Re: Suspense Upgrades

by wich2 1/20/2024, 8:12 pm

Answered prayers, Doc.

Onward!
- Craig

by gathol 1/21/2024, 12:33 pm

Fantastic news greybelt - continued prayers and best wishes throughout your son's recovery.

by greybelt 1/24/2024, 11:24 am

The message I sent to some family was

Heart surgery Friday afternoon,
home for dinner Monday.
Burritos.

Priceless.

It looks like I will be able to restart posts sooner than anticipated. Not that I've had time to do any writing... been a chauffeur and errand boy these past few days with things moving so quickly. Far less empty hotel time than I believed... such as "none"... which is all good news.

Comments about The Light Switch would be greatly appreciated.

Saw this offered on eBay
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Not that I'd get it, but the backs of the photos always have interesting information and can usually be reliable sources for spelling of certain terms. So I always look with keen interest.

Thanks again, everyone!

by greybelt 1/28/2024, 8:46 am

Back home, and possibly with no further recovery trips required. We'll know more mid-week. It's so amazing that it's even possible.

Now that I'm back or at least can plan differently, I can settle back into a routine.

I looked at the traffic on the blogposts and decided that I'd re-post some of the most popular ones in hopes of finding new members of the social media audience who might have joined late and not be aware of the project. There are also some posts that had particular importance that did not have the traffic they should have had. I'll do those too.

The Suspense Project daily posts will be re-starting soon. Until then, I'll post some "repeats" of the posts that had the biggest traffic for those who might have missed them. This particular one has some new information added to it that makes its story more curious.

"The Lodger" was presented on the failed "pilot" of Suspense that was part of the CBS series Forecast. It has a strange history that disappointed CBS, listeners, critics, ad agencies, and potential sponsors, and almost killed any chance for the series to ever be broadcast.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The post has the background on how Hitchcock became involved and the production strategy that was so flawed that it repelled advertisers and never made the air. Suspense had to be re-formulated to something be very different than originally conceived. Top CBS executive Charles Vanda and his associate (someone named "William Spier") had to fight almost two years to get a revised version of Suspense on the air. No sponsor would come forward because the memory of the bad pilot led them to allocate their limited budgets to different programs.

Learn why a Hitchcock imitator was used on the broadcast... and who that was... where Hitchcock was when he listened to the program... and why the guest he had with him undermined the opportunity the show might have had!

THERE IS NEW INFORMATION since the original post of the episode profile. The author or co-author of the original script might have been a key Hitchcock associate who was not affiliated with CBS! Learn who that was...

If you go to the blog [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I've added labels (or "tags") for Cornell Woolrich, Lucille Fletcher, Orson Welles, and Ray Bradbury episodes. I'm trying to figure out what other tags would be appropriate for an author or a star. Also considering adding something like "Classic" or "Top" episode that's either really good or really important. Ideas appreciated.

My suspicion is that the posts can re-start on February 11, 2024 rather than the originally planned March 1.

Please, if someone can help with The Light Switch, let me know. Private message me and I'll send you the rough draft as it stands.

by greybelt 1/29/2024, 5:53 am

The daily Suspense Project posts will resume soon. One of the most-accessed posts in the last year was for THE HITCH-HIKER with Orson Welles. It's a fascinating Lucille Fletcher story that may have been the lowest rated performance of the script of the four times it was on the air! Because the Suspense recording was likely the first time modern classic radio fans ever heard it, it has always been associated with Suspense, and has a bigger following today in relative terms than it did in its era.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It almost never made it to the air. Welles first produced the script in 1941, and at this time in 1942 Welles was busy traveling and participating in WW2-related efforts and fundraising. There were very few announcements about the Suspense broadcast or the Welles appearance prior to broadcast. AND... there is a very funny in-side joke that made it into the production. The blogpost has lots of background about how the broadcast came together. The post has links to the recordings of the Suspense production and those of other series... with and without the inside joke! If you missed this blogpost when it was posted a year ago, catch it now!

by greybelt 1/30/2024, 9:43 am

The Suspense Project daily blogpost is returning soon.

