Here it is, the most famous Suspense script of all time… and much of the stories about it that spread around the hobby since its beginnings are untrue. It’s a shame. Those long-held myths obscured the importance and innovation of this script and broadcast. Sorry, Wrong Number changed the direction of the series and created a dramatic franchise, a distinctive notoriety for Agnes Moorehead and higher recognition for writer Lucille Fletcher.
The plotline: a husband hires a killer to murder his nagging wife while he’s on a business trip. That’s all. How the drama was constructed around that basic idea is what made the broadcast legendary.
How different it was
The program did not get much pre-broadcast publicity, and it didn’t even have the name Sorry, Wrong Number until days before broadcast. The “hook” that the CBS publicity department used was that Agnes Moorehead’s voice would be the only one heard in the broadcast except for unidentified voices on the telephone. This was their main reason to listen.
And then you listen. Does this sound anything like the John Dickson Carr version of Suspense? No. This was new. This was quite different. Where are all the characters? Where’s all that constant banter between them. We’re listening to a lady on the phone. She’s stuck in bed. She’s lonely. The story is practically real-time, not drawn out in different scenes that take place days apart. We’re eavesdroppers. We’re thrown into a story with no set-up, no circumstance, no introduction. We don’t know what’s going on.
“Everyone” in the hobby talks about the “flub” at the end. Guess what: it doesn’t really affect the story. Mrs. Stevenson was still dead. Everyone who listened knew it. Minor details may befuddled some at the end of the broadcast, but it was the full scope of the ending, so contrary and unlike other broadcasts of its time, that made ending so surprising, flub or not. Many in audience thought they missed something. The period of dead silence after the murder to rattled the audience whose expectation was for a different ending. You don’t hear that long a period of silence on radio. “Dead air” is considered taboo. “Dead air” was part of this drama.
Then there is also the myth that the east got the flawed broadcast (Eastern and Central time zones), but the west (Pacific and Mountain) got a perfect one. Suspense didn’t even have east and west broadcasts in May 1943.
There was only one broadcast, and the newspaper timetables across the country verify that. Suspense was a sustaining, sponsorless series. One of the reasons networks had east and west broadcasts was so sponsors could have their message reach the largest possible audience at a particular time of the listenership. You needed sponsors with big budgets for that. Suspense didn’t have a sponsor.
Here is an image of the top of the script cover page. It shows the switch to the Sorry, Wrong Number title and only one broadcast time, 6:30pm Pacific War Time (special thanks to Suspense researcher Don Ramlow).
The east-west broadcast history of Suspense
CBS was courting “bankrollers” for Suspense throughout 1943 and did an east-west “test” that was sponsor-free on two Saturday evenings in August 1943. Sorry, Wrong Number was the first of the Saturday broadcasts, and was highly promoted. CBS and Colgate were in negotiations for the series sponsorship. The experiment lasted only two weekends before they gave up and reverted back to weeknight broadcasts. Ratings for the Saturday program must have been awful, otherwise they would have continued it. That August day, however, was the first time Moorehead performed the script since May, and was the first time she performed it twice on a single day.
When Roma Wines initiated its series sponsorship in the beginning of December 1943, the east and west broadcasts were on separate days, Thursday for the east and Monday for the west. Then, in mid-September 1944, the full CBS schedule finally cleared in a manner that allowed for east and west on the same day. The east and west broadcasts ended when the Roma sponsorship ended in November 1947.
The flub kerfuffle that really wasn’t
What is startling as this is researched from the perspective of the 2020s is how little mention there was in newspapers and the trade press about the “flub.” Yes, it is likely that director Ted Bliss threw the cue out to Hans Conried at the wrong time, but that was not really anything new in radio. The stuff just happened, but it didn’t happen very often, and when it did it was rarely newsworthy.
The few newspapers that mentioned it wrote about it in a matter-of-fact passive way, reporting that the script would be repeated soon. Initial reports said it would be two weeks later. It wasn’t. It ended up as almost three months later.
