Re: Suspense Upgrades

by greybelt 4/23/2024, 6:38 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Rose Garden and stars Miriam Hopkins in her only series appearance. She plays a newly widowed woman who dies one of the strangest deaths presented on the series. It’s a fine and often underappreciated presentation. As a listener, you’ll start to feel as trapped and claustrophobic as Hopkins’ character does in encounters with the strange tenant who keeps taunting her as amusement. The original story, called "Miss Bone," was by Australian novelist and playwright Sumner Locke Elliott and adapted by Antony Ellis. Elliott was a long-time fan of Hopkins and was thrilled when he learned she would star in the broadcast.

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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!

This is one of those episodes where you see the author's name and say "who?" Had no clue who Elliott was, and it turns out he was fairly successful in 1950s Hollywood. The blogpost has background that as an Australian he was asked to adapt British stories for radio because he understood the dialect better that Americans did, even if it wasn't his own. RadioGoldindex has not other radio listings for him, but does have soundtracks from kinescopes for Studio One that he did.

Had a stubborn tape yesterday. I had tried it a couple of weeks ago with a day or so of baking in the dehydrator. Failed. Did it again. Failed. Finally had to resort to a wet rag. Worked.

by greybelt 4/24/2024, 5:14 am

Today's Suspense episode is Rave Notice with Milton Berle. Future Oscar-winner James Poe wrote the story. An actor becomes angry at a play’s director when he is replaced in the cast. He decides to murder him, then act insane to avoid conviction, incarceration, and execution. This was technically Elliott Lewis' first Suspense production since the drama portion was recorded on 1950-07-21.

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Berle’s TV success was growing rapidly, and the 1950-1951 television season had some of his best ratings. Baby boomers may no longer hold Berle in high regard, but at the period of this broadcast he was at the top of his game. If you’re curious about what all the Berle fuss was about, this episode shows that he was a talented performer before his career and celebrity began to ebb.

The Internet Archive link in the blogpost has the network broadcast and a KNX aircheck. The sound is not as crisp on either recording.

Berle, Conried, and Price all performed this script. My favorite is Conried. They each bring their personality into the role. I was never a Berle fan, but have always been curious about his importance in TV's adoption. Karl Schadow is helping find the Quick magazine photo of Berle in rehearsal that was teased at the end of The Rose Garden. We thought it was in the Sept 25 1950 edition, but it was not. But that issue had a Berle feature with the quote from columnist Robert Sylvester: "Nobody likes Berle's work, except his mother and the public." When I get the Quick magazine item, I will post it here.

There was a joke going around about Berle's TV show stimulating sales of televisions. It was "My brother-in-law saw Berle's show and sold his television. My uncle saw Berle's show and sold his television, too. My..."

And then there was his dreadful SNL appearance.

by greybelt 4/25/2024, 10:56 am

Today's Suspense episode is Barbara Stanwyck portrays a notorious gangland beauty, a favorite of the local crime reporters. She who comes home one day to find a murdered man on the floor of her apartment, surrounded by police. It is another entertaining offering scripted by future Hitchcock screenplay writer John Michael Hayes in collaboration with radio scripting legend E. Jack Neuman. It’s an audio B-movie about gangsters and their distrust of each other. It’s a good script, and performance, with cartoonish gangster cliches worth chuckling over. While not a Suspense classic, it’s a very worthwhile listen. It's another example of how Suspense is not for kids because of its violent and nasty (but well-earned) ending.

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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 Good Old Days of Radio podcast is Post Mortem.
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by greybelt 4/26/2024, 3:33 am

Today's Suspense episode is Too Hot to Live with Richard Widmark. He's an unemployed drifter who inadvertently finds himself in a strange town and ends up accused of murder. There are many intense narrative segments that would challenge many actors, but Widmark does it all so well. Lewis considered him one of his best and most reliable Suspense performers.

