2/15/2024, 11:49 am

greybelt wrote:Yes, it seems Joan was the Master Thespian of her time

(Well, she did knock boots with most of her fellow Leads, until she aged out of that possibility. So there's that...) Wink

by greybelt 2/16/2024, 7:59 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Ten Years with Joan Crawford. Her “mic fright” led to this episode becoming the first transcribed (pre-recorded) episode of Suspense. Complete broadcast recordings of this episode have not been widely available. The broadcast that day was a mix of recorded drama and live music and ads as they navigated the intricacies and costs of union contracts. How it all happened is a fascinating intersection of a headstrong Hollywood star, sponsor meddling, broadcast technology, union contracts, public relations showboating, and much more. AND... there is a new recording of this episode that is an aircheck from New York's WCBS-AM that is as broadcast with national and local commercials!

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

It FINALLY came together. It is one of the longer blogposts but it's a good story.

I resisted posting the recreations of The Hand. I keep hoping someone does a new recreation of it sometime. There is a 1960s or 1970s production of it that it think was by Bay Area collector Dave Amaral. The copies are not the best.

Thanks to all for your support and encouragement!

* * *

UPDATE: I added a PDF of the blogpost commentary to the Internet Archive page. It is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by greybelt 2/17/2024, 7:44 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Lunch Kit and stars John Lund. The script by radio veteran Larry Marcus was first presented on The Whistler in 1944 and was heard only on the CBS Pacific Network. Now his story about a wartime factory sabotage conspiracy gets the national exposure and prominence of Suspense. An unwilling participant is pressured to engage in the nefarious act but is so nervous he bungles his simple task to cause his own end. The innocent and unknowing act of a co-worker ends up foiling the plot.

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

8,000 reels were picked up yesterday to continue to feed the OTRR volunteer effort of upgrading recordings to lossless format and improve sound quality and find missing recordings, etc. etc.

There are reel decks awaiting claim by volunteers willing to assist. All they have to pay is shipping and make a commitment to transfer what they are sent.

by greybelt 2/18/2024, 8:06 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Trap with Agnes Moorehead. She plays a lonely woman who inherited a very large house and realizes that she’s not alone. Are the noises she hears the normal sounds of a creaky old house? How does that explain the whistling, the items suddenly missing from the kitchen, and other things that are just not right? There is someone in the house… and they want revenge for what Moorehead’s character did to her many years ago.

The script was based on a story written by Virginia Myers and adapted by three-time Oscar nominee Walter Brown Newman and Ralph Rose. Myers would become a famous romance novelist and short story writer.

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

It seems that the forumotion software did its usual "surprise" lock of pages 1-40 of a thread when that thread reaches 45 pages. Then it opens a new thread with the 1-5 pages. Not sure why, but it's what happens... Takes a while for the disruption to forum visit habits to settle back.

Yesterday we took the long drive to go see this exhibit [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I was 8 and Mrs GB was 6 when all this happened. Amazing what you remember all these years later and what gets filled in when you see these things now that we are 50 years wiser about human nature and lived through the historical context and crosscurrents. The commentary on the photos is interesting. There is a phone-only app Bloomberg Connects that many museums use that can access the audio recorded by McCartney about the experiences of the Beatles 1963-1965 US trips. The photos are in a new book (impressively printed) and on Amazon for $37ish

Posted at the OTRR groups page about the recent reel pick-up [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and we may have 2 more volunteers to help.

by greybelt 2/19/2024, 7:24 am

Today's Suspense episode is Ghost Hunt with Ralph Edwards. I think expectations were low for the famous game show host, but he delivers an excellent performance. It's a great broadcast and one of the highlights of Anton M. Leader's only full season as the Suspense producer.

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The original story was by the highly regarded British writer H. Russell Wakefield. He was known for his ghost and supernatural stories. This one appeared in Weird Tales a year earlier. It was adapted by three-time Oscar nominee Walter Brown Newman.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

The blogpost about The Ten Years was one of the most heavily trafficked ones of the project. It was probably the WCBS-NY aircheck that gave it a boost. Thinking about Crawford reminded me about the Mommie Dearest movie with Faye Dunaway as Joan... and the famous wire hanger...
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Hard to believe it's 43 years ago.

