If the phrase “in fear and trembling” sounds familiar, it’s used in two Biblical passages Philippians 2:12 which itself is likely a reference Psalms 55:5. Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard used the title “Fear and Trembling” in a treatise about anxiety. Therefore, many in the listening audience of 1943 would have been familiar with the phrase from a variety of perspectives.
Mary Astor is in the lead role, making it the second consecutive week that an actor from The Maltese Falcon starred on Suspense. It would be her only appearance on the series, as it was for Sydney Greenstreet. She plays Lucia Durant who is having anxiety issues, and her husband suggests a “tonic” that has the poison strychnine as an ingredient. The concept of a “tonic” was big that then to supposedly cure most any kind of malady, and they could contain most anything. For most, one of the key ingredients would be alcohol; some of the tonics in the 1800s and early 1900s had a high percentage of alcohol. But strychnine seems to be a step too far, because it’s a pesticide. At least now it is... around the turn of the Twentieth Century there were many who still considered it to be a performance enhancer for people who were lethargic. The dangers of the chemical were becoming better known by the time of this broadcast. So while it seems really strange because we know it as a pesticide and poison today, there would have been enough people who still heard about it as a treatment for being “tired” and the plausibility of such an ingredient in a tonic was not as crazy as it would sound today. If that’s not enough to consider in this story, there’s a love triangle going on.
J. Donald Wilson, creator of The Whistler, wrote this story for that very program. It aired there on the CBS Pacific Network only with the title Jealousy on 1942-09-27. Because that program was not broadcast nationally, using it on Suspense a little more than four months later was not a problem.
After this episode, Suspense returns to New York for a few weeks before settling down in California and its illustrious run.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP0216
THE CAST
MARY ASTOR (Lucia Durant), Fred MacKaye (Gil Durant), Lou Merrill (Dr. Hanby), Jane Morgan (Miss Benson), Ken Christy (Police Capt. Drake), unknown (Beverly), Joe Kearns (Man in Black)
###
