1962-09-30 Devilstone

The final episode of Suspense might be the most scorned and despised broadcast of the series. It does not help that it is the final broadcast of Suspense and the last the radio drama era, so believed at that time. The story was written by Jack Johnstone under the name of “Jonathan Bundy.” The story does not deserve its negative reputation. Its reputation is unfortunately tainted by its circumstance. It has an interesting history, however. It fits the pattern of many Suspense episodes where the backstory may be more intriguing than the broadcast.

(Many thanks to classic radio enthusiast and professional researcher Karl Schadow for details about the historical background and origin of this production, and his many generous contributions to other aspects of Suspense history in this Project).

The story

Devilstone introduces listeners to Timothy Martin, played by Christopher Cary, a wealthy man of Dublin. He has just inherited a castle in Northern Ireland, called “Devilstone.” He does not want to move there, but would prefer to turn it into a rental property. His attorney says it will not be possible because it is haunted.

Martin does not believe in such things. He has been pitching rental of the castle to an American couple, the Stokers, who were eager to do sign on. The Stokers go, but return early, very upset. The wife had a terrifying experience there from its haunting. Martin does not believe it, but his curiosity is piqued. He decides to go and see for himself, taking his butler and his dog with him. They visit and have some experiences in the nature of a poltergeist, and hear a ghostly warning that they should leave. That warning leads to another: the dog is dead without any sign of foul play or injury. Martin and the butler experience the sight of a ghost. At one point they see footprints appear, with no visible or physical being making them. They return to Dublin to see the attorney for more details.

He provides Martin with a fuller story. It is revealed that Devilstone was built by Martin’s ancestor, Jason O’Flynn, for his wife. She died on the very day she tried to enter it. O’Flynn, consumed by grief, swore no one else would ever live in the house until his own body “turned to dust.” He disappeared, not to be seen again.

The day after the visit with the lawyer, Martin and the butler return to the castle. They find a hidden trapdoor beneath a wrinkled rug in the very room where they experienced the apparitions. Below, in a crypt-like space, is the perfectly preserved body of Jason O’Flynn! His wrists were cut, indicating a suicide. As fresh air reaches the crypt, after decades of being sealed, O’Flynn’s body rapidly decays and turns to dust. This breaks the curse. It implies that his spectral presence they encountered previously was tied to his perfectly preserved remains. The haunting of the castle ends as the body turns to dust. The Latin words “requiescat in pace” are uttered to conclude the story (and also the radio drama era).

The story behind the story

This episode is a re-use and rebuild of a script written by Johnstone for the 1940-1941 Mutual series Who Knows? Its weekly 15-minute episodes were built around the experiences and research of then-popular psychic investigator Hereward Carrington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereward_Carrington (Some of Carrington’s books are at Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5832 )

The series was broadcast for parts of two years in some of Mutual’s largest markets, but was not heard nationally. Jumping twenty years ahead, Johnstone authored eight scripts for Suspense. It is possible all or most were reworked scripts of Who Knows? Johnstone had a long-time fascination with ghosts and psychic phenomena from his work on that Mutual series, and likely had interests in the topics before that. We already know that he used a script from that earlier series for the Suspense, the 1962-02-04 episode, Feathers). That implies he remained very familiar with his work of that time and likely had great fondness for it.

The similarities of Devilstone and the Who Knows? production can be easily detected. At about 3:00 of the Devilstone broadcast, the text matches the 1941-07-11 script. Listen to the Suspense version and hear how similar it is to the 1941 broadcast script:

JOHNSTONE: Deep under St. Michan’s Church, in Dublin, is a crypt that possesses most amazing properties. In it are scores of bodies, all in a state of perfect preservation, albeit hundreds of years old. They say that it's all due to some form of Black Magic. How about that, Dr. Carrington?

CARRINGTON: Mr. Johnstone, modern chemistry has finally exploded that belief, has shown that certain gases, generated by the unusual composition of damp earth, have produced this strange phenomenon.

Devilstone is mainly a ghost story. It is interesting that producer William Spier, back in the 1940s, issued Suspense script guidelines that stated:

Suspense is not a ghost story broadcast. The most successful shows have been those which were realistic and in which the listener could easily identify himself with the predicament of the main character.

Oh well, Devilstone is a ghost story. Whoops! The guidelines Spier set were obviously no longer applicable. He violated them himself when he presented HP Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror. Did Johnstone select Devilstone for submission and secure the agreement of producer Fred Hendrickson for a particular reason? Is there a new, special symbolism or connection relevant to Suspense and its broadcast demise?