Variety of 1943-06-02 stated
Lucille Fletcher’s whodunit script, broadcast May 25 on the “Suspense” series, will be repeated two weeks hence by CBS because the solution was lost when one of the actors missed a cue in the original performance.
That was basically all that was said. Reporting about it elsewhere was practically zero. The solution wasn’t “lost.” Leona Stevenson was dead.
Newspapers, likely assisted by CBS publicity, focused more on the large number of phone calls the network and affiliates received and the overall reaction to the story, and the requests to hear it again. All these years later, the context of the listening marketplace of that night is not widely understood by most classic radio fans. To grasp how different Sorry, Wrong Number was and why it got such a strong listener reaction, here are four key points.
First, it was a really good story
Flubs don’t create a stir. Very few programs get news coverage or “buzz” after their broadcast. SWN was much different than what listeners were used to hearing. It had them talking around water coolers in the office and chatting with a neighbor while hanging laundry in the backyard clothesline. The dead silence after the murder confused attentive listeners. Did they miss something? Where are the police? Did they just witness a murder? How did she die? Is the radio still working? It was so very different than other programs they heard. That atypical ending caused more confusion than any flub could.
The principal aspect of the conclusion is that Mrs. Stevenson dies, brutally, upon the attack of the paid killer. We don’t know exactly how she was murdered. We heard the “thud” of her body.
At about the 4:10 point of the network recording, the killer is told that using a knife to kill Mrs. Stevenson is okay as long as there isn’t much blood. But by the end of the story it’s not clear that a knife was even used. All we know is that the act is taking place as the train goes by, and the fall of her body.
The entire program she was complaining about being bed-ridden and helpless, but she seems to get out of bed to defend herself. She was a weak, helpless woman who got up from her bed. Instead of complaining about how awful her life was, she attempted to defend it. Unless she did that, there would be no “thud.” This must have been vicious. The killer could have just suffocated her with a pillow if she was so helpless. But that’s not the way it happened. The killer had to work.
Typically, a suffocation on radio would have required the complexity of dialogue and a staged and extended scuffle in her bed. Shooting her would have been loud and perhaps draw attention, even over the noise of the elevated train. Was she strangled? beaten? choked? stabbed? Fletcher pulls any possibility of satisfactory closure away from the listener. The train passing by masks the noise of the murder to the neighboring apartments and to the listeners. Does it matter how she dies in the radio play? It’s yet another open-end question for the listener, with the murder details drowned out by the train noise. The lack of details and the thud make it more shocking.
In the 1948 movie (scripted by Fletcher herself) you get a glimpse of the killer’s fingers going toward her and the camera shifts to the window where you see the passing train, but when the camera shifts back to the bed, you see the arms of a lifeless Mrs. Stevenson, killed in bed. In the stage play, you’re not quite sure how it happens, whether strangled or choked. In the movie and in the stage version, you don’t need a thud.
How good was the story? In 1947, Decca released a studio recording record set of a new Moorehead performance. It became one of the biggest selling recorded performances ever done, and was issued a multiple times over the next 10 years. A “flub” cannot create that level of financial reward and that high degree of marketing persistence and presence that SWN had.
Second, listeners became very impatient with Mrs. Stevenson.
She was constantly complaining and was making demands to try to bully others to do her bidding. The personality was similar to a woman Fletcher had a run-in with at a local store. Fletcher’s daughter was interviewed years later and said that the character was her mother’s act of revenge.
There was likely a good portion of the audience who muttered “I wish she was dead” or “shut up, already.” The tide of the story turns against Mrs. Stevenson the longer one listens. Once the audience realizes she’s dead, there’s a shock of guilt for the intense listeners. This was made worse by no one rushing in to help, not a police officer, not a neighbor, or anyone else. There’s a long silence after the “thud.”
Did the listeners who grew impatient with Mrs. Stevenson have some voyeuristic complicity in her murder?