Today's highlight is the earlier post about Sorry, Wrong Number that debunks the big myth about that May 1943 broadcast (there was no "perfect" west coast broadcast to correct the miscued line; there was one national broadcast). The blogpost explains why the show garnered the attention it did and paved the way for Suspense to be the franchise it became.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

After studying the patterns of decisions and meddling involved in series sponsorship, it seems clear to me that no sponsor would have allowed the show on the air with the ending that it had. In fact, the original ending was for the police to rush in and save Mrs. Stevenson. But that wasn't dramatic enough. So it got the ending it did, and good did not triumph over evil, and listeners did not believe what they just heard. The flubbed line was nothing. Mrs Stevenson was still dead and listeners just heard a vicious contract killer commit murder on the air as the end of the story.

And all of the titles that this show had.... none of them would ever been a classic. The original title "You Can Always Telephone" would never last as the name of a classic mystery franchise. Nor would "She Overheard Death Speaking." The history of Sorry, Wrong Number may be more interesting than its performance. Its gruesome ending, for its time, that no weak-kneed sponsor would have allowed, showed the potential power of the series. It dispelled the remaining residue of skepticism of the failed pilot, and captured the attention of agencies and sponsors. In just a few months, Suspense would become a big-budget sponsored series.

Check out the blogpost if you missed it the first time... and if you saw it then, it's a story worth repeating!

Still need help with The Light Switch. Listened yet again, and I think I solved some of the issues. I think it's down to one thing: the grey coat. Why is it missing from the closet? Did Skit have a similar coat all along? Did she plant it? Did the husband wise-up and plant it at Terry's apartment somehow? I don't think a good foundation for it was set. Please, please, comments.... What did I miss?

by chasedad 1/30/2024, 10:32 am

greybelt wrote:
Still need help with The Light Switch. Listened yet again, and I think I solved some of the issues. I think it's down to one thing: the grey coat. Why is it missing from the closet? Did Skit have a similar coat all along? Did she plant it? Did the husband wise-up and plant it at Terry's apartment somehow? I don't think a good foundation for it was set. Please, please, comments.... What did I miss?

Skit broke into her house and took the husband's grey coat from the closet. He had told her to be in the car across the street, watching the entrance to the alleged girlfriend's apartment house, so that she could witness the girl supposedly entering it with her husband at 7:30. He had told her that he himself might be a little late---presumably his plan was to enter the building with the girl, spend some time with her, then exit the building without being seen by the wife (through a rear exit, I guess?) and join her in her car. He did all this in order to collect the $500 she'd promised if he gave her proof positive that the husband was carrying on with someone. His plan apparently hinged on his resembling the husband from the rear and from a distance, with the stolen grey coat being the distinguishing characteristic that would convince the wife that she was seeing her husband, and not Skit, with the girl.

All of this could have been clarified with a couple of additional lines from the wife during her closing narration. Part of the problem is: this is a really poorly-written script. The wife's actions make zero sense from beginning to end. When we get to the drunken vaudevillian couple (!) practically holding her hostage and forcing her to listen to them sing "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and she screams "STOP IT! STOP IT!"....I knew exactly what she meant, I was tempted to switch off the episode. But I had to find out if the ending was as garbled as you'd said it was. (And it was.)

[Addendum: Or, maybe the girl was in on Skit's plan all along---it was established in the closing narration that they were boyfriend and girlfriend---and he didn't have to sneak out of her apartment in order to join the Claire Trevor character in her car. This is one episode where the listener gets to write the ending!]

by lasombra 1/30/2024, 11:15 am

Great explanation, chasedad!

by greybelt 1/30/2024, 11:43 am

Yes, but we get to hear Wally Maher sing! Smile

The script must have been flawed in other ways because the script cover says "revised by Bob Ryf" -- whom I believe worked in the CBS script department at the time (we know him more as "Robert Ryf" for YTJD 5-parters).

So I think they knew they were in trouble and they probably ran out of time to fix it.

The particular script is from the archive of the ad agency. I wonder what the submitted and first revisions looked like.

There is a subtle meaning to the title. "Switch" is also the killing of Skit rather than the husband.

