Re: Suspense Upgrades

by greybelt Thu 21 Nov - 5:56

Today's Suspense episode is Murder Aboard the Alphabet, A MISSING EPISODE from 1955. It was found in a cache of AFRS discs that a group of collectors purchased in 2023. It is now available for the very first time with this blogpost. It is a new production of a 1947 broadcast that originally featured John Lund and Joe Kearns. In this one, it's William Conrad and Vic Perrin. The ship captain with obsessive compulsive disorder is played by Conrad. He demands that ship maintenance and operations be performed in alphabetical order. When crew members are found murdered, the captain is a suspect because they are were killed in alphabetical order! Could the captain really be the killer? Or is it a crew member who seeks to use the captain’s quirky habit to hide their vile acts?

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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!

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by greybelt Fri 22 Nov - 5:10

Today's Suspense episode is Final Payment with Harry Bartell. He's got an Army buddy who concocts an insurance fraud scheme that is a sure thing will take time and patience to implement. They have anticipated every contingency to make the ruse as authentic as possible and not raise suspicions. Bartell's character moves his family, takes a job in their new town, buys a car… and an insurance policy. The day finally comes… and his buddy is hit by the car as planned... and it looks like the scam will work. As planned, the case goes to court where they expect their big payday. But something quite unexpected happens... The script is by Richard-George Pedicini and Phil Cole, and adapted by Antony Ellis.

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THERE IS A NEW AFRS RECORDING THAT IS AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE NETWORK RECORDING.

NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They will be returning soon.

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 mjnunes84 Fri 22 Nov - 14:15

Still catching up on listening, and just got through 1954-04-26 The Bertillion Method, with Charles Boyer. I don't think it's mentioned in the blog post, but I believe this story was also used on the Hallmark Hall of Fame 2-13-55, also with Charles Boyer. I have not compared the broadcasts to see if the script is the same or if it was revised for Hallmark.

by greybelt Fri 22 Nov - 17:01

Bertillion appears to be the same according to RGI details:

78935. The Hallmark Hall Of Fame. February 13, 1955. CBS net. "Alphonse Bertillion". Hallmark. Charles Boyer, Edward Arnold (host), Frank Goss (announcer), William Froug (producer, director), Morton Fine (writer), David Friedkin (writer), Vic Perrin, Byron Kane, Herb Butterfield, Betty Harford, Edgar Barrier, Jane Webb. 29:09, Audio Condition: very good audio, complete.

I have check various sources and cannot find this in WAV or FLAC. If you find a nice copy I'd appreciate it.

And... I will add whatever notes you have to the blogpost... and your name and thoughts will be in electrons... forever!

by kdmarket Fri 22 Nov - 18:25

The Hallmark Hall Of Fame. February 13, 1955. CBS net. "Alphonse Bertillion

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by greybelt Sat 23 Nov - 6:34

THANKS kdmarket FOR THE HALLMARK RECORDING!
Very much appreciated... and thanks mjnunes84... I will update blogposts in the coming weeks. I'll try to freshen up the recording, too. I wonder how many more of the Suspense Fine & Friedkin scripts made it into the series.

Today's post:

Today's Suspense episode is Study of a Murderer, the second and likely best broadcast of an exceptional Arthur Ross script. It is superbly cast with Charlotte Lawrence and William Conrad; they are extraordinary together. This is not one of those episodes where you can listen in the background and catch all of its subtleties; when you listen in the car or other setting, make sure you have time for uninterrupted listening. Conrad’s acting range may be surprising since he is so often cast in strong roles on Gunsmoke and his TV series, or sinister roles on Escape, The Whistler, and other series. This episode is about the mental illness of a husband, and we hear his condition deteriorate with almost every minute, all through the script, and Conrad’s portrayal. We suffer with his wife, who after only two years or marriage has to come to terms with his need for psychiatric care. The time of being happy newlyweds was incredibly and tragically brief.

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NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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 I Was a Communist for the FBI Kickstarter for Carl Amari's Ziv restoration was funded with three days to spare. For those wondering, in rough proportions, about 1/3 of the funding comes from the hobby, the other 2/3 come from listeners to his weekly syndicated Saturday evening radio program, Hollywood360. It is easy to get discouraged sometimes when it seems our fellow hobbyists are no longer active for various reasons (health being one of them for a few I know), but we do need to be encouraged when we hear news such as this. There are many others who are interested in classic radio as entertainment and in preservation efforts. As for IWaC4tFBI, I have heard some of the new recordings and they are often quite stunning. Favorite Story will be the next project, and I think Philo Vance will follow that. (But that always makes me think of Soupy Sales' skit "Philo Kvetch.")

