1942-09-02 The Hitch-hiker

The Hitch-hiker was a legendary Suspense script by Lucille Fletcher, author of Sorry, Wrong Number. Well, that’s almost right.

The script was written for the Lady Esther Orson Welles Theater and was broadcast on 1941-11-14. Fletcher had not yet written Sorry, Wrong Number, and newspapers identified her as the author of a magazine short story adapted by Norman Corwin to become entertaining 1940 Columbia Workshop episode, My Client Curley. That story about a dancing caterpillar would eventually become a movie. Obviously, The Hitch-hiker was much different. A man is driving cross-country keeps seeing the same hitch-hiker on his trip. There was no dancing, and no charm to this story.

Rod Serling remembered The Hitch-hiker story from radio and wanted it for The Twilight Zone. Fletcher was interviewed about the story in 1960 when it was adapted for The Twilight Zone with some modifications for actress Inger Stevens. She said in an interview “I made a trip across the country in 1940 and saw a sort of figure similar to the hitch-hiker three times along the road, originally first beside the Brooklyn Bridge.” That trip was with then-husband and famous composer Bernard Herrmann. He would soon write the famous and haunting Suspense theme that was used early in the series and then on and off through the years.

Most everyone in the classic radio hobby believes it’s a Suspense script because that’s the presentation they first heard and the earliest recording available. It’s easy to understand why. Suspense is a show that is well-known and sought by fans, so it’s natural for it to seem this was a Suspense original.

There’s another implicit assumption many classic radio hobbyists make, though they may not realize it. It is easy to assume that all recordings of a series had about the same size listening audience. Most collectors don’t even think about such things: why should they? They just want to enjoy the recording and savor the era.

The Hitch-hiker had a far bigger audience when it was heard in 1941 on The Lady Esther Orson Welles Theater. Suspense had a comparatively very small audience as a 1942 summer replacement series. The Lady Esther broadcast is not widely circulated, is not complete, and is in low quality sound, and therefore relatively unknown to the hobby. The big network show in 1941 was Lux Radio Theatre with nearly a 31 Hooper rating. Lady Esther had a little over 20, an impressive showing, just behind Lux in the category of “prestige drama.” That was an achievement, owing to the weekly performance of Orson Welles. The Lady Esther show had a bigger audience than golden age radio drama legends such as such as Mr. District Attorney, The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, and many others. Suspense in its Summer 1942 series was not about to match that. The fledgling Suspense series wasn’t SUSPENSE yet!

This makes the broadcast history of The Hitch-hiker a very curious one. There are four documented performances of the script, all with Welles, and all on different series. And, only two of the four were teased in the newspapers around the country on the day of their broadcast! Two of the performances, Suspense and Philip Morris Playhouse may not have been planned far in advance. It seems so strange!

Suspense, a low-rated Summer replacement series, could certainly have used a national publicity boost of a Welles appearance. He was at a height of celebrity from 1941’s Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons released just weeks before this broadcast, and his numerous radio appearances (and the reputation ripples that were still coming from War of the Worlds almost four years earlier). Yet, there was no such newspaper publicity.

Producer William Spier and Orson Welles were close friends. It was Spier who gave Welles his first radio job on March of Time, and Welles often showed his appreciation for it. This was Welles’ first appearance on Suspense, and it could possibly have been his last, because the series was not yet renewed for the CBS Fall 1942 schedule. It could be assumed series was on the verge of cancellation, especially if sponsors appeared for series other than Suspense. If Suspense could find a sponsor, the decision to renew would be automatic.

It could very well be that The Hitch-hiker, the perfect Suspense script that wasn’t a Suspense script, and a script that Welles adored, was possibly the performance and broadcast that helped push Suspense over the renewal finish line. One thing’s for sure: The Hitch-hiker broadcast didn’t hurt its chances of renewal! It was a prime example to those who did hear it, and CBS executives, about what Suspense could become. Suspense finished its Summer 1942 season on September 30. A month later, on October 27, it took its first step to becoming a fixture in the CBS schedule for many years, with some hiccups along the way.

During the week off when CBS pre-empted Suspense to broadcast a promotion of the Holiday Inn movie, it’s clear that Welles and Spier were in contact. Did Welles offer to do The Hitch-hiker to help Spier’s program get some attention and momentum toward a renewal?

According to the New York Daily News, Welles arrived in New York on Tuesday, August 25 (more curious details are at the end of this post). One news report said that part of his trip was to put things in motion to move the Mercury Theater to Hollywood. On August 29, he was master of ceremonies for a special war bond drive broadcast that lasted six hours on the NBC Blue Network. That program raised $14 million, which in 2022 US dollars is more than $250 million!

The Daily News also reported that while he was in New York he was scheduled to be on the Stage Door Canteen broadcast of September 3. He was also scheduled that Saturday at a Russian War Relief fundraiser. With Welles in New York a week before the broadcast, there was plenty of time to assemble a cast of regulars and perform a script of which they were already familiar. Everyone was in town for one reason or another, so why not?