Hey, that's not $500, that's $6500 in US$2024. Smile

(Still doesn't seem worth it)

At one point I think she was setting up Skit on purpose as part of the plan, knowing that Williams was two-timing her husband, and Skit was part of an extortion plot. She could get both of them.

But then we have the surprise at seeing that her husband was still alive. Was that reaction faked? Or did she mean it?

Despite it all Claire Trevor does well in it. But she couldn't save it.

Any reaction to these comments?

(The more you study this episode the more you wonder "why couldn't this be one of the missing episodes?")

by chasedad 1/30/2024, 12:05 pm

Wally Maher singing, sure, but you have to sit through that incredibly stoopid-with-two-o's scene in order to hear it. Claire Trevor's predicament here bears some resemblance to Van Heflin's in "3 O'Clock", but the execution certainly doesn't.

Interesting to learn that the script they ended up with was actually a revision...it certainly plays like something that was written in great haste without the luxury of time to examine it very carefully.

It only makes sense to drop that information that the husband's grey coat was missing---and that it was being worn by Skit at the time of his death---if they were trying to establish that the wife mistook Skit for her husband, not that she was onto his scheme and planned to kill him along with his girlfriend. (I'm using "makes sense" in the loosest possible definition of that term.) Her surprise when the husband turns up alive at the end is genuine.

And what kind of a name is "Skit", anyway?

by greybelt 1/30/2024, 1:57 pm

In my notes I have the difference in production compared to Three O'Clock. Yes, she is trapped and she has trouble getting out of circumstances of her own making, where as in 3O'C, Heflin's character is put there by others. But they are similar.

In terms of production, the frequency of flashbacks is much more in 3O'C and they are marked by the absence of the clock ticking. I wish there was better demarcation of past and present in this episode, but that wouldn't save it, anyway.

You can't even say there are plot holes or implausibilities. It's just sloppy.

As far as the name "Skit," that is an odd one. The closest I can find is that is Finnish, but that's a real stretch. It's made up.

Of course, I thought of Skitch Henderson, and Wikipedia explains his name as coming his musical ability as an arranger:

Lyle Russel "Skitch" Henderson (January 27, 1918 – November 1, 2005) was an American pianist, conductor, and composer. His nickname "Skitch" came from his ability to "re-sketch" a song in a different key. Bing Crosby suggested that he should use the name professionally.

None of the Internet sites about names and nicknames have anything close. I could sooner understand "Skip."

Why the script seems like a rush is beyond me. Suspense had a backlog of scripts, and Vodra was a freelancer. There was no vested interest in having to use his script. This is an indication of how important Robert Richards was in the pre-Auto-Lite era as show editor. There was no permanently assigned editor at this time. So the rush may have come from backing themselves into a corner in some manner and messing up the queue of scripts in process. Whenever there was a problem in the prior era, Spier always went to his file cabinet and grabbed a previously produced script he had confidence in. I still think the Leader year is one of the best of the series, but this is one that should be hidden under the rug and denied. (It is funny to me that this was 75 years ago and we're having such fun figuring it out).

I found a source for a different script version (I think). Anxious to see if this version was "less worse."

by chasedad 1/30/2024, 2:15 pm

It's a pretty strange choice of script alright, given, as you point out, that they wouldn't have been lacking for alternative options. It's not the dumbest script they ever performed---for my money I think that would probably be 1956's "The Twelfth Rose"---but the detective being made magically identical to the husband by the mere act of wearing his coat, and the wife failing to take almost everything imaginable into consideration in her murder attempt, and the appearance of the belligerent drunk neighbors at the climax, and all the blanks at the end that you're left to fill in for yourself, all help make this a way, way below average episode. I'd be very interested to hear what you find out about an alternative script, if you should be able to get ahold of it.