I have heard from Cobalt's beloved Toebig (Tom Elkins). He is still having medical issues from the cascade of problems he has had this year with flu, COVID, and other things that just take longer to recover from as you become older. I check in every few weeks and he sent this note [abridged and edited for privacy]:

I appreciate your concern... About all I can do for OTR is listen. This last two weeks have been very painful for me. My next step in... treatment is [being decided by my doctors]. Give everyone my love and prayers. Take care and GOD bless, Tom

He has been so generous and supportive to many of us and the hobby for a very long time. Please think of him at Thanksgiving time this year.

It is hard to believe there have been about 550 episodes that are already profiled in the blogposts. That means about 400 more to go. At the same time I'm working on the audio processing of the shows, and I am almost done with 1955. The switchover from archived transcriptions to archived recording tape starts with Waiting. That's when the haphazard sound occurs from episode to episode. The network recordings where someone was able to get access to the tapes are marvelous. Getting out tape noise and brightening them us results in very rich and pleasing sound. But there are obviously situations where that did not occur, and we have bad airchecks. Last year there was an offering of AFRS discs from around this period and later, and they really upgraded the sound quality. The Cellar and Remember Me are among the massive upgrades.

As far as listening, I'm just starting the Robson era. Why he used The Doll for the first episode is beyond me, except for the publicity around 11-yr old Patty MacCormack's guest role and the interest in the movie A Bad Seed. It is a dark, Twilight Zone-ish script with no happy or even puzzling ending. The script is by Peggy Chantler, a very active freelance writer for some radio and mostly television, but her only Suspense script. I am trying to find out if the script was commissioned for this very appearance, but I have had no luck doing so. It seems too "perfect" a fit for the new interest in the series that CBS suddenly had, and Robson's producing reinstatement with the radio division. Interviews and profiles about MacCormack's "career" made a point to emphasize the movie and the radio appearance and how the latter was a pretty big deal. I checked IMDb and MacCormack is still getting involved in projects here and there. If anyone has an idea about the background of the script in this regard, it would be appreciated. I have requested a copy of the script because it seems that the surviving recording is short, and may be missing the content of the mid-show break, and perhaps something else. Robson makes some claims at the beginning of the program about what a big change the show was making to move to tape production. Let's call him a "hyperbolist" in making such a claim, since tape was becoming rampant a year or so before, and Elliott Lewis took advantage of it in his tenure.

by greybelt Sun 24 Nov - 3:38

Today's Suspense episode is The Operation, a tension-filled episode that stars Hy Averback and Mary Jane Croft. It's an excellent story by Charles Jacobs... and that was a mystery in itself... until now. A man is down on his luck and decides to rob his doctor's office as it nears closing time. But as that's happening, two men come into the office, one of them with a gunshot wound, demanding immediate treatment. That robber is mistaken for the doctor, and the nurse, who is the real doctor's wife, takes charge of the situation and guides the robber in pretending to operate as they buy time for help to arrive. Will it be in time? Who is this writer "Charles Jacobs" who wrote such a good script? The blogpost reveals all...

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NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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!

As we know from a recent post, "Charles Jacobs" is Antony Ellis.

The blogpost for Murder Aboard the Alphabet had 50% more "opens" than usual, and 2x as many file downloads. For most downloads, FLAC is more than half, but this one was 2/3 mp3. It's been interesting to watch how that relationship has been tracking and how FLAC has been growing.

The range of audio quality of 1955 recordings has been very wide. But for most every one I have been able to find a crisp sounding one. There are six collections that are being tapped for most of the episodes, and you can start figuring out who had the better equipment, and tape, and who was closer to the original source, and who was trading with whom. Some of the episodes were incomplete when they were first circulated. And then, suddenly, complete copies appeared. Makes you wonder why that happened.

