Suspense Upgrades

Today's Suspense episode is Murder Strikes Three Times and is the sole appearance of Marlene Dietrich on the series. It's a repeat production of Three Times Murder from 1946. She plays a conniving murderess whose life becomes intertwined with a corrupt money-grubbing lawyer, played so very well by Hans Conried.

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Today's Suspense episode is boxing drama Slow Burn that's really about fraud, envy, and a romantic triangle. Scheduled and delayed twice, it finally makes it to the air with an excellent performance by Dick Powell. If you've never heard this production in good, full sound, the AFRS recording that's posted here is richer than the noisy, narrow-range network one that been around for decades. It's a good script by Fred Freiberger with a superb supporting cast that includes Wally Maher, Larry Dobkin, Elliott Reid, Georgia Ellis, and Joe Kearns (all of whom double!).

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

If you were the producer of Suspense, you had to be flexible. The show was planned six to eight weeks in advance, and they always had backup scripts and actors at the ready if they needed one.

1950-02-02 Beatrice NB Times

The Feb 2 1950 show had a name change to "Consideration." Slow Burn was originally scheduled for 1950-01-12 with Robert Taylor, but Four Hours to Kill was used instead. Even though Kirk Douglas had a smash hit boxing movie ("Champion") and therefore a good fit for "Slow Burn," they switched him to "The Butcher's Wife" in which he delivered a superb performance.

Alan Ladd ended up doing "Motive for Murder," not Richard Widmark, and it was delayed to March. Dick Powell got the "Slow Burn" role on February 23 and gave a fine performance. In many ways, this was a quiet month for changes!

Whenever they had real trouble, William Spier had a file cabinet of favorite past scripts that he would select for a repeat performance. He always knew who might not be busy. In past seasons he would call Joe Cotten or Lee Bowman to fill in at the last minute. That's what had to be done when you had a big-time big-budget series that was competing with movie set filming schedules and hiccups, new demand for guests on television, scripts that were not on schedule and a lot more. It must have been incredible to work in that environment of last minute phone calls and memos and rewrites. And somehow, when it came to air time, it all came together and listeners had no inkling of the chaos involved that that made it happen.

Today's Suspense episode is Lady Killer and stars Loretta Young in her only Suspense appearance. This is a police corruption story about the cover-up of a gambling operation. (Oh, forgot, “spoiler alert”). The story fits together logically but it does not have the fast moving Suspense action and fact revelation. It's like a "recipe" of scenes presented in required order, lacking the magic coalescence that inspiration provides. The vivid illusion that radio provided so often is missing. Hey, it happens. Even on Suspense.

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

Today's Suspense episode is a new (and very good) performance of Banquo's Chair with James Mason. A newly retired police officer just can’t let go of a case he could not solve. He brings the suspects together for a dinner party, and a ghostly incident occurs that helps expose the murderer. Hans Conried plays "John Bedford" as he did the prior two productions and is superb once more.

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I always felt that Banquo's Chair was an entertaining episode but was remembered more for its 1943 production that opened with the pre-show announcement about the previous week's Sorry Wrong Number production. That took away from appreciating how good the episode is. This may be the best of the three with the casting of Mason. It is not a compelling Suspense episode but it is a very enjoyable detour from its usual fare.

This had to be one of Spier's favorite scripts as it was his fourth time using it. It was part of his Philip Morris Playhouse in the previous season, and starred Claude Rains. That production is unfortunately still missing.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Alan Ladd in Motive for Murder. He's a detective whose wife was found at the scene of a murder... in their own home! His boss looks the other way as he goes against protocol and investigates the crime. It's a set up... and it involves door-to-door sales of vacuum cleaners! Ladd is great in the part, replacing the originally cast Richard Widmark. If you enjoy Ladd's Box 13 like so many of us do, you'll really enjoy his performance here.

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

The effort is to understand the interaction of script, acting ability, effects, music, direction, editing, vision, time, relationships, and other intangibles that come together in a special chemistry to make superior productions. For that you have to be curious about when it doesn't work and grasp why. This allows us to earn an appreciation of the times when it does and and how it got there, and how challenging the process to do that was. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of recordings to listen to. As we are more than 80 years after the beginning of the series, the context of the times and the mechanics of the process fade away. It is important, especially for newer listeners, to have the opportunity to experience the best of those recordings and find out how it all worked. Then you can enter a discussion of the complexities why this series stood apart and why it is still so fondly remembered. I'd really be disappointed if their only contact with the series was Cat and Mouse, The Light Switch, Beyond Reason or even this one, and they gave up on the series. Savor the best of them instead.