by greybelt 1/31/2024, 5:01 am

New blogposts for The Suspense Project will begin on February 11. Today, the focus is on the ground-breaking two-part production, Donovan's Brain starring Orson Welles. It showed that a primetime audience could be held for a second week, and that science fiction could have broad listenership. These broadcasts were the final guest star appearances of Welles on Suspense. (He did an inside-joke cameo in a later episode). But there's much more to this episode...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Welles had a bigger part in the production than star. After the broadcast of the Thursday eastern broadcast, Welles and producer William Spier were at dinner, and Spier had a heart attack. Ordered to bedrest, CBS called Robert Louis Shayon to the west coast to produce the show. But Welles had uncredited involvement in the script, production, and effects development, and a command presence in the studio. Welles held it all together while Spier missed the Monday west production of part one and the Thursday east and Monday west productions of part two. He had great affection and loyalty to Spier because he gave Welles his first radio acting job years before. They remained friends for many years and were collaborators in many early Suspense productions.

There's a lot more to the history of these broadcasts covered in the blogpost. Enjoy!

Thanks so much for the help on The Light Switch! The different script was received but it was the same second revision that we had. But... it was complete... It is likely the original and first revision were never in CBS files or given to actors, destroyed so as not to confuse the broadcast production. The copy had minimal markups. I love seeing old scripts with notations (and Ben Wright's doodles and Agnes Moorehead's to-do lists after the productions!).

February 11 is the day things return to the daily schedule. The recovery of our son after the robotic minimally invasive mitral valve repair was stunning. It's less than two weeks since surgery, his return home three days later, and now his clearance to return to full time on-site work on Monday February 5. Thanks so much to everyone for your thoughts and prayers and encouragement and personal stories of family members and even yourselves with heart surgeries of all kinds. They are all so very much appreciated. Now Greybelt the Younger and his wife can resume their newlywed life of plans and dreams and health together for years to come. And Greybelt the Elder and his wife can celebrate the 49th anniversary of their first date, Young Frankenstein, tomorrow with greater happiness, relief, and much gratitude.

by greybelt 2/1/2024, 8:30 am

New blogposts for The Suspense Project will begin on February 11. Today, the focus is on Fugue in C Minor with Vincent Price and Ida Lupino. It's a terrific Lucille Fletcher script. East and west recordings have survived but there's mild chaos during the Thursday east broadcast. You can sense it when Lupino is trying to encourage the child actors to read their lines at the right time. By Monday's west broadcast, all of the problems are gone, and it's a fine production.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

William Spier's absence may be the reason for the east broadcast's issues. He was still home recovering from his heart attack and was not running the rehearsals or the broadcast.

There's a grand speculation related to this episode and we may never know if it's true. We're still trying to learn if Joe Kearns was an uncredited organist for the episode. Kearns played the Wurlitzer at the downtown Salt Lake City theater years before moving to Hollywood. At the same time he was a fledgling actor and performer at KSL. He may have supplied music for some of the drama productions in the KSL studio, too. He is suspiciously absent from his announcing or acting assignments in this episode. His love for the instrument was underscored by his personal and expensive restoration of a Wurlitzer in his home in the 1950s.

This is a fine episode... listen to the west broadcast for its best performance. Enjoy!

by greybelt 2/1/2024, 7:06 pm

The episode Give Me Liberty had a magazine feature! The July 1949 edition of Radio Mirror included a short story version of this episode with the title “The Cuffs.”

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by greybelt 2/2/2024, 8:23 am

New blogposts for The Suspense Project will begin on February 11. Today, the focus is on Fury and Sound, a crazy episode with an inside joke premise that runs through it all. It stars Norman Lloyd. There's a narcissistic maniac radio producer in the control room who drives his actors and staff crazy. Are they making fun of producer William Spier? Yes! And he's in on the gag!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The script was prepared by William Spier's early career mentors, and had announced stars who didn't exist! (But we know who they really were!). Publicity for the show promoted Mark Humboldt as the co-star, and also mentioned Clifton Cromwell, both made-up names! The real cast is some of our favorite radio veterans. It's a grand roast of Spier, who appears at the end of the broadcast, as himself, in the character lampooned in the story.

The story can stand on its own, and is okay. Read the blogpost first to enhance the experience.