Tomorrow is the final show with Tony Leader at the helm. It got rocky a few times (like The Light Switch not being ready for prime time, the special Christmas broadcast that was promoted but never done and sneaking Back for Christmas in as "Holiday Story," and being subjected to the bullying over The Hand and the rogue publicity of Crawford and Dinelli for Ten Years). Despite those hiccups it was one of the best seasons of Suspense of its entire run. It's the season I enjoy the most. He even had some good hour-long episodes at the end of that brief run. He "fixed" the broken Suspense franchise and stepped on a lot of toes along the way. More details tomorrow.

by wich2 2/19/2024, 2:23 pm

greybelt wrote:8,000 reels were picked up yesterday to continue to feed the OTRR volunteer effort of upgrading recordings to lossless format and improve sound quality and find missing recordings, etc. etc.

Done heard about that. Kudos to the Benefactor, and to the Disseminators.

It can't be overstated, what projects like this add to our little corner of the universe...

(And how each puts another nail into the coffin of the era of the Gollum Collectors.)

Onward!
- Craig

by greybelt 2/20/2024, 7:36 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Day I Died with Suspense favorite Joseph Cotten. He plays a “dead man,” whose circumstances led him to an opportunity to commit insurance fraud. His “widowed” wife is not really sold on the idea of sharing the proceeds in the way he wants. The story is by Ken Pettus and Lou Scofield. There's no one better at voicing cold, calculating, and sinister than Joseph Cotten.

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This is also an important episode because it's the last production under Anton M. Leader. The Suspense series reached its highest ratings in the first Auto-Lite season with some superb episodes. Why wasn't his contract renewed? Details to that decision and insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of Suspense are in today's blogpost.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

The Auto-Lite shows under Leader for 1949 are at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Look for the zip file with K - 1949 Auto-Lite - Leader in the name.
All the individual files are in the episode pages at archive.org if you are following along anyway.

The blogpost has a long section about Leader's time at Suspense. Some of the information comes from a letter John Schienfeld got from him. As a college student in the early 1970s, John had hopes of writing a Suspense book but various successes intervened. He eventually shared his notes and interview recordings with Keith Scott and Keith got permission to share them with me. We keep John informed of the quirky things we find and up to date on missing shows as we find them. He would send letters to Vanda, Spier, Lewis, Zirato, and got cassette tape letters back from them. He had a long in-person discussion with Robson, and toward the end it was clear that some thought lubrication was being self-administered through the process which made it kind of amusing as Robson talked. John was also fascinated with Spier's work on Sam Spade.

Tomorrow we start posting the Spier-Macdonnell season. With all the stuff that's been going on here I have not been able to get as far ahead as I wanted to be. The listening is ahead of the writing. I'm having trouble deciding if this 1949-1950 season is being "mailed in" rather than a bigger effort. Spier's aspirations seem to be elsewhere with movies and television. Macdonnell was directing. I'm not sure how they were dividing up their work. Blind Date was a strange show with June Havoc playing an actress trapped in her own dressing room and complaining about being on the road all the time. That was exactly how she grew up... as a vaudeville kid, raised on the road. This is the first season for Spier and Havoc as married with Suspense as his main endeavor. Account Payable was much better than I remembered it from listening years ago. Momentum gets annoying with the supposedly inadvertent series of murders but it reminded me that CBS' Criminal Minds series has had similar events in their stories just a few years ago. Momentum was probably one of those Woolrich stories that worked in print far better than it did in audio.

I so wish that Spier's year of Philip Morris Playhouse would be found. The only existing programs seem to be what June Havoc shared with SPERDVAC in the 1970s. Like so many of radio's performers they gave no thought to saving things, just an occasional recording here and there. Spier was running PMP as a parallel Suspense. That's probably why Philip Morris cancelled after a year and they settled on the much cheaper Casey, Crime Photographer.

by greybelt 2/21/2024, 7:43 am

Today's Suspense episode is Nightmare with Gregory Peck. It's also the return of William Spier as producer and a new director, Norman Macdonnell. He will become a key figure in radio production, and especially Gunsmoke.