Suspense is not for kids: some of the dialogue here is steamy, almost like it's an audio version of the 1981 movie Body Heat. The script is by ex-dockworker (and ex-dance instructor) Sam Rolfe, in the early stages of his scripting career. His future successes would include co-creation of TV's Have Gun, Will Travel and writing and producing assignments for The Man from UNCLE, and more.

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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!

Here's the Berle item from Quick Magazine of 1950-10-09 that was the teased for Rave Notice in the closing announcements of The Rose Garden. It's the same publicity photo used in newspapers. The papers just cropped it to a head shot. This is larger and shows him holding a prop gun. No big deal. It's a letdown. When I saw it I called it a Peggy Lee photo... you know her big song... "Is That All There Is?" The tease implied it was more than one photo and that it was showing Berle rehearsing. Peggy... sing for us please...

But Karl Schadow surprised me with a nicer Quick item from 1950-04-03. I had not seen some of these photos before. [Love the Jordans photo]

The editors use the "fear of ad libs" gimmick again, like they're all walking a tight rope and these entertainers can't control the urge to blurt out things when on stage or before a microphone. One thing that's forgotten in the whole thing: there's no audience in the studio. Those ad libs or supposed ad libs would be done in their comedic lives to get a rise out of a live audience. And another thing: they have a script to attend to... they may be starring in a script but they're not the star of the broadcast. When they were on their own shows, their scripts were written for them. When they're on Suspense they're performing in a script written for the series, and not specifically for their talents or persona. They're on Suspense to play in roles that they're not known for, so they always had an incentive to be on their best professional behavior.

by greybelt 4/27/2024, 8:53 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Victoria Cross with Herbert Marshall. The story is about honor, envy, betrayal, truth, and a tragic murder. It is not a simple murder mystery: its complexity may not be fully grasped without multiple listenings. It has exceptional use of music that might seem annoying at first until you realize it is a creative approach to indicating the psychological turmoil of Marshall's character. He has pretender syndrome, what is currently considered PTSD, is a drug addict, and has other issues and circumstances about which he is blackmailed. Savvy and cynical adult listeners would realize what was going on. It is likely that others who heard the live broadcast did not grasp the full and dark context if their listening was interrupted or were passive listeners.

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Aside from the story's complexity, this has been an underappreciated episode because it has always circulated in noisy sound and/or narrow range. That sound has been improved, and as such helps reveal much nuance. Some story elements may have been shocking to the 1950 audience had they been stated explicitly (and the censors or Auto-Lite may have killed it). Gil Doud and Antony Ellis skillfully related the unsavory nature of the events without being blunt about them. That itself adds mystery and tension to the storyline.

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!

by greybelt 4/28/2024, 6:24 am

Today's Suspense episode is Blood on the Trumpet with William Holden and includes the famous trumpet musician, Ziggy Elman. It’s a superb production with a satisfying surprise ending.

Holden plays a New Orleans jazz musician in an unhappy marriage with financial and other problems. He meets a young woman at the jazz club who adores him and his music. He confronts his wife, tells her that he's leaving. A physical confrontation begins and she falls and hits her head... he thinks he accidentally killed her. He flees the scene, but is soon arrested. He learns that things were much different than he thought, and he's being framed for the wife's murder!

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The blogpost has details about scripter Richard-George Pedicini and how this episode was “a turning point in my career.” You can hear him talk about this episode in a short clip from a 1996 interview. There are also links to information about Ziggy Elman... and how his trumpet is preserved and now has a home in Texas.

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 Blood on the Trumpet recording is superb. Be sure to download it.

There is a Pedicini interview clip on the Internet Archive page. It's just 1:38, and worth listening to.

Too Hot to Live was taken down by Google Blogger. As usual, there is no indication of the reason other than a violation of the spam policy. Changed a few random words. It was taken down at 3:28am ET Sunday morning 4/28. I noticed that at 5:13am, and did my revision. If it's not allowed back in, I'll create a web page for it.

by greybelt 4/29/2024, 10:39 am

Today's Suspense episode is the classic episode On a Country Road. It stars Cary Grant and is written by a one-hit-wonder scripter who became a prominent newspaper journalist. This story generated legitimate shudders among the 1950 audience than it would today, when there were warnings about nefarious hitch-hikers, cars were more prone to breakdowns, GPS was a sci-fi dream, and phones were at a physical location that could be far away and hard to find, and definitely not in your pocket.