Johnstone wrote the first Devilstone script in 1941. When Suspense came under the producerships of Bruno Zirato, Jr. and Fred Hendrickson, the re-working of past scripts helped cope with the paucity of new radio scripts of the time. If there was a gap in the schedule coming up, a prior script could be adapted more quickly than writing a new one. In the late 1950s, the best writers gravitated to the greater financial benefits of television. Johnstone resigned himself to that shortage by deciding to write most of the post-5-part Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar scripts himself. Repurposing and reformatting his own past scripts helped keep both shows on the air from budget and production deadline perspectives. Devilstone may have been written in 1941 to be just a spooky story, but the imagery Johnstone crafted could be re-shaped to the unique circumstances of September 30, 1962. The likelihood of a listener remembering the Who Knows? series and its Devilstone episode was very small.

Linking the symbolism with broadcast business realities

The castle in Northern Ireland and is haunted by an ancestral ghost. Is that castle Suspense? Is it inherited because Johnstone is one of the show’s main scripters (and also Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar) in the final months months and weeks? (An inheritance is something you get whether you want it or not). Is the “Suspense castle” inherited because he is the author of the scripts that ended both series on that day? Is Suspense haunted by an ancestral ghost of “radio past” and the actors and listeners of the golden age of radio? Or is Suspense a “ghost of itself,” its own heyday long past? Are people listening in 1962 because of what Suspense used to be and not what it became?

The ancestor committed suicide. His body was stored in a manner that it would be preserved and incorrupt. Once exposed to the air, however, the corpse turned to dust. Is that ancestor symbolic of radio the way it was, committing suicide by surrendering all it was over to television? Once radio gave into that medium, it symbolically turned to dust. CBS Radio president, Arthur Hull Hayes, commented in a 1962-10-08 St. Louis Post-Dispatch interview that “if people want drama, television can do it much better.” He continued about the cancellations “we’re only doing what should have been done years ago.”

That “done years ago” comment applies to the story. The corpse was preserved from air, but once exposed, it turned to dust. Does the Hayes comment mean that Suspense and YTJD were “protected” from the actions of the marketplace and maintained by CBS for no good reason? In the story, the curse existed only because the corpse did not get natural airflow around it. If had, there would be no curse. Is that Hayes’ managerial point? Is he saying that clinging to and protecting obsolete radio formats undermined the financial health of the CBS radio division? Was the underperformance of financial health their own self-imposed curse?

The last three words

With the closing words of the Devilstone drama, “requiescat in pace,” radio “gave up the ghost.” Its spirit was gone and could not return, according to Johnstone. Those final words are the Latin phrase meaning “rest in peace,” usually abbreviated “RIP.” It indicates that a person is dead, free from earthly turmoil and enjoying a happier afterlife, and never to return.

That phrase is a significant departure from the conclusion of the Who Knows? script. The 1941 production’s final words were “pax vobiscum.” Why the change?

The context and meaning of the two phrases are very different. Pax vobiscum, “peace be with you,” are the words uttered by the resurrected Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Luke and John in this particular and similar forms. The epistles of Paul, Peter, and John, open with a similarly worded expression. It also appears in the early lines of the Book of Revelation. Note that:

• pax vobiscum is a prayer directed to and for the benefit of the living.

• requiescat in pace is a prayer for the benefit of the deceased.

The latter phrase was part of early Christian funeral rituals. It is more widely known for its appearance on tombstones. Its first documented use on such markers, at least discovered so far, is sometime in the Fifth Century. It came into wide common use later and is still used today.

Johnstone was convinced that the broadcast of Devilstone was the certain end of network radio drama programming, and was never to return. Those three last words, requiescat in pace, were his acknowledgment and expression of that sentiment and that certainty.

During a presentation about the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar series at the September 2025 Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, author John Abbott related what Jack Johnstone's daughter reported about that day. When Devilstone concluded, Jack turned off his radio, turned to her and said it was “the end of an era.” Days later, he retired from CBS.

Curiosities

• The closing announcements of Devilstone do not announce it as the last episode of Suspense. The only hint of finality is the absence of the tease for the next week’s broadcast.

• It is believed that some affiliates were disgruntled at the prospect of Suspense and YTJD cancellations and that CBS allowed repeats of the New York productions on the network feeds for a few months. If that was the case, for listeners to those stations, Suspense would still be on the air and did not have a final episode, at least for them, on September 30, 1962. Verification of those continuing broadcasts is elusive, but it does appear in many newspaper radio timetables for months and in some cases, years. Suspense was briefly syndicated in the 1970s by Charles Michaelson. His business was a syndication of many other series, but best known for The Shadow.