The title "Nightmare" was used earlier in the series, but this is a different story. It relates to Auto-Lite's theme of highway safety but also expresses how the seeking of vengeance can become all-consuming, distort one's judgment, and compound bad consequences. The title is its own spoiler alert: it's all "true" but thankfully Peck's character wakes up, all is fine, but the bad dream teaches a valuable lesson.

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The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

by greybelt 2/22/2024, 10:17 am

Today's Suspense episode is Chicken Feed with Ray Milland. It's not about buying supplies for a poultry farm. A man leaves his house in a huff after an argument, goes to a coffee shop, realizes he left his wallet at home, gets put in a police holding cell for vagrancy, is bullied by the thugs in there with him... and his angry wife won't take the phone call that can get him out. The situation doesn't get better. He'll never storm out of the house again, but if he does, he'll always check that he has his wallet.

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It's amazing how much can be packed into 25 minutes of drama. The pace of Suspense is often borderline frantic, with roller coaster ups and downs, and that's what holds attention.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

Tomorrow is Last Confession with Dorothy McGuire. She was supposed to do The Red-Headed Woman until Spier signed Lucy and Desi. It was McGuire's only appearance.

Then we have the strange Experiment 6-R. The story's okay, and the writers were unfamiliar. One of them was arrested eleven years later for running a business from his home selling obscene materials. Then about twelve years later he's writing similar stuff and it's being published by Bantam Books and can be bought on the paperback rack at a drug store or newsstand. Sometimes the Suspense backstory is like Grand Central Station "the crossroads of a million private lives, a gigantic stage on which are played a thousand dramas daily."

(GCS was one of those series that the opening was the best part of the show).

Speaking of Experiment 6-R... does anyone have the AFRS version of the episode? It's listed in RadioGoldindex.

by chasedad 2/22/2024, 11:09 am

From today's blogpost:

A nickel, or five cents, is worth 64 cents in US$2024.

Evidently by the time this script was performed again in 1957 it had halved in value: it's a missing dime, not a nickel, that's required to make a phone call in that adaptation. It also means that the great closing line from this 1949 version had to get cut, and the story ends rather abruptly.

Tomorrow is Last Confession with Dorothy McGuire. She was supposed to do The Red-Headed Woman until Spier signed Lucy and Desi.

How interesting to learn this; I'm guessing that the lead male character's name was not originally Jose before Desi was cast in the role, and also that the goofy epilogue wasn't there until the script was adapted to accommodate Lucy and Desi. I don't suppose you have a copy of the script for this one, with markups to indicate the changes?

by greybelt 2/22/2024, 11:54 am

chasedad as usual you make me go and listen again.

I cannot find a pre-Lucy&Desi script of "Red Headed Woman" though I did verify there is no hyphen in the title in the script.

The author is Nancy J. Cleveland -- I cannot find a short story in any of the data bases that she wrote that could have been the foundation for the script. She is not a one-hit wonder as she also wrote a lot of Whistler scripts and for other series.

I cannot find an archive of her papers.

The only editing in the script pages I have is that they seemed to make a point of alternating the mention of their names Desi-Lucy in on place, Lucy-Desi in another, etc.

by chasedad 2/22/2024, 1:48 pm

] The only editing in the script pages I have is that they seemed to make a point of alternating the mention of their names Desi-Lucy in on place, Lucy-Desi in another, etc.