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It's a superb story and presentation. It was done four times on the series, and also on the Suspense television series. This production with Grant is considered the best of all. (A link to the TV kinescope recording is in today's blogpost. The show featured John Forsythe and Mildred Natwick).

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!

Too Hot to Live blogpost is still down.

In the Pedicini sound clip for Blood on the Trumpet, he mentions that William Conrad was cast in the production. He was planned to portray “Angelini,” but the role was shifted to Joe Kearns when Conrad became unavailable. Pedicini was obviously remembering the original casting as he was commenting.

by greybelt 4/30/2024, 2:59 am

Today's Suspense episode is Going, Going, Gone, and features Ozzie and Harriet. It's an odd comedic story about buying a steamer trunk at an auction for $3 that turns out to be loaded with valuable jewels. When someone shows up at their door and offers $100,000 for it ($1.3 million in today's money) and there's a long, black limousine down the street, they start getting a bit concerned about their future. This is not classic Suspense, for sure, but is a story just for the fun of it. It has some twists and turns to keep listeners amused in a light mystery.

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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 recording sounds superb, and is a good upgrade if you're been following along.

Too Hot to Live is still blocked on the blog site with a note to me that it's being reviewed. It is so very bizarre. I set up a blogpost that links to a Google Sites page with the original post in case you missed it [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
It's claimed to have violated the community guideline for spam, which reads "Do not spam. This may include unwanted promotional or commercial content, unwanted content that is created by an automated program, unwanted repetitive content, nonsensical content, or anything that appears to be a mass solicitation." How it does is beyond me. I doubt a human has intervened yet.

Tomorrow's post is Lady in the Red Hat. It is so very disappointing. It happens. Shame that they wasted Van Heflin on it or is it that it's a shame Van Heflin wasted his time on it. But it made me think how good these first episodes under Lewis were before we got a clunker.

by greybelt 5/1/2024, 3:07 am

Today's Suspense episode is The Lady in the Red Hat. It stars Van Heflin, whose usual fine performance can't rescue this subpar script. He's a newspaper reporter whose articles probe the psychological aspects of serial murder. The ending is obvious because there's not enough characters in the story to create legitimate suspicion among others to culminate in a satisfying surprise ending. The Lewis era began with some marvelous productions. This wasn't one of them. Hey, it happens. The next episode gets things back on track.

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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!

This is one of those situations where you have a bad episode in great sound. My usual question: why couldn't this be a missing episode so we might think more highly of it?

Finished transferring Theater Five tapes from yesterday. Nice set coming in a few weeks. And coming on August 3rd there will be a 60th anniversary marathon at the Stay Tuned America streaming station.

In a few more days, the Lewis 1950 shows will be complete and available.

Too Hot to Live blogpost still unrestored.

by greybelt 5/2/2024, 4:47 am

Today's Suspense episode is After the Movies with Ray Milland. He portrays a juror in a murder trial who becomes involved with thugs in a bribery scheme to ensure there's a mistrial. The superb story was by Jack Finney. Just a few years later his sci-fi novel would become the highly successful film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s an excellent production that includes William Conrad as the police detective who realizes there's more to the story than he's being told.

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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!

by greybelt 5/3/2024, 4:52 am

Today's Suspense episode is A Killing in Abilene with Alan Ladd. He plays a lone horseman tracking down his brother's murderer. His goal is to bring the killer before a court rather than a quick revengeful confrontation. After two years of searching, he arrives at strange town where he has heard the killer is hiding. It’s a good story, and Ladd is good in it. The story has a “Gunsmoke feel” though that series is months away from its debut.

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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 blogpost details issues with the spelling of the show title.