• The cancellation of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar received practically no news coverage. The November 1960 cancellation of CBS soap operas received far more news attention. Suspense was cancelled at that time, but YTJD was not. Suspense returned at the end of June 1961, replacing Gunsmoke.

• Actor Ted Osborne was in the very first Suspense broadcast in 1942 and this final show, over twenty years later. For reasons unknown, he is billed as “Reynold Osborn” during his later Suspense appearances, and even in summer stock theater. He was the only performer to be in each of the “bookend” broadcasts.

• The character “Stoker” is likely a reference to Bram Stoker, author of the landmark novel, Dracula. This little inside joke implies that if someone named “Stoker” won’t stay at Devilstone because it’s haunted, it must be true! Stoker was not American as the man in the story is, but was of Irish descent, loosely linking the real-life author to the location of Devilstone. This was likely an inside joke of convenience for Johnstone. The famous 1931 Dracula movie that starred Bela Lugosi could still be found in theaters in 1941 (often for late Saturday night horror movie showings). The late 1920s play also remained popular in regional theater productions. The 1941 listeners of Who Knows? were more likely to get the reference than the 1962 listeners were.

• Radio collectors referred to September 30, 1962 as “the day radio died.” This was same way that the February 3, 1959 plane crash in which Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the “Big Bopper” perished was called “the day the music died.” (That phrase was re-immortalized in Don McLean’s 1970s song American Pie). Drama would be back in fits and starts with Theatre 5 by the ABC Radio Network, and other series such as Hollywood Radio Theater (sometimes referred to as Zero Hour), the productions of Jim French in the Seattle area, but especially CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Jack Johnstone could not have foreseen that any success any of these later dramas would even be possible. How paradoxical it was that CBS would bring drama back. CBS Radio Mystery Theater presented 1399 original episodes and was broadcast for parts of nine years. It would inspire a new generation of classic radio fans.

Surviving recordings

The surviving recording is a WROW aircheck. An Armed Forces Radio and Television Service recording (AFRTS#917) is known to exist, but is not available at this time.

There are no available recordings of Who Knows? The Library of Congress has recordings of rehearsals of the episodes. They are not available at this time, but can be heard by visitors to the Library of Congress by appointment. Some background of the series and their holdings is available at https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2021/10/who-knows-radio-and-the-paranormal/

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620930

THE CAST

Christopher Cary (Timothy Martin), Neil Fitzgerald (Everts), Gilbert Mack (Carney), Walter Greaza (Stoker), Frank Milano (Kim the dog), Ted Osborne [aka Reynold Osborn] (Man’s Voice)

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1962-09-23 At the Point of a Needle

Betty Garde delivers a despicably excellent and loud performance as a toxic narcissistic wife intent on having her way and her way alone over very small matters. Her behavior becomes destructive, and of course, something’s wrong with everyone else, not her. The script is by Joseph Cochran. Blogger Christine Miller, in her Escape and Suspense! blog wrote in 2012:

This show was the second to final episode of Suspense… and one can only wish that the series had ended its twenty year run with this aggressive little episode, and the perfect performance by Betty Garde…

Some listeners may not like Garde’s character and performance because it is so loud and aggressive, but that’s the idea. She’s a horrible and there are times when you feel “I’ve met someone like this” somewhere in your past.

A perpetual complainer, for whom no level of attention or cooperation is good enough, is at a rented beach cottage with her husband. They want to escape the Summer heat. It’s a public beach, but “public” is a concept that is very hard for her to grasp. She considers the beach in the width of the cottage to be private. If anyone is in her line of sight to the water, they are trespassing. She puts up signs, plays loud and obnoxious music, in an attempt to deter people from settling down in whatever spot they choose on the beach. Her selfish efforts go to court against a couple who liked that part of the beach. (How they got a court date so quickly is an impossible part of the plot, but let it go, as she probably heaped verbal abuse on a court clerk to get her way). The judge rules against Myra and George. Of course, the judge is stupid and incompetent, despite his Ivy League law degree, according to her. She continues to belittle and humiliate George. He finally reaches a breaking point and walks to the supposedly offending beach couple, and shoots them. Myra is shocked… but George calmly walks back into the cottage, and calls the police to report a murder. Part of the shocking incident is that he did not turn the gun on himself. He does not turn the gun on Myra, either, too scared to do so. The episode concludes with Myra in voice-over, complaining about George, and how he left her so little money, and how stubborn he had become. Her concluding line is “After I had been such a kind and loving wife, why I didn't even have enough money to buy a decent morning outfit.”