We don’t even know exactly how she died. Was she beaten? Was she strangled with the phone cord? Was she choked? We didn’t hear a gunshot. Was she stabbed as the killer discussed at the beginning of the play?
Radio listeners always had a clue what the instrument of crime will be, and it was usually integral to the scene of the crime or its attempt. Scriptwriters often used now-laughable lines like “put down that gun” or “you think you can kill me with a knife?” or “why do you have that rope?” Fletcher introduces the idea of a knife at the beginning of the story, but we really have no idea if it was used. The knife was mentioned about 20 minutes before the murder occurs. Listeners were used to knowing details of nefarious acts: Fletcher withholds it and all we know is the aftermath.
Third, the ending was atypical of its time and genre.
The original concept of the story was that she would be saved by police rushing in. Sorry, no police. The story would not have its dramatic impact if she was saved from an attempted killing. It would be just like every mystery and detective program heard every other night. This ending was so very different from what was on the air at the time.
This may be hard for us to understand all these years later. We are used to stories having dark endings (it seemed especially common for movies in the 1970s). In the 1940s, there were movie codes and a general sentiment that good always had to win in the end. This story was actually quite risky to broadcast.
Remember: Suspense was a sustained program. In light of some actions taken by future sponsors Auto-Lite and Roma Wines to alter script plotlines or reject scripts, it is highly likely that they would rejected this story ending. They would have pushed for the police rescue or a saving act by someone, anyone. By the time these companies sponsored Suspense, this script was considered an unalterable classic. Sorry, Wrong Number was bigger than the companies sponsoring it. These same sponsors that rejected lesser scripts during their tenure were happily and enthusiastically grabbing the coattails of this proven audience-grabber for all of the repeat performances. What a funny paradox that is.
Fourth, there is an undercurrent of class envy in the story.
Less than 40% of the households in the US had a phone. Generally, only businesses and upper middle class families could afford one. It was either too expensive for many or a luxury item with little practical use. This means that even having a phone itself had a mysteriousness about it for many of the listeners. A problem like crossed lines and overhearing conversations was very rare. Because almost two thirds of the audience had no regular experience with phones, they accepted its possibility. Fletcher could play a little fast and easy with phone technology misconceptions in the story.
There were probably some listeners who had aspirations of phone ownership, but after the program wondered if they should aspire for something else. How many breadwinners who were skeptical of phones in the home were saying to their spouses and relatives “see.... this kind of stuff only brings trouble... we don't need one in our house…”?
In terms of overall class envy, there may have been some in the audience who were intrigued by a wealthy person with a comfortable life struggling through the story. There is a “money can’t buy happiness” underlying theme. Mrs. Stevenson seems ungrateful for what she has, even though she has a phone, lives in a posh area of Manhattan, and can boss people around.
It’s clear where the fictional Stevensons lived in Manhattan. Fletcher has their address as 53 North Sutton Place. There is no such address, but Sutton Place is a short road that becomes York Avenue around East 55th Street. The Sutton area is one of the most expensive and exclusive areas of the east side of Manhattan
In the meantime, “regular people” were dealing with the scarcities and uncertainty of the World War. Everyone was sacrificing in one way or another or had family members in the service. All Mrs. Stevenson seems to do is complain. A key part of the storytelling is to slowly erode any sympathy for her, and harden the audience against her, making the ending more devastating to their decency.
How the myths became entrenched in the classic radio hobby
Those major points are about the listening audience and the nature of their times. Pioneer classic radio hobbyists did not really seek that kind of context. Their mission was to rescue programs, record them, trade them, and enjoy them. Eventually, they encountered the Suspense program of 1943-06-01, Banquo’s Chair. At the beginning of the program, they hear this announcement:
In just a moment, CBS will present its weekly program of the world's outstanding thrillers, Suspense. Before we begin, the producer feels it incumbent upon him to reply herewith to the many inquiries concerning the solution of last week's story of the woman on the telephone called Sorry, Wrong Number. Due to a momentary confusion in the studio, an important line cue was