Getting back to transferring reels. One had an AFRS Philip Marlowe that I don't think is around in that form, and also an AFRS Whistler that is an upgrade of one currently circulating once I clean it up. When I first played the tape I saw the volume going down and down and the sound being more muffled. The oxide coating was so soft and sticky as it passed the heads the tape would also slow down. It would get stuck on the tape path when I would rewind it. I put it in the dehydrator for TWO DAYS at 125 degrees, perhaps a little more, and was able to get it to play!

Saturday night, Carl Amari will be playing a missing Inner Sanctum episode, The Front Page Murder 1948-11-08. It is an AFRS recording. One of the folks in "The Knights of the Turning Table" group who worked on the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection found it on eBay and a bunch of us kicked in something like 10 bucks each and got it. He insisted it be shared widely among OTR fans. Look for Chicago station WIND in your streaming services like TuneIn Saturday night. It looks like it will be the second hour, which I believe is 9pm ET. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by greybelt 2/4/2024, 5:46 am

New blogposts for The Suspense Project will begin on February 11. Today, the focus is on Short Order. It's a summertime broadcast that relied on radio pros as the cast, and not a big Hollywood star. While everyone who was anyone was on vacation sunning themselves somewhere, Joe Kearns, Gerald Mohr, and others were delivering a chilling performance of a John Suter script. He later became a successful mystery writer, but at this time he was a chemist for Union Carbide!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The music in the episode is used particularly well. It's a good listen with superb performances. Enjoy!

by greybelt 2/5/2024, 5:45 pm

The new Suspense Project blogposts begin again on Sunday, February 11. In the meantime, it's time to focus on the script that William Spier rejected, his wife told him to reconsider, which he did, changed the title, ran it at a time of year when listenership was low and Hollywood stars were on vacation and only radio actors were around, it won a Peabody Award, embarrassed the show sponsor out of their plans to cancel the series, and became a beloved episode then and still is now. It's Dead Ernest, of course. The story behind it is marvelous. The blogpost link is for the original broadcast and all the details.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It's a roller coaster ride of fear and chuckles that had many critics. They usually said Suspense was not for kids, and this episode proved it, in their minds. But we know lots of kids were listening at home when Mom and Dad weren't looking. The Suspense ensemble cast of radio pros put on a fine performance. Enjoy!

by greybelt 2/6/2024, 9:01 am

The new Suspense Project blogposts begin again on Sunday, February 11. Today the focus is on the second production of Lazarus Walks with Brian Donlevy and a very entertaining performance by Hans Conried. This is much better than the initial rushed performance and production from 1943 with Orson Welles. The effects and music are better and benefit from the bigger budget under Roma sponsorship.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It's a fun script that plays on the 1940s interest in psychic phenomena and psychology. Conried seems to be having great fun in his part, more fun than he had in the 1943 one. He plays a "human lie detector." And that's the truth!

The new Inner Sanctum I mentioned the other day is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by greybelt 2/7/2024, 9:31 am

Back in May I wrote a blogpost about how many times Suspense was on the verge of cancellation over its 20 years. I just updated that post -- it seems it was 8 times, including the final one in 1962 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I ran across some newspaper clippings and I realized how close the show was to being cancelled in 1951. That wasn't even included in my original blogpost!

CBS and other networks had convinced sponsors that they should sponsor TV and radio versions of series simultaneously. You just knew that wouldn't last long. The 1951 negotiation was where Auto-Lite tried to sponsor a cheaper radio show, My Friend Irma, and retain the Suspense TV sponsorship. CBS and Auto-Lite obviously came to an agreement after the 1951 season ended. I could find no rumored alternative sponsor for the radio program at that time. You could see how the radio+TV packages would not last long, and how TV was starting to get ad dollars away. Sponsors had a real problem. TV was only in big metro areas, and TVs were expensive. In 1950 only 10% of US households had TVs and they were only in those big metro areas. There was a lot of uncovered geography. So they still needed radio, but the question was how much. Radio ad dollars really started to crumble around 1953 when advertisers started to buy time on a spot basis more often than they would buy full sponsorships.

Auto-Lite would bail on the whole thing in June 1954, which was a shock at the time. They probably could have unbundled the radio and TV package if they pressed hard enough. The recession caused cutbacks at the company in all areas, so they had to bail on the whole thing. But they also started to rely less on consumers for their business and more as a manufacturer directly for the manufacturers of cars and many other kinds of equipment. With that distribution channel change, the need to advertise direct to consumers was greatly reduced.

