Peter Lorre appears again in the John Dickson Carr story about a bedroom where its guests are murdered. A young woman tells her uncle that she plans to marry a man she met just days ago. The uncle invites the man to stay at their chateau in the “Tapestry Room,” which sounds interesting enough. He wants to scare the man away, and the man wants to prove his love for his intended bride.
The story was also adapted for the comic book Super-Magician Comics. It appeared in issue #25, with a cover date of May 1944. The main feature of the comic book was heroic stories about Blackstone the Magician. This was the only Suspense story used in the comic book series. (A PDF of the story is on the same Internet Archive page as the episode recording).
This recording is the last complete one before Suspense traveled for three weeks in Hollywood to start to set up its relocation. The final New York program would be on 1943-04-06.
Suspense would return to New York for three broadcasts in 1947 and a single broadcast in 1953. The series would move back to New York at the end of Summer 1959 until its final episode. Suspense was moving to Hollywood to have better access to big stars; when it moved back to New York it was to save money. By that time, the big stars were no longer doing radio except for a few notables, such as Vincent Price. In the meantime, Suspense would be known for its lavish budgets and impressive productions. It took a while to hit its stride, as the series was moving to Hollywood and still lacked a sponsor.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP430119
THE CAST
PETER LORRE (Count Stefan Kohari), Gertrude Warner (Ilona), Ted Osborne (Man in Black), others
The script was used in the BBC’s Appointment with Fear series on 1943-10-21; it was also re-used on the 1948-12-26 Cabin B-13 series as The Sleep of Death.
(Special thanks to Craig Wichman for his information about Super-Magician Comics).
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