Three more posts after this one for this week. Then next week there are two at the beginning of the next week (December 1 and 2) and then on December 3 the hiatus is announced with a blogpost that has links to the 13 most-accessed blogposts since the beginning of this project. The Hitch-hiker and the initial production of Sorry, Wrong Number are the top two.

by greybelt Mon 25 Nov - 4:04

Today's Suspense episode is A Killing in Abilene and stars Parley Baer. It is a second performance of the Gil Doud and Antony Ellis story about a lone horseman tracking down his brother's murderer. Rather than revenge, he seeks to bring the killer before a court where the evidence can be presented. In the conclusion, all the accusers realize that the killer was not who they originally believed. Justice is finally delivered. This role for Baer is far more authoritative than his portrayal of the often bewildered Chester of Gunsmoke. Baer was beloved among his peers, and was adored by radio fans at his appearances at radio conventions where he was generous with his time and his many stories of Hollywood radio and his other exploits.

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NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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 Tue 26 Nov - 7:26

Today's Suspense episode is Diagnosis of Death with Jeanne Bates and Larry Dobkin, a good race-against-time story by John Dunkel. A man accidentally overhears the terminal diagnosis of a patient, but he believes that report was meant for him. That bad news drives him to near suicide as the doctor and his wife desperately try to find him and prevent him from taking his life. The story is of its time when many diseases had little possibility of early detection and treatment options, unlike today. It was a more stirring (and disturbing) story topic for the listeners of almost 70 years ago than it is now. The story's premise seems less likely with today's tests, imaging technologies, treatments, and current emphasis on patient privacy procedures. These progressions would have been hard to imagine back then. Do they find him in time?

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NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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 Wed 27 Nov - 4:52

Today's Suspense episode is The Man with the Steel Teeth, one for the few broadcasts to also star its author, John Dehner. He plays an American reporter who escapes the incarceration and beatings of the Russian KGB who considered him a spy. He is picked up by the police after a cultural event, and charged with numerous crimes, including spying. They torture him but he never confesses. One morning he wakes up in his cell, but the door is open. He takes the opportunity to escape but always wonders if it was a set-up. He later learns that one of his captors wants to escape with him to the West. The story was originally used in the 1953-03-15 broadcast of Escape and starred Harry Bartell. And yes, steel teeth was a real thing. Dehner’s inclusion of “steel teeth” in the story may have come from late 1940s news reports about the dentures of a Czechoslovakian political figure. There were also sporadic news reports in the early 1950s that mentioned steel teeth had become “popular” in Russia, whatever "popular" means. (Sorry, Ipana, sorry, Pepsodent.)

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THE NEXT SUSPENSE PROJECT BLOGPOST WILL BE SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2024.

NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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 Yesterday at 5:49

Today's Suspense episode is Waiting, and features three of 1950s radio’s best actresses: Vivi Janiss, Helen Kleeb, and Charlotte Lawrence. Fans of the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar serials know their voices quite well from their frequent appearances there, as well as Gunsmoke. A man is awaiting execution and perhaps a call from the governor to save him from his punishment. Three women are alone, waiting, for that word, or for the execution to be made. As a listener, we are a fly on the wall, as we listen to his wife, Aline (Charlotte Lawrence), her mother, Mrs. Martinson (Helen Kleeb) and his sister, Harriet (Vivi Janiss), review what led everyone to this situation. The emotional discussion between them reveals many aspects of their relationships to him and each other. Listen carefully and pay attention to the identity of the character speaking and when... it is easy to lose track, but it's worth the extra effort to catch this fine psychological drama. If you multitask with this in the background, you may lose track. The bottom line: the story is full of lies, and the truth finally surfaces in the end.

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THERE WILL BE AN IMPORTANT PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024.

NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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!

Great! I come home from a Thanksgiving trip, start up my desktop, and get

"This sign-in option is disabled because of failed sign-in attempts or repeated shutdowns. Use a different sign-in option, or keep your device powered on for at least 2 hours and then try again."

No clue how this happened. But luckily this blogpost and some of my other work is in the cloud in one way or another, and I can use my laptop to access things. I can still function for a little while. Ugh! The two hours might work but what I see online as I try to fix this is not that encouraging as I play "beat the clock" to get ready for the shoulder fix. Double-ugh! [Update: It did start after the 2 hours. Now I have to read up on how to never let it happen again.]

Thanksgiving messes up your sense of the order of days. "Thanksgiving eve," aka Wednesday, feels like Saturday, then Thanksgiving feels like Sunday, and the Thanksgiving Friday feels like Saturday, and then you get another Saturday right after it, and then you get Sunday... just a few days after you already had one!

To preview the announcement of Tuesday, go to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] but don't pass it around yet. It's still being edited.