Interesting! The same thing is done two years later when Ball and Arnaz star in "Early to Death" (4-12-51). I'd thought maybe this was a particular case made to accommodate two powerful (and often clashing) partners who both might have wanted star billing, but the same thing is done a few weeks later with Phil Harris and Alice Faye in "Death on My Hands" (5-10-51). Not so with Ozzie Nelson and Harriett Hilliard...in all three of their appearances on the show his name always came first. Oddly enough, in "Mr. Diogenes" (1-26-50) they're referred to as "Ozzie and Harriett Nelson" throughout, when she was still using her maiden name on their radio show (it's back to "Ozzie Nelson and Harriett Hilliard" when they make their final "Suspense" appearance in "Going, Going, Gone" (11-23-50)).

by gathol 2/22/2024, 2:35 pm

greybelt wrote:Tomorrow is Last Confession with Dorothy McGuire. She was supposed to do The Red-Headed Woman until Spier signed Lucy and Desi. It was McGuire's only appearance.

Then we have the strange Experiment 6-R. The story's okay, and the writers were unfamiliar. One of them was arrested eleven years later for running a business from his home selling obscene materials. Then about twelve years later he's writing similar stuff and it's being published by Bantam Books and can be bought on the paperback rack at a drug store or newsstand. Sometimes the Suspense backstory is like Grand Central Station "the crossroads of a million private lives, a gigantic stage on which are played a thousand dramas daily."

(GCS was one of those series that the opening was the best part of the show).

Speaking of Experiment 6-R... does anyone have the AFRS version of the episode? It's listed in RadioGoldindex.

I posted the CBS promo for Suspense (among other series including Casey Crime Photographer and FBI in Peace and War) probably close to two years ago for Dorothy McGuire in Red-Headed Woman from the G Robert Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University. So, it would seem that was another late change by CBS for this series. Here is the promo again. No, I don't have an AFRS version of Experiment 6-R.

490900 CBS promos for Suspense Casey Crime Photographer FBI in Peace and War -
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by greybelt 2/22/2024, 3:41 pm

Gathol -- you're the best! Thank you for reminding me of that. You had sent me those earlier and posted them for the group. I had forgotten these announced the McGuire in TRHW and not Last Confession.

Wish I could add them to the Internet Archive page but they are in the MSU library. I will add the link
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to the blogpost

I so appreciate you reminding me of this.

by gathol 2/22/2024, 4:08 pm

You're welcome greybelt! Just glad I can help out once in a while!

by greybelt 2/23/2024, 7:16 am

Today's Suspense episode is Last Confession with Dorothy McGuire in her only Suspense appearance. She portrays a woman to suspects she may have committed a murder, but she’s not sure. The newspaper has a story about a killing in town, she starts where she was at the time of the crime, and if the single glove at the scene was hers. When she calls the home of her boyfriend, she learns he’s dead! It's an interesting story where she sets out to prove her innocence but she convinces herself that she did it! Did she?

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Read how McGuire was supposed to be in a performance of a different script and how Spier and Macdonnell changed things around to accommodate an upcoming pair of guests!

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

by greybelt 2/24/2024, 11:56 am

Today's Suspense episode is Experiment 6-R with John Lund as an unappreciated hotel manager who wants to eliminate his boss so he can get a promotion and the higher pay he feels he deserves. A mysterious scientist is running experiments on caged rats in one of the hotel rooms to the dismay of many... but Lund's character sees an opportunity in the strange substance the scientist is developing. It's a comic-book style story. Don't get wrapped up in its logic, just go along for the entertaining ride.

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The story is a collaboration of two Minneapolis writers, one who wrote for a local children's serial, and a University professor who became a curious countercultural icon in that city. He would later find himself at odds with free speech laws and particular kinds of periodicals he was sending through the mail.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

Lots of progress catching up on posts, going all the way up to Search for Isabel. More to come this weekend.

This 1949-1950 season sees a change in sound quality for many of the recordings. Some are duller sounding than what had been posted so far. From what I could piece together from asking around, the best transferrer of discs decided to work on other series and someone else took the Suspense work. The Suspense discs were recorded multiple times over the years, so if you get enough copies that originate from the prominent collectors of the time, you'll find one that is better than the others. That's not the case, this time. Some of them clean up well and the sound can be rebalanced to be more enjoyable. But nothing beats a really good disc transfer with the best equipment.