Daily News radio critic Ben Gross, who liked the initial performance done in 1941, liked the Suspense one, as noted in the September 3, 1942 edition:

For a real spine-chiller, Orson Welles in Lucille Fletcher's "The Hitchhiker"... more than filled the bill last night. The Mercury Theatre broadcast this play last year and it deserved repetition. It really has got what it takes to bring down your temperature. Aided by the first-rate atmospheric music of Bernard Herrmann and a good supporting cast, good old Orson scared the wits out of me.

Just six weeks later, in the Daily News of October 17, 1942, Gross was just as enthusiastic about the Philip Morris Playhouse rendition:

“The Hitch-Hiker” has by now become one of the standard thrillers of the air. This eerie drama of an across-the-continent drive packs more than a dozen average blood-curdlers. Orson Welles was in it again during the Playhouse period last night and gave a performance that brought one a tight feeling around the heart. When it comes to chilling your blood over the radio, Orson is still the master of them all.

These were four performances of the script, with three of those in the span of 11 months. This may be the only script to be broadcast this many times on three different series, with the same actor in the lead role. Lucille Fletcher said in the 1960 Twilight Zone publicity that after the Lady Esther broadcast Welles “repeated this performance on almost every radio series in which he starred thereafter.” These are the four:

• 1941-11-17 Lady Esther Presents Orson Welles - there are newspaper references to “this new Fletcher play” and the longer radio page teases often reference Fletcher’s My Client Curley. A recording of the drama portion of the program has survived, though in low quality sound. Researcher and voice actor Keith Scott notes that you can hear Mercury Theater players Ray Collins and Agnes Moorehead in supporting roles.

• 1942-09-02 Suspense - the program was pre-empted the week earlier to air a promo of the movie Holiday Inn (released on 1942-08-04). There are virtually no newspaper references to Welles appearing on Suspense or the identification of the play for that evening. Assuming the publicity window for newspapers at that time was 10-14 days for detailed coverage and a few days for timetable detail, this indicates that the decision to perform The Hitch-hiker was not done in time for almost any newspaper coverage. The only newspaper listing that can be found in searches is the New York Daily News timetable for that very day, in the very same city as the broadcast and the CBS publicity department, listing Welles and the play by name. The New York Times timetable, obviously in the same city, does not list anything special about the Suspense broadcast for that night.

• 1942-10-16 Philip Morris Playhouse - this performance has NO newspaper teases. The most detailed tease about PMP for this night is that Welles will star in a new script about Rumanian guerilla fighters in the War. This wartime script was obviously not ready for broadcast and they substituted The Hitch-hiker for it. Unfortunately, no recording of this broadcast has been found.

• 1946-06-21 Pabst Mercury Summer Theater - this broadcast was promoted well in the newspapers. Much of that coverage stressed that Pabst was foregoing the mid-show commercial to maintain the integrity of the story’s dramatic flow. A complete recording exists. This was the final broadcast of the script.

It was a very strong script, and Fletcher’s composition of the story in first-person narrative style, a format Welles believed was exceptionally effective for radio. Welles’ opinion had a big influence in Spier’s production vision and development of Suspense. If it was so good, and so well suited for Suspense, why wasn’t it repeated?

Perhaps Welles liked the script so much, he wanted some exclusivity about it, and not allow others to have it. Fletcher may have felt that it was worth letting Orson have his way, making it “portable” for wherever he wanted to do it.

In contrast, she seems not to have felt the same way about Sorry, Wrong Number and Agnes Moorehead in the beginning. For example, she allowed Ida Lupino to perform SWN on The Kate Smith Show in February 1945, and Mildred Natwick on the CBS experimental TV station in New York (Moorehead was in Hollywood and air travel was time consuming at that time). Fletcher could have insisted on Moorehead for the “big screen” version, which instead went to Barbara Stanwyck. (Morehead attempted to buy the movie rights for SWN to ensure her lead casting, but her offer was spurned). Moorehead’s deep association with SWN was much the result of a constant steadfast effort to make it so. She never strayed, performing SWN on Suspense even when the movie was in theaters, for a Decca record set, and in one-woman stage shows around the country throughout the 1950s. Why was The Hitch-hiker different?

Such Moorehead-like efforts to keep The Hitch-hiker set aside for himself were not required for Welles. The reason it was not done on radio after Mercury Summer Theater in 1946 was that Welles was doing other things and on radio less often. When he was, he was usually cast as the “celebrity Orson Welles,” playing himself or a public caricature of himself. He would eventually do the radio series Black Museum and The Lives of Harry Lime, but those were syndicated, on his own terms of availability and his own desires for its production, without having to fit into any rigid network broadcast schedule. It’s likely that The Hitch-hiker was not heard again because Welles no longer did network radio drama, and many of those venues were disappearing. Audiences and ad dollars were shifting to TV so there was less radio network drama to do. The desire to perform The Hitch-hiker again faded away.