Today's Suspense episode is One and One's a Lonesome with Ronald Reagan. An unscrupulous young man has a weakness for a quick buck and attractive women. This is Suspense, so those attributes won’t combine well but will make a good story. While the owner of a garage is away, the man starts an illegal casino in its back rooms. The owner comes back, hates the idea and wants it to stop, but the wife likes it and decides she likes the idea more than she likes the husband. You know where this is headed!

It's a one-hit-wonder script by 25-year-old Nelson Sykes who would go on to become a nationally-influential advertising and public relations executive, and a patron of the arts.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Blood Sacrifice with Joseph Cotten. The Dorothy L. Sayers story was first published in 1936. He plays an actor named “Johnny Scales.” His sudden circumstance has him choose a strange murder weapon of opportunity – a blood transfusion – against someone he has grown to despise. When listening you need the context of what was known about blood at the time, and the blogpost has some background. Just go along with the story and accept those technical details as being of their time.

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Cotten is always so calm and matter-of-fact when his characters are filled with evil, making the portrayal even more diabolical. When this was aired, the blood bank concept was only 13 years old and 1950 saw the first use of plastic bags for stored blood. Rh factors were not documented until three years after Sayles story was published.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Salvage with Van Johnson. It's a story about an ex-military pilot hired by a deep-sea treasure hunter who has no intention of sharing his discovery with anyone. Joe Kearns plays the despicable character. The ex-girlfriend of Johnson's character married this horrible man, and now she wants out. As usual, things are not what they seem and the story plays out in many unexpected ways. It's a great listen!

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

Today's Suspense episode is Six Feet Under starring movie musical star Dan Dailey. He plays a traveling carnival performer whose “act” is being buried alive. Then people pay to see him through a peep hole for 10 hours a day. At the end of the day. a worker, who happens to have romantic interest in this buried man's wife, digs him up. He has dinner, goes to sleep, has breakfast, and starts it all again the next day. But will the man who digs him up every day keep doing it? Maybe not... there's one turning point day that his air supply "malfunctions" and that changes everything. It's a hokey story premise, but it ends up as a really good story. Dailey's innocent victim status grows into seething envy and panic, page by page of the script. Don't underestimate this production. Bury your skepticism, but don't bury Dan Dailey's performance!

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

Today's Suspense episode is Pearls are a Nuisance. Raymond Chandler’s satirical send-up of detective mysteries has Ray Milland starring in the second production of this script. The past production, five years earlier, starred William Bendix as the chaser of the stolen jewels. Both productions, good in their own ways, can be accessed through the blogpost.

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The research efforts behind this project often yield many curious details. The original plan for this date was to have Arthur Godfrey star in a new production of Two Sharp Knives! Godfrey's appearance only made some trade publications. Milland's appearance in Pearls was inserted in plenty of time for newspaper listings to be correct. Godfrey would never appear on Suspense. Louis Jourdan was another pre-announced guest who never appeared on the series.

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

Today's Suspense episode is The Chain with Agnes Moorehead and written by scripting veteran Joel Murcott. She plays a jealous, selfish, nagging woman who sends chain letters to people associated with her husband’s workplace. They’re not getting along, and she does this to get under his skin. She pretends her actions are innocent and he’s making way to much about the consequences. The events she sets into motion go horribly and disproportionately out of control. The story turns so darkly, it was likely surprising to regular listeners.

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It is somewhat distracting to have one of the characters named “Burt Reynolds.” We know the real Burt Reynolds the actor of the same name and popularity from his movies and TV from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Murcott may have gotten the germ of the idea for the script from the news. Senator Taft of Ohio was running for re-election, and a grass roots movement of chain letters for contributions to the campaign started earlier that year.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Statement of Mary Blake and stars Joan Bennett. It's a good story about professional envy between married scientists, and Bennett's lab assistant character is framed for the wife's murder! The script is by Shirley Gordon, writer and assistant editor of TV-Radio Life magazine. She became a successful radio and TV writer, and became known for her 1970s children's books. But this is no kids story. Why is the husband so intent to have the secret poison the lab is developing have the "just right" amber color? Hmmmm.... Some of the story may seem a little obvious, but it's a very good plot and highly recommended listen.