The last name “Petit” of Myra and George may be plays on the words “petty” which the wife certainly us, and “petite,” meaning small, which describes the size of George’s resolve. That is, until he reaches a breaking point does the very wrong and most severe thing at the end of the story. Myra has her footprints all over George’s back until that point, when it turns very dark very quickly and unexpectedly.

The title may have been selected to show how delicately balanced things are in the story, until they fall very apart.

There are two network aircheck recordings. The WROW aircheck is the better of the two, in clear sound. The station engineer missed the cue for the “And now…” introduction. The other is from WDNC in Durham, North Carolina. The somewhat noisy and narrow range recording is fully intact and has more of the closing and after-broadcast announcements.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620923

THE CAST

Betty Garde (Myra Petit), Walter Kinsella (George Petit), Teri Keane (Esther), Bill Adams (Judge), Bob Readick (Bill)

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1962-09-16 The Golden Years

This William N. Robson story has an odd title, implying that the story might be about people who are retirees or senior citizens. It is not. It is actually about the teenage years, and how important they can be in building relationships and character that young people can take into independent and responsible adulthood.

“Sue,” played by Rosemary Rice, a teenager who is head over heels with her new boyfriend, “Buddy,” played by Peter Fernandez. Buddy wants to take the car for their date, but his stepfather turns him down because he has had some driving issues. Their relationship is tense, and Buddy lashes out, saying that his stepfather is not his “real” father, and he has no right to turn him down. Sue and Buddy meet during the day, and he says their date that evening has to be cancelled. Buddy is so miffed he says that he intends to murder his stepfather, and knows exactly when. The man falls asleep every evening while watching television, waking only to catch a news report. Buddy will sneak in just before the news. Sue dismisses the comments, thinking Buddy is just angry and it will pass, but she starts to think differently. Buddy tries to buy ammunition for his rifle, but the store owner refuses him, noting that the stepfather had prohibited after an earlier transaction. Buddy gets a hunting knife instead. It’s clear this could get vicious and brutal, and Sue brings her worries to a woman for whom she is babysitting. The woman is active in crime prevention in the town, and decides something must be done. There was some confusion about tracking down Buddy’s name because his last name changed when the stepfather adopted him. Sue and the woman figure it out. The woman calls, and Buddy actually answers the phone! The ringing of the phone wakes up the stepfather just in time. He sees Buddy has the knife, and did not have a chance to act. She never revealed her name, but advised the father that he and the son need to come improve their communication and their relationship, saying “That son of yours needs you. He needs your understanding and maybe your help. Try to give it to him, will you? For your own good.”

The program was originally planned to air on September 9, 1962.

The program was recorded on Wednesday, September 12, 1962. The session start and finish time is not known.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620916

THE CAST

The cast: Peter Fernandez (Buddy Birdwell), Rosemary Rice (Sue), Ivor Francis (Buddy's Stepfather [Ralph Karsten]), Elspeth Eric (Buddy's Mother [Mrs. Karsten]), Mary Jane Higby (Mrs. Foster), Ronald Dawson (Mr. Schmidt the storekeeper), Bret Morrison (Sgt. Kenny / Dr. Devins)

NOTE: Pat Hosley is announced in the closing credits, but does not appear in the drama. The original script had a role for a telephone operator. It is likely that Hosley is announced in the credits because she was in the recording sessions for the episode, but her role was eliminated in final editing to meet the allotted time for the network broadcast.

The storekeeper’s name was changed from “Larsen” to “Mr. Schmidt” prior to broadcast. It was likely because “Larsen” may have sounded too close to “Karsten.”

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1962-09-02 The Death of Alexander Jordan

Paul McGrath stars as a man named “Rutledge” who is attorney for a frail elderly farmer. Alex knows he has only a few more days to live, and is concerned about being buried alive as well as who will inherit the farm. He requests that Rutledge arrange to have his coffin be fitted with an electric bell that can be activated should the need occur after he is buried. Alex trusts the wife of his nephew, Martha, with the farm, but not trust his nephew, Ramsey, with ultimate ownership of it. Ramsey is impetuous and greedy, and seeks to dispose of the farm as soon as legally possible. Alex arranges what he wants in the will, and asks Rutledge to keep its terms confidential for a week after he passes away. Rutledge arranges the coffin accordingly. Alex passes away, and everything is set in motion, and his body is placed in the nearby family crypt. Ramsey is furious that he has to wait to learn the terms of the will and belittles the idea of the bell, which he learns about after the funeral. Martha, however, respects Uncle Alex's wishes. She refuses to sell the farm; without Alex around, Martha becomes more assertive in her decisions. As the days pass, Ramsey has increasing anxiety and paranoia about the bell. His greed has no patience. One night, he hears the bell. It’s actually ringing, and it’s not his imagination! In a fit of rage and panic, he attacks Martha, knocks her unconscious, and rushes to the crypt to cut the wires to the bell. He locks himself inside the crypt, but Uncle Alex had not moved. Instead, he encounters a strange presence of the spirits of the deceased Jordan family members, including that of Alex. The spirits are aware of Ramsey’s malicious intent and he is trapped in the crypt. He dies there, of fright. The bell was engaged by a short circuit to the bell wires damaged by a severe storm, or at least that’s the practical explanation. Martha finally awakens in the hospital after her beating by Ramsey. Rutledge is at her side. He tells her what happened, and encourages her to start a new life, now unburdened by an abusive husband.