I had more than one "from disc" copy of this episode and none of them were really satisfactory. It did clean up but is not as crisp as one might hope. It sounds much better after some of the adjustments. I wonder if there was a storage issue or if the disc was not cleaned prior to transfer. No AFRS copy is around to compare it to.

Too Hot to Live blogpost remains blocked.

Worked on some AFRS Whistler yesterday. I'm not sure if any of these are "new" versions yet. What continues to be interesting as reels of shows are transferred is how off speed so many recordings were. It was rampant. It was the result of consumer reel equipment that was not matched well when copies were made. There was always the assumption that what was recorded on a consumer deck would be replayed on that very deck. So even if a consumer had two decks of the same model, and one deck was 1% fast and the other was 1% slow, when a copy was traded to another collector and then that copy was traded to someone who had a 2% fast deck and then they made a copy on a 1% slow deck, it is easy to see that random deck pairing could eventually compound into speed issues.

Spent about 45 minutes on a Zoom recording session with Larry Groebe yesterday. A small portion of those minutes will end up in the introduction of the Project Audion production of The Life of Nellie James recreation that will be released next Friday, 5/10/2024. Will send links when available.

Will take another few days break after the 1950 Lewis shows are done. Almost there!

by greybelt 5/4/2024, 4:33 pm

Live at 6:30pm US EDT 5/4/2024 Suspense discussion with Keith Scott and Dr Joe Webb -- join us on YesterdayUSA Blue network. Stream it at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
or through other services such as TuneIn.

Just before we start they will play the episode "The Man Who Couldn't Lose" with Dan Duryea. Then we will be discussing all kinds of topics... and you can call in too!

by greybelt 5/5/2024, 5:08 am

Today's Suspense episode is Christmas for Carole, a sentimental story that stars Dennis Day. It's one of those seasonal shows that has the ending you'd expect about the change of heart for the main character. He's in trouble, believes a criminal act is the way out of it, does it, and then repents... and then sings. It's a simple story with a mildly surprising ending and a break from the weekly Suspense seriousness.

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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!

by greybelt 5/6/2024, 1:44 am

Today's Suspense episode is A Ring for Marya and stars Cornel Wilde in a story about arson, fraud, and a despicable husband who wants to get out of his marriage. He's such an awful guy he convinces his wife she's the right person to commit arson at their store so they can collect the insurance money. It's a good story, not a series classic, but a good performance about an evil man by Wilde. And, Larry Thor plays a detective whose name is not Clover!

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FYI it's time for another brief hiatus for Suspense research and to continue preparations for the 60th anniversary of Theater Five. The usual Suspense posts will resume in about a week. I'll post some other things here and there 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!

The Too Hot to Live blogpost is still blocked. I was able to request another review. Still nothing.

Saturday's visit on YesterdayUSA was great fun, at least for me and Keith Scott. Awaiting an audio file I can post for those who missed it.

Ended up missing a day for a post because Internet Archive had server issues so I could not post Christmas for Carole for a few hours. It obviously did get posted.

I had not listened to A Ring for Marya in a very long time. Was better than I remembered it.

Next up is Alibi Me and the story about "Therd Jefre" gets to be told on a more formal basis. I'm still amazed it turned out to be two mid-30s sisters in Brooklyn living at home with their mother and their adult brother. There was a housing shortage, remember.

by greybelt 5/7/2024, 11:42 am

Keith Scott and I were on YesterdayUSA for a discussion about Suspense (and some fun!) Saturday evening.

The audio can be downloaded at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] The link is good for the next 7 days.

The 2-hour segment begins with the 1947-12-12 The Man Who Couldn't Lose with Dan Duryea (a really good tongue-in-cheek episode that fits Duryea perfectly). Then we join in with hosts Larry and John Gassman and Walden Hughes and questions from the audience. Thanks to everyone who joined in and for the permission to post this and make it available to all.

by gathol 5/7/2024, 4:58 pm

For my final post from the AFRTS Archive I have posted 3 episodes of the AFRTS series Adventure Theater in the sharing shows from my collection thread. All 3 episodes are from Suspense if there is any interest in them. I hope doing the link like this works.

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