It is interesting that a collection of best radio plays, published in 1947, excluded Sorry, Wrong Number but included The Hitch-hiker. The book was edited by Joseph Liss (who wrote for Columbia Workshop and others), who believed that SWN was definitely a good play, but that The Hitch-hiker was better. (The book can be viewed, but not downloaded, at https://archive.org/details/radiosbestplays00jose)

The Hitch-hiker could have turned into one of Suspense’ most beloved plays over the years if there were more performances of it. It is ironic how that one particular performance became so strongly associated with Suspense. Of all four of its broadcast presentations, the one on that September night in 1942, with likely its smallest of the four audiences, became the legendary one. The miracle of recording technology and the actions of classic radio hobbyists many years later have made it so.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP420902

There are multiple recordings available, with three of the Suspense version. One is a studio recording, which is the best one, another is a broadcast aircheck (thank you, researcher Don Ramlow). There is also a 1970s Armed Forces Radio and Television Service release that is heavily edited. The drama portion of the 1941 Lady Esther broadcast is available, but in lower quality sound. The 1946 Mercury Summer Theater broadcast is also included.

THE CAST

Orson Welles (Ronald Adams), Berry Kroeger (Narrator), others are not identified. It is not known if Mercury Theater actors were included. No production script has been located. 

Karl Schadow has identified John Gibson as the Pennsylvania Turnpike service station attendant. Gibson was another one of those actors who was constantly busy from the 1930s and into the television era. You can hear him in Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police, as Blue Note Cafe bartender Ethelbert in Casey, Crime Photographer, and you can catch him here and there in the "Classic 39" episodes of TV's legendary The Honeymooners.

There is a possible inside joke after the 18 minute mark. Welles' character is on a lonely road through a farm area and there is a continuing sound of mooing cows in the background. Ronald Adams laments that he is "udder-ly alone." The same effect is in the 1941 performance with the same line, so it’s not new to Suspense. Because the October 1942 Philip Morris performance is missing, it is not known if it was used then. The background sound effect is not used in the 1946 Mercury Summer Theater performance.

Welles was a jokester, and probably had a grand time with the little gag, deadpanning it in front of the microphone while others in the studio smirked or rolled their eyes. William Spier also ran loose and lighthearted rehearsals and would occasionally plant in-joke items in stories. It was obviously left in with Spier’s acquiescence. It must have been really something to remember to see Welles and Spier and the Suspense ensemble casts together for desk readings and rehearsals as they slipped in wordplay and wisecracks but still turned in compelling, innovative, and superior performances when it counted on the air.

NOTE: The Clock (ABC, 1946-1948) had a Hitchhiker program with different plotline; the series Detour (ABC, 1950), which re-used many Clock scripts, had one by a different writer (Michael Sklar), and is likely the same script as used on The Clock. This script is about an actual hitchhiker.

NOTE: In 1952, Fletcher created a one-act theatrical play from the radio script. It is available from the Dramatists Play Service. In the Twilight Zone publicity it is mentioned that it had been performed in theater groups in every US state and internationally since it was released.

The Wikipedia page for the radio play is well done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitch-Hiker_(radio_play)

The teleplay for The Twilight Zone performance is also worth reading. Serling changed the main character to a woman because he felt it would add more dramatic tension to the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitch-Hiker_(The_Twilight_Zone)

 ***

Keith Scott sent me a note about Welles’ schedule. Welles arrived in New York at the end of August. Keith explains that the timetable of it all is in the 1992 book This is Orson Welles by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich. (There are lots of used copies available online). Keith summarizes that Welles was in New York on his return to the US from South America (his second trip there in 1942) as he was shooting material for It’s All True (which he never finished – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_All_True_(film) ). He stayed in New York for two months. In that time, he appeared on shows and at events:

• The Kate Smith Show
• Suspense – The Hitch-hiker
• on the very same night as Suspense, a benefit for Russian War Relief in Croton-on-Hudson, about 30 miles north of CBS New York studios (note: raising money for Russian War Relief efforts in the early 1940s unfortunately landed some performers in the Red Channels listings just years later)
• 1942-09-11 Men, Machines, and Victory
• 1942-09-18 Information, Please
• 1942-09-25 Philip Morris Playhouse – Crime Without Passion
• 1942-09-28 Cavalcade - Juarez: Thunder from the Hills)
• 1942-10-05 Cavalcade - Passage to More Than India
• 1942-10-11 Radio Reader's Digest - High Flight,
• 1942-10-12 Cavalcade - The Admiral of the Open Sea
• 1942-10-13 Annual United Fund Appeal – performed a playlet Hospitals in Wartime on CBS
• 1942-10-16 afternoon speech at Carnegie Hall with Charlie Chaplin, Sam Jaffe, Lillian Hellman and others for "Artists' Front to Win the War"
• 1942-10-16 Philip Morris Playhouse – The Hitch-hiker
• 1942-10-18 Texaco Star Theatre with Fred Allen
• 1942-10-20 a talk to film students at New York University
• 1942-10-25 Nazi Eyes on Canada
• 1942-10-26 Cavalcade - In the Best Tradition
• Welles then departed for the West Coast to edit the film Journey into Fear and commenced the radio series Ceiling Unlimited in November.

Not mentioned in Keith’s note from the Welles book were the Stage Door Canteen (1942-09-03) appearance and another Russian War Relief that Saturday (1942-09-05). Welles certainly made the most of his time in New York.

###