This script was originally planned to air September 16, 1962.

The program was recorded on Wednesday, August 29, 1962. The start and finish time of the session is not known.

The storyline may bring to mind the phrases “dead ringer” and “saved by the bell.” The phrase “dead ringer” does not refer to a bell being added to buried coffins so someone mistakenly buried could call for help. While this may have been tried, the phrase originates from horse racing, placing a horse that looks exactly like another in to perpetuate a fraud of some type. The phrase “saved by the bell,” often associated with a coffin bell, originated in boxing. A boxer in trouble would be happy when a boxing round ends with the ring of the bell to stop being pummeled by his opponent.

The script was written by Hector Chevigny written for the short-lived series Creeps by Night of 1944-04-23 with the title The Strange Burial of Alexander Jordan. He was a CBS radio staff writer starting in the late 1930s. He later became a novelist and wrote for television and film. He became blind after having detached retinas and with surgical solutions not working (such surgery has made great strides in recent decades). He continued to write. In 1946, Yale University Press published his biography, My Eyes Have a Cold Nose. It can be viewed at The Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/myeyeshavecoldno0000hect_x8n5

The 1956-10-23 CBS Radio Workshop featured Chevigny in its broadcast A Writer At Work. It explained how radio scripters worked and Chevigny offered comments as the program followed his process of preparing a script for the soap opera The Second Mrs. Burton.

There are many recordings of this episode in circulation. This particular network aircheck is fully intact with its opening commercial. Most of the other recordings have had that edited out. It is known that there is a surviving Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) recording, but it is not available at this time.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620902

THE CAST

Paul McGrath (Rutledge), Connie Lembke (Martha Jordan), William Mason (Ramsey Jordan), Edgar Stehli (Alexander Jordan)

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1962-09-09 A Strange Day in May

 William Mason stars in a Michael Healy story that is ultimately about abduction by alien life forms and their possibly nefarious duplication of humans. Are they planning to take over the world... or is it something else? It’s definitely not your typical Suspense story. It is low-level science fiction at a time when such topics were popular. There were attempts to mimic the success and style of television’s Twilight Zone, even on Suspense. Unfortunately, this production does not come close to measuring up to Suspense standards or that of TZ.

But there’s a twist to the story that makes it a bit creative when it is learned what their real plans are. It modern computer terms, are they making a backup copy of the human race?

Astronaut Thomas Manning is assigned to a space mission to investigate the disappearance of two previous astronauts. His wife, Mary, fears he will also disappear. When his vehicle gets to its desired distance he reports feeling a “blue rapture.” He sees something glowing and his spacecraft is heading toward it, and he loses control. Something must have happened, as he wakes up at the base hospital with a painful headache, exhausted. The reactions of his superiors to him, and especially by his wife, Mary, are strangely wooden, functional, essentially at arms-length. They’ve known him or been with him for so long that it is really odd that they don’t understand everyday little things about him. He realizes something is seriously wrong. He escapes the hospital and heads home where he sees Mary again. She is very cold to seeing him; she treats him like almost like an acquaintance. She warns him to get away, and the military personnel arrive to take him away. He protests… and is carted away. But there is a different Major Manning already inside the house. The man they took away was the real Manning, but it seems everyone in the program has been replaced by aliens studying human life by taking the forms and appearance of individuals involved in the space effort. Why?

The story can be confusing, especially if you are of the deeply-ingrained inclination that stories like this always have aliens wanting to take over the world. If that’s the case, you may miss an important aspect of this production. Classic radio enthusiast and researcher John Barker explains that this is not that kind of story. The last lines of dialogue set it straight.