I have to find the time and season when the radio program made the break toward more stories from real life. They really wanted to keep the radio and TV audiences and keep as much of the radio listeners engaged and not make a wholesale migration to TV. It seems like the idea was pushed by their ad agency.

by chasedad 2/7/2024, 10:43 am

greybelt wrote:
I have to find the time and season when the radio program made the break toward more stories from real life. They really wanted to keep the radio and TV audiences and keep as much of the radio listeners engaged and not make a wholesale migration to TV. It seems like the idea was pushed by their ad agency.

"The Truth About Jerry Baxter" (6-14-51) is the first episode that opens with Joseph Kearns announcing "You are about to hear a story suggested by actual events." This is repeated in the remaining two shows of the season before the show goes on summer hiatus. When it returns in August of '51 with "Report on the Jolly Death Riders" (8-27-51) Larry Thor has taken over announcing duties and the opening announcement has changed slightly to "You are about to hear a story based on actual events." This, or some variation of it, is heard in the opening moments of every broadcast for weeks afterwards, even for scripts where real-life inspiration is questionable at best (e.g. "The Evil of Adelaide Winters" and "The Flame"). "A Murderous Revision" (12-3-51) is the first of the surviving shows of the season to not claim a basis in actual events (all of the November 1951 shows are currently unavailable for listening). From that point on "Suspense" alternates between openly fictional scripts and ones that at least purport to be based on fact for the remainder of Autolite's sponsorship.

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

THANKS very much chasedad! Perhaps that's an indication of a bit of experimentation during the CBS/Auto-Lite negotiations.

We do have scripts for those November 1951 shows. They are each slightly different.

What does "based on fact" and all the other varieties of the wording mean? So many of the writers have told me over the years that their source of inspiration, especially on those "writer's block" days was the newspaper. They loved the quirky crime stories that played out in real life. By the time they would get done, the script may look nothing like the original story, but it was the spark of their creativity as they would create characters and situations to tell the story in 22-24 minutes of radio drama time.

Mission of the Betta used some of a 1943 Man Behind the Gun script. Robson and others on the cast of MBtG took a submarine ride in New York harbor for background of that story. Robson used that experience for writing this episode under his Red Channels pseudonym of the names of his sons, "Christopher Anthony." There are rumors of this episode being recreated sometime. I keep hoping for an AFRS version to be found.

by wich2 2/8/2024, 1:58 pm

The Wife and I love John Newland's TV ONE STEP BEYOND.

That series claimed to be different from ones like Hitchcock and TZ, in being based on reality...

Its creators admitted, later, that they interpreted that description very broadly (!), and usually didn't worry too much about researching any veracity.

- Craig

by greybelt 2/8/2024, 2:00 pm

For those wondering about these missing episodes...

The Trials of Thomas Shaw
This particular performance may be missing but it was performed again on 1955-11-15 as Once a Murderer. It is likely to be AFRS#386.

The Mission of the Betta
This is a missing single performance. Script portions were re-used from a Man Behind the Gun episode. It was written by "Christopher Anthony" aka William N. Robson. More details are at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] It is likely to be AFRS#387.

The Embezzler
This is a missing single performance. There was a recreation by American Radio Theater in 2013
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
It is likely to be AFRS#388.

A Misfortune in Pearls
This particular performance starring Frank Lovejoy may be missing but it was performed again on 1956-01-07 as End of the String with Stacy Harris. It is definitely AFRS#389 and was sold on eBay a few years ago. No recording has appeared.

by greybelt 2/9/2024, 8:24 am

The list of missing Suspense episodes has been updated. There are now 12 "truly missing" episodes. Those are episodes that were not repeated with another performance. For two of those, we have the first half of the broadcasts.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Efforts are being made to recreate the 12 episodes. Only four are left to be done! The list also includes missing network performances for which we have AFRS recordings and known existing AFRS recordings that have not been acquired yet by The Suspense Project.

by Sponsored content