The full performance of this episode is missing, but the second half has survived.
Philomel Cottage is based on Agatha Christie’s Love from a Stranger about a newlywed who suspects her husband is planning to have her killed. It was adapted by Harold Medford.
The script was performed again on 1943-10-07 and yet again on 1946-12-26.
A new performance of The Lodger was originally announced for this date. The muddled version used for the Suspense audition on Forecast in 1940 was re-written to be more appealing to listeners. It was also planned for week prior to this broadcast, but for unknown reasons was not used until December 1944.
This is the first surviving recording of a Suspense episode produced by William Spier. Charles Vanda had left CBS for military service. Under Spier, Suspense would deviate and evolve from Vanda’s original vision for the series.
The scheduling of specific Suspense performances was always in flux, and newspapers rarely had any information for the day of broadcast beyond show titles. Those would often be inaccurate. Suspense was a summer replacement series and those kinds of programs were not always covered by the press in a serious manner. Sometimes even the network publicity departments allocated only small budgets and time to promote summer programs.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP420729
THE CAST
Eric Dressler (Gerald Martin), Alice Frost (Alix Martin), Alfred Shirley (George), Dick Widmark (Dick), Berry Kroeger (Narrator).
Yes, “Dick Widmark” is famous movie actor Richard Widmark. He was very active in New York radio in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He would become a favorite actor of Suspense producer Elliott Lewis in the early 1950s.
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