If anyone has a "crispy new, fresh as the morning dew" copy of Murder of Aunt Delia please let me know. That's the first one that is tough to get. Even the Radio Spirits version has a dull sound to it, and I know who did those. They could not give it a brighter quality. If you have a candidate, please compare it to this file first before sending it
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by greybelt 2/25/2024, 8:00 am

Today's Suspense episode is Blind Date with excellent performances by June Havoc and Charles Laughton. She's a dancer in a traveling show, ready to have a nice night out with a blind date before the show moves to the next town. He's an odd refined gentleman... until he takes out his knife to open a bottle of wine. The conversation takes a bad turn. She realizes she's in danger, trapped in her dressing room with no way out. Nearly all the production is dialogue between Laughton and Havoc with simple but growing tension as the situation develops. The play was written by radio legend E. Jack Neuman and Whistler writer Harrison Negley.

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This broadcast is the first time OTR fan favorite Parley Baer (Chester on Gunsmoke) plays "Hap" for the Auto-Lite commercials.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

As mentioned yesterday, when you start transferring reels, especially this series, you not only delve into the history of the series and broadcast, but also the history of our hobby and the recording preservation.

It was confirmed yesterday that this 1949-1950 episode was a pivot point in sound quality for the series as some of the programs were not in the Pacific Pioneers holdings but had to be found outside those shelves, and a key recordist shifted their transfer work from Suspense to Escape. That meant someone different, with different equipment, and different audio preferences and experiences, was transferring the shows. This year, I was involved in two transfer efforts, for example, and there was a clear difference in the amount of disc noise and turntable rumble that was picked up by one equipment set-up compared to another. Nowadays, these can be adjusted for in software, but that could not be done back then in the early pioneer years of recording from transcription disc to reel tape. (Remember - the first digitally recorded LP was not until 1979, by Ry Cooder). Digital transfer from discs would not be practical for hobbyists until many years later. This is why getting as close as possible to reel copies of recordings is so essential as we attempt to create good lossless copies of classic radio. Software can only do so much to reel recordings that are several generations away from the original transfer. Until then, we do the best we can and hope for additional sources. Suspense discs were recorded by many different people and some shows multiple times. Most all OTR was transferred just once.

by greybelt 2/26/2024, 7:53 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Defense Rests with Van Johnson. This superb script was previously used in 1944 with Alan Ladd. Johnson is very good in this role. The blogpost has links to both performances.

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The broadcast includes two actors who would star in Gunsmoke under Norman Macdonnell: Georgia Ellis as Kitty and Howard McNear as Doc. Larry Dobkin is also in it, and he would be a regular supporting actor in that series.

The Suspense Project daily blogposts have series history and episode and performer background. They are up at 5:00am ET and include links to stream or download FLAC and MP3 recordings of the episodes. Enjoy!

Experiment 6-R was blocked by Google. I added the word "undergraduate" to the post and it was unblocked. I suspected the post would be flagged at some time since it had the word "poison" and details about Harold Kahm's legal issues, so it wasn't a surprise. Once I saw the blocking notice, I made the change, and within 5 minutes it was back up. Their review bots flag posts, and then a real person reads it after you "correct" it and remove the "violation" of community standards. I wish there was something like the Homeland Security "trusted traveler" program for blogposts. But since I want "free" blogposting at a service that I think will be around decades from now when I may not be, this is what you put up with.

Got great copies of Murder of Aunt Delia and also The Long Wait. They're coming up and are worth downloading. Somehow these nice copies never had wide circulation. The Red Headed Woman blogpost is good and the recording is excellent. The copy of Mission: Completed that is coming up (have to write the blogpost today) is really good. If you want to jump ahead, Delia and Wait Internet Archive pages are already up.

A week from Friday, I am the speaker at the monthly Zoom meeting for Metro Washington Old Time Radio Club (MWOTRC) and the topic will be Suspense writers. I so love telling the Edgar Scott Flohr story but now we have so many more to join with it.

The author of Mission: Completed was a radio executive in Seattle. He also wrote Daisy Chain.

Will send log-in details for March 8 when I get them.

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