The aliens are not planning an invasion of earth. They’re making “copies” of the people, “doppelgängers,” and on a separate second Earth. That German word literally means “double-goer.” A person has a doppelgänger when another person looks just like them but are not their biological twin or other genetic relation that would have physical similarities. The true Major Manning landed on a second Earth filled with doppelgängers. He notes that “the aliens in this story are quite benign, and a planned invasion of the Earth doesn't figure into the story at all.” As for why the two astronauts “disappeared” but are still being held on the second Earth and not returned, he states that the aliens “don't want their own existence known and fear the potential for an attempted invasion of their planet by our own Earth,” In the concluding lines of the drama, the second Earth military officers say that our Earth and their second Earth “might need each other” at some time in the future. These and the other explanations rule out invasion as a plotline. Are the two Earths and their doppelgänger populations like a flesh-and-bone computer backup mentioned earlier?

There are many examples of science fiction short stories and novels published throughout the full span of the 20^th Century that involved some kind of “second Earth.” Many of such stories have characters in the one world that are the exact opposite of the way they are in the other. In this story, they are intended to be the same.

Aliens have been meeting earthlings on Suspense since their broadcast of The Outer Limit. The episode Re-Entry did not involve aliens, but it used the plot element about an astronaut who did not return. In that case, it was by choice because of the euphoria he felt on his mission and wanted to experience again. This is similar to the “blue rapture” described in this story.

The alien invasion theme is a common one in sci-fi media, and was used in Twilight Zone. The episodes that involved aliens infiltrating the population are the 1960 episodes The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street and People Are Alike All Over and the 1961’s Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? The classic TZ about alien invasion is To Serve Man. John Barker, however, considers this Suspense episode as most closely resembling a 1963 TZ hour long episode, The Parallel. The episode was written by Rod Serling and has similar elements.

A Strange Day in May was author Michael Healy’s only Suspense script. He might be a “one-hit-wonder” for whom this was his only radio script and there are no indications of other writing in print or other media. Nor are there indications his name is a pseudonym.

Maurice Tarplin of Mysterious Traveler fame plays a newscaster in this story named… Maurice Tarplin.

The program was recorded on Wednesday, September 5, 1962. The start and finish time of the session is not known.

This episode was originally planned to air on September 2.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620909

THE CAST

William Mason (Maj. Thomas Manning), Tony Darnay (Mary Manning), Reynold Osborn [Ted Osborn] (Col. Alvin Marks), Herbert Duncan (Lieutenant, Driver), Maurice Tarplin (Newsman Tarplin), Bill Lipton (Countdown Voice, Guard), Bill Smith (Doctor)

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1962-08-26 The Lost Ship

Mason Adams stars in an Irwin Lewis story about an old Spanish galleon stranded in the desert, loaded down with a treasure of gold. Adams plays “Harry Turner,” who, with his wife Viola are on the run after Harry embezzled $50,000 from his employer. That is about $535,000 in US$2025. They’re headed to Mexico where they can enjoy the money and avoid the authorities. They turn off the main road to a desert road and find a small cabin in the mountains. An old prospector named Pete lives there. Harry is first attracted to the idea of stealing his Jeep and using that to get across the border. As Harry and Viola talk to him, he offers generous hospitality to let them stay. Pete explains why he is there and describes a lost Spanish galleon that holds gold coins and other treasures that is in the distance. He tells Harry where to go with binoculars and under what conditions he can see it. Harry is convinced he can see it, goes there, and finds it. He digs into the sand and enters the ship, and does find furniture, maps, and treasure. He loses track of the dangers of such a venture, and is trapped inside.

This is one of those typical stories where greed overcomes the most basic common sense. There’s another aspect of the story. The old codger treasure hunter, Pete, mentions to the fugitive couple says how much he likes living alone. Did Pete “plant” the coins so Viola would find them, and lure him into a trap? Did he tell them about the ship because he knew Harry would fail to return? Pete would be guaranteed of being the only person who knows the location. If this happens today, someone like Harry would be able to communicate the exact GPS location, fly drones with cameras over it to survey the scene, and eventually harvest the ship and the treasure. That is, if there really was one.

Mason Adams used the name “Matt Cooper” in this episode. It is not clear why. Both names are noted on the script cover. Adams has extensive monologue in the production, especially as he explores the ship. He delivers that extremely well.

Blogger Christine Miller notes that there is a good Wikipedia page about “The Lost Ship of the Desert” legend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Ship_of_the_Desert The page notes the legends, how they came to be, and how they have been portrayed in media.

The program was recorded on Wednesday, August 22, 1962. The start and ending time of the session is not known.

The surviving recording is quite good, an improvement compared to most circulating copies. It is a network aircheck of WROW. Unfortunately, the end of that recording is clipped, but the good-sounding drama is fully intact. The final approximate 45 seconds, comprised only of cast announcements and the tease for the upcoming show, have been restored from a similar-sounding recording. Therefore, the recording is marked as “composite,” because two recordings were used to make one final recording The overall sound of the one final recording provides very good listening experience.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620826

THE CAST

Mason Adams [Matt Cooper] (Harry Turner), Jean Gillespie (Viola Turner), Bill Adams (Pete Townley)

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1962-08-19 Pages from a Diary

Jim Backus and his wife Henny star in one of the most bizarrely creative Suspense episodes that likely confused listeners greatly as they wondered what was going on. It is likely many did not listen to its conclusion when it was originally broadcast. That’s a real shame. A great advantage that modern day classic radio enthusiasts have is the ability to listen to broadcast multiple times. If something doesn’t sound familiar, rewinding and pondering can help dig deeper into storylines and dialogue, and especially the structure of the stories. This is one of those times. Classic radio enthusiast and researcher John Barker notes that “Pages from a Diary is an effective latter-day Suspense episode, and an interesting experiment in composing an entire episode out of narration (almost all of it from Jim Backus).”

Keith Scott, international voice actor, classic radio researcher, and author of the best Suspense log available (from which the cast information for all of the episodes in the Suspense Project are drawn) noted that “The episode is a psychodrama, with a hint of Norman Bates of Psycho.”

Jim and Henny Backus were very popular celebrities on both US coasts at this time. Casting them for this episode was similar to the "casting-against-type" strategy that was used so effectively in the heyday of Suspense in the 1940s. Jim was best known for his characterization of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo but also for the TV series I Married Joan where he played the husband of Joan Davis’ lead character. They Jim and Henny co-authored best-selling books about their various amusing exploits, Rocks on the Roof and What are You Doing after the Orgy? The latter can be accessed at The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/whatareyoudoinga0000back

The idea of using a diary format may have been inspired by the 1959 short story, Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. The story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction April 1959 edition. The narrative of the story is comprised of first person diary entries of the main character. When the award-winning short story was adapted for television on the United States Steel Hour in 1961, but the story was converted to a traditional stage play. The story was built out into a novel published in 1966, and then adapted as a traditional movie screenplay. It was released as Charly in 1968. (There are links to these resources after the cast information below).

Another Suspense episode, Return to Dust, broadcast on 1959-02-01, was not a diary in the usual sense, but the experiences of the main character are related in great detail as if it was in diary form. It is more likely that Algernon may have been the mind of the author Virginia Volland than Return would be. Algernon received much more attention and would have been more widely known. They key point is this: in Algernon we read the diary of a man whose mental and writing skills are minimal, changed surgically to have an IQ approaching 200. The skill of Keyes is the craft the writing style to reflect the change in intelligence and self-awareness, especially as the surgical effects diminish and return to where he started. In Pages from a Diary, we sense a man having mental problems and difficulty discerning reality. Unless listeners were clued into the plotline, it is likely they were confused in some way.

The broadcast begins with Henny Backus’ character reading from a diary for a brief time. She plays a wife who finds her late husband’s diary. She starts reading and then the performance goes solely into Jim’s voice for the entries. The entries are a stream of consciousness account of his last days. Some of the diary is annoying because of that style of writing, but it’s intriguing at the same time. That’s because Jim’s character has multiple personalities, so don’t be surprised. There’s even some repetition in the narrative. It can be a frustrating production to stick with, but give it a chance. You’re listening to a man’s psyche devolving, which you don’t realize for a little while in the story. It can be uncomfortable for the listener, but it’s also uncomfortable for him. On one hand he is feeling great enlightenment and on the other hand he is feeling great bewilderment. You know it can’t end well.

The main question of the story is that John and Janet were estranged, and Janet was never sure why. She reads the diary hoping to find out. The entries begin in April. We hear his voice as the many entries are read, but he is clearly having psychological problems. He says a variety of things that indicate the struggles: “My body is a battleground” and having “impulses and counterimpulses” and being “...torn in two directions. I am two people.”

By the 9:30 mark, he has decided to kill Janet. It is also around this time he starts talking about how he can send his vision to one place, in this case to see a movie, but he forgot to send his hearing along. The same for other aspects of his body. He sends his arms and hands to ring door bells and then to disappear. Are these delusions of actions or is he performing these actions and the delusion is that he does not remember what he does as a whole person. He repeats himself, meandering, we’re losing patience as listeners, but he thinks he’s making great discoveries. At one point he says “we both went out to see her,” meaning that his two personalities went to see her. He says at one point his hands and arms were sent to her, and they were sent to strangle her. It doesn’t end well: he is committing suicide at a railroad trestle walking on the tracks, but it’s at the same time Janet feels, in retrospect when she continues her narrative, that she had a dream of being strangled. And strangely, she has the bruises on her neck of an attempted strangulation. And John was found at his desk, not outside. The story ends with a lack of closure… did John ever really leave his desk? Did he ever really visit Janet? Did he ever go to that movie?

This is such a creatively different presentation that classic radio fans who want to introduce others to Suspense or the hobby should be sure not to suggest this as their first or early episode of their listening. It is so atypical of the series that they might not be able to have the context needed to put it into perspective.

One could dissect this script and production for hours and hours. It was by Virginia Volland, a famous Broadway costume designer. Volland started on the stage as an actor when she was in college and continued over the years, then began working behind the scenes. She worked in costume and wardrobe over the years eventually became a highly regarded costume designer for Broadway in the early 1950s. Her career, however, was ended by blindness in the early 1960s. She started taking courses in writing, and this script was one of her early efforts. At he time she was writing this script she was likely beginning work on what would become a very popular book for those interested in theater and behind the scenes stories from her experiences. It received very positive reviews. Designing Woman: The Art and Practice of Theatrical Costume Design was published by Doubleday in 1966. As best as can be learned from available genealogical resources, she passed away in 1968.

In deciphering this episode, John Barker commented on the fan forum Cobalt Club and offered additional observations:

It has one very strange element, though: an entire fifty seconds is lifted from the first half and repeated in the second half. In the complete recording posted today it starts at 6:25 with "I am two people..." and ends at 7:17 with "...the leader my body must follow." This entire segment is repeated from 14:26 to 15:18. It's not that Jim Backus is asked to perform the dialogue again; the recording, background music included, is simply repeated during the second half of the drama. It's possible that the lengthy narration was recorded in segments and then edited together later on...did someone goof and paste the segment in twice? Was it done intentionally to pad out the running time? It is possible to drift in and out listening to this one and I heard the episode several times before confirming to myself that there was in fact a repetition. (I remember thinking to myself on previous listens "Didn't he say this already?" but didn't bother to go back to confirm it).

Since there is no access to a script at this time, there is no real answer to the dialogue repetition. The character repeats himself in so very many ways throughout, that it could be planned. It could also be that similar dialogue was used but something went wrong with the audio. There are a few times in the recording where there is a sudden volume change, and it’s always at the beginning of a sentence, so it is not random. This might be one of the most heavily edited productions of the New York period. It’s not an easy script, and there are many opportunities to add or subtract nuance. These could have been very long recording sessions.

Keith Scott adds:

The episode is a psychodrama, with a hint of Norman Bates of Psycho. It seems to me that his diary notes represent his subconscious coming to terms with his darker impulses. And it appears to be a deliberate edit from the first speech, inserted later, as if he is trying to re-justify his murderous feelings to cover up any guilt. I don’t know whether he kills both the housekeeper and Janet...it’s one of those David Lynch-style stories that is left up to each listener to interpret.

John Barker also notes:

The music played underneath Henny Backus' opening and closing narration is from Alex North’s score to the 1956 film The Bad Seed. The particular piece used is Identity and it can be heard at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txUhWn40I9Q&list=OLAK5uy_m6hIRqy3yY6lruPYSXy-wTABREVupjM7Y&index=9

Ethel Huber was the musical director for this episode and for the 1959-1962 New York Suspense productions. It is not known how the piece came to her attention. Bad Seed was a big movie in its time, and there is a good chance she saw it, and musical directors always tried to be familiar with scores and recordings of all types.

Suspense broadcast two significant psychological stories under Antony Ellis, I Saw Myself Running and his interpretation of A Friend to Alexander. His staging of the James Thurber story was much better that the prior ones of the series). This 1962 Suspense production is good, but might have benefited from Ellis' production insights and its larger budget (which was meager compared to earlier years, but definitely larger than 1962). Ellis also had a wider range of Hollywood sound effects and music personnel in his time than Fred Hendrickson had in the last days of the series in New York. It’s compelling radio drama, often dismissed because it was done late in Suspense history.

The program was originally scheduled for broadcast for August 26, 1962 but was changed to August 19. Recording of the program was done on Wednesday, August 8, 1962. The start and finish time of the session is not known.

Lost Ship was originally scheduled for this date, based on newspaper listings.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620819

THE CAST

Jim Backus (John), Henny Backus (Janet)

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Resources for Flowers for Algernon:

• History of the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon

• Original short story: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction April 1959 edition https://archive.org/details/magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-1951-2008/1951-1959/1959/Magazine

• 1961 TV adaptation for United States Steel Hour as The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DfrzQ2Z8vY

• IMDb entry for the 1968 film Charly: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062794

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