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

Today's Suspense episode is The Man in the Room with John Lund. He's a mystery writer who's in a creative dry spell and decides to build a story around his situation. He starts with the typist whom he meets once and never sees again, and the very strange elevator operator in the office building where he delivers his draft manuscript. That leads to some impossible story elements of murder and deceit but they seem to keep coming true!

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Lund is superb in moving from the first person narrative style to dialogue. The script has its surprises and its affirmations. It's great fun if you don't take it too seriously and just enjoy being entertained. The author is known among classic radio fans as "Rush" from Vic & Sade. It's Billy Idelson, radio and TV actor, director, producer. He wrote this script with his big sister, Mary!

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

Today's Suspense episode is Angel Face as Claire Trevor returns in a Cornell Woolrich first published as "Face Work." This is a predictable B-movie style story presented in an very entertaining way. Her brother hangs around with the wrong girl and gets involved with gangsters, gets blamed for a murder and ends up in jail on Death Row. She's a chorus line showgirl, who risks her life to try clear her younger brother of the murder charge by getting a job in the mob's night club so she can get the evidence needed to prove his innocence. The cops think they've got the right evidence because of the mark of a signet ring on the victim... is it a "W" that convicts the brother? or is it an "M" that proves it was the mobster? or is it a different symbol or a number? And to cap it all off, there's the one cop who believes the brother is innocent despite his conviction and helps her out along the way. Get the popcorn and grab a seat in the front row! All this in 23+ minutes of drama plus the always fascinating Auto-Lite banter!

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

Today's Suspense episode is Very Much Like a Nightmare with Dennis O'Keefe. He portrays an employee who falls asleep at his desk, sleeps through the end of the workday, and when he wakes discovers that a burglary is in progress. He was sick, thought he took enough “stay awake” pills to function, got confused, and mistakenly took his sleep aids by accident. He wakes up at 2:15 in the morning! He tries to quietly call the police but is interrupted by the robbers and may not get to see the morning.

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The story is co-authored by 31-year-olds M. Carl Holman and John Michael Hayes. The latter went on to collaborate with Hitchcock on four hit screenplays. The former, a college professor in literature and writing, went on to become an influential, acclaimed, and highly esteemed civil rights leader and one of the founders of the National Urban Coalition in which he served until he died in 1988.

Suspense fans have known this episode to have sound quality challenges over the decades. Neither the network or AFRS recordings are available in pleasing sound. Today's recordings are "less bad" than those typically circulating. These are unsatisfying upgrades in many ways, but the hunt continues... perhaps the original discs, or a different AFRS disc, will turn up again and new transfers can be made.

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

Today's Suspense episode is A Case of Nerves with Edward G. Robinson. His character has a plan to murder his wife with an overdose of her painkilling medication. He travels to another city, rents a room under an assumed name, and tricks others that he is ill and gets the medication with his ruse. He returns home and begins the implementation of his nefarious plan. His impatience with the slow pace of the plan becomes his undoing. It's another good EGR performance and a good story with surprise conclusion that could easily have been adjusted for a episode of The Whistler.

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

Today's Suspense episode is The Case of Henri Vibard and stars Charles Boyer in his first appearance on the series. He portrays a man with no identity but he does have a bag packed with cash. To complicate matters, an investigation leads to the belief that he was murdered two years ago! That little black bag has $2.6 million today's value but he can't seem to remember where he got it. Years pass without a clue to his amnesia, without a single friend or relative coming forward to identify him. One day that changes: a woman convict, accompanied by prison guards visits him. She claims to be his wife, and is serving a life sentence for a murder that he committed!

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This is not a memorable fast-moving Suspense plotline. It is worth listening and moving on. It is decidedly average and could be on any other mystery series, except for the big star and the distinctive Suspense music. The composer and orchestra do their best to make it better than it is.

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

Today's Suspense episode is the amusing The One Millionth Joe about a publicity stunt that backfires in unexpected ways. Comedian Jack Carson expertly plays a publicity manager whose selfish interests are put way ahead of his client's. A stunt to award a bevy of prizes to the one millionth passenger at the local airport fails when the winner doesn't want any attention or the gifts. A woman he accidentally and unknowingly elbowed out of the honor demands the goodies she would have gotten. Both winners have secrets that drive their desire for privacy. The grand prize of a free plane ticket to anywhere is so very enticing and confusing.