Murder Aboard the Alphabet 1955 version piled up the page views and is now the third-most viewed blogpost behind The Hitch-hiker and the 1943 Sorry, Wrong Number. Even though it's a repeat performance, it's still a new Suspense and shows the strong interest in the series. The missing Beetle and Mr Bottle will be posted soon, and the "truly missing" The Eavesdropper will be, too. All in due time. There will also be a massive upgrade of The Cellar because of the AFRS disc that was in the same batch of transcriptions. Lots of good stuff ahead.

Anyway, in that preview post mentioned above, I did not include Murder Aboard the Alphabet as part of the top 13... but the link is at the bottom of that page, and it would actually qualify. There were some really great posts that should be highlighted and get attention once more.

I figured I would be so reliant on painkillers after surgery that if Google Blogger blocked a post with so many hyperlinks as being "spam" that I would not be in the best frame of mind to deal with the review process. Those painkillers make you very overconfident and totally incompetent at the same time. The last thing I need is to be in charge of a keyboard. I thought setting up a Google Sites page would limit the possibility the blogpost being suspended. Hope it works!

I had to listen to Waiting four or five times, most of those at the gym working on thwarting my knee arthritis, and I was never certain I was catching it all. I had to track it carefully in the end. As mentioned in the blogpost, it would have benefited from a little dose of Hummert:

I am Mr Keen.
Mr Keen, the famous investigator?
Yes, that's me.
Saints preserve us! Mr Keen is the tracer of lost persons!
I'm looking into the disappearance of Mrs Smith, the wife of the famous philanthropist who contributed to many worthy causes.
Do you mean Mrs Pauline Smith who was married to the man who so generously gave money to the needy?
Yes, Pauline, who married Mr Smith after they met at a fundraiser for poor children, one of the many causes he so graciously supported from his great wealth.

If you listen to enough Hummert stuff, the Bob & Ray Komodo Dragon sketch starts to sound like natural dialogue. But it was there for a reason, because people were often doing other things as they were listening to their radios, and they did not always tune in at the time the story was beginning, so they needed to be brought up to date. Jack Johnstone was a master of this in the 5-part YTJD shows. You could skip Monday through Wednesday, and on Thursday you could still get enough background to enjoy the cliffhanger. But Johnstone's was rarely stilted and awkward, but sometimes the Hummert shows were, and that's one of the things that makes them kind of adorable. Just don't miss Friday's YTJD. There's no recap on Monday Smile

by greybelt Today at 5:49

Today's Suspense episode is the second performance of Ray Bradbury's The Screaming Woman. This time it stars 13-year old Sherry Jackson who is best known by nostalgia fans for her roles in TV's Make Room for Daddy and in the original Star Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of? This story was adapted by Silvia Richards and first broadcast in 1948. A murderous husband disposes of his wife’s body prematurely. A young neighborhood girl is the only one who hears her screams under the dirt of a nearby dumping ground. Adults don't believe her, but she persists in her search for the woman, and soon puts her own life in danger.

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THERE WILL BE AN IMPORTANT PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024.

NOTE: The Internet Archive is back online. Blogpost pages have download links in MediaFire until the creation and editing features of Internet Archive are completely restored. They should return soon.

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!

After all these years, a hard copy of Network Radio Ratings 1932-1953 by the late Jim Ramsburg and published by McFarland came into my hands. (Wish I had it sooner when I could deal with the small font more easily). This is one of those heroic research efforts that looks easy to someone who never did any research projects. I was surprised there was so much commentary on each of the seasons. If you can find it, get it. Amazon has it for $44 (there are no used copies at a better price), but it's $10 as a Kindle book. Here are the ratings for Suspense that were compiled there:

The 53-54 season, not included in the Ramsburg book, can be found in the old book of ratings compiled by Harrison Summers, and that was 6.0. No ratings were reported for the series for 54-55 or 55-56, which is where the Summers book concludes. It's yet another reminder that these Ellis productions were unnoticed compared to prior years, and that we can enjoy them now. Notice how big the Anton M. Leader 48-49 season was... and then he was unceremoniously canned... I still think it was the combination of Holiday Story, the Crawford mess, and general dislike among the ensemble cast that coalesced against him. It was still a very good year.

The Summers book, published in 1958, is available for download [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Tomorrow is the "big announcement" for the hiatus to December 18. It's still getting last tweaks [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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