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This is Suspense just for the fun of it. Stick with the story and chuckle along with the rampant mental reservations and laughable dishonesty and the truth befuddles the process. (One of the prizes is to a "lion farm," an inside joke to the Los Angeles locals... the truth behind it is in the blogpost).

NOTE: Starting April 4, the Suspense Project will be on a break for about 10 days. Other radio projects need some attention in the meantime.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Love, Honor or Murder. Elliott and Cathy Lewis star in a Larry Marcus script that has greed as its impetus. He's a cabbie whose regular customer left a wallet in his cab with $155,000 in today's money. She sees a chance to keep it and have no one be the wiser. He's reluctant but is bullied into a murderous cover-up of the theft. Then things start to go wrong... The Lewises are convincing as the hateful and ethically corrupt couple, and they're probably having great fun together as they perform in a very good script.

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Just days before this broadcast, Lewis was named as Suspense producer for the upcoming Fall season.

NOTE: Starting April 4, the Suspense Project will be on a break for about 10 days. Other classic radio projects require some attention.

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

NOTE: an early version of this 1950 Spier-Macdonnell zip file did not include Love, Honor or Murder. If you downloaded after 11am EDT on 4/3/2024, you have the updated zip file that has it.
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Today's Suspense episode is True Report with Pat O'Brien. It's the first broadcast of the Elliott Lewis era of Suspense. He's a cop who is investigating a hit and run accident and realizes his own son may be the perpetrator. It's a good story about a police officer whose promotion and job are on the line along with his ability to trust his son to do the right thing. O'Brien's good performance is in a fine script by future Hitchcock screenplay writer John Michael Hayes and radio writing legend E. Jack Newman.

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The blogpost includes background about the Lewis years and how Suspense adapted to the many changes in media entertainment and the rise in television adoption in that time.

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

Collector, performer, and researcher Keith Scott adds this comment:

I recently went through my Sam Spade logs and noticed an interesting fact. When William Spier went to NYC in mid-1947 to do the three Suspense and four Spade from Manhattan, he missed one Suspense in Hollywood: 1947-06-19 Dead of Night. As I noted in the log Elliott Lewis directed a Spade episode for 1947-06-15 and Charles Vanda did the 1947-06-19 Suspense. It only now struck me that as early as two years before he became a full-time producer-director for CBS, Lewis was highly enough regarded by Spier to fill in on that Spade show. I also had forgotten that Lewis also filled in for Spier on three 1950 dates for Spade: 1950-06-18, 1950-06-25 and a few weeks later on 1950-08-27, just days before the broadcast of True Report, Lewis’s first aired Suspense episode! And Lewis did a final Spade sub for Spier on 1950-12-29, at NBC!! They were obviously pretty close pals even if they totally different personalities.

Today's Suspense episode is Over the Bounding Main and stars Dan Dailey. It's a good one! His wife (Georgia Ellis before her Kitty days in Gunsmoke) is conspiring with the captain of a fishing boat (a cold and calculating William Conrad) so they can run off together with the insurance money from her husband's fatal "boating accident." Dailey's character avoids the "accident" and gets wise to the nefarious plot against him. But he's virtually helpless because the ship's mate who might help him has been drugged by the captain. Now, the captain is resorting to a harsher and more certain action against him.

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

Today's Suspense episode is The Crowd with Dana Andrews in a story by Ray Bradbury. He's a police lieutenant trying to find the person who appears in the crowd that gathers around the accidents and misfortunes of others. He taunts the police into finding him. It is an exceptional and compelling production with fine performances by Andrews and Joe Kearns as the killer. It strays, however, from Bradbury's original and insightful intent.

The Bradbury short story was adapted by radio veterans Mort Fine and David Friedkin. It likely frustrated him. His commentary about the disturbing human instinct that assembles do-nothing onlookers at scenes of tragedies was inspired by a childhood incident. It was transformed into to a police procedural about the hunting down of a serial killer, instead. It's still a great listen. Ray got to produce it the way he wanted in his 1980s cable TV series.

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BLOGPOSTS WILL RESUME ON MONDAY, APRIL 22 AS WE PAUSE TO ALLOW FOR ADDITIONAL RESEARCH TIME.

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

Today's Suspense episode is Fly by Night. Joseph Cotten returns in a George and Gertrude Fass story adapted by Morton Fine and David Friedkin. The story has a bit too many "it just so happens" coincidences in its conclusion, but Cotten’s fine performance as a businessman being framed for murder rises high above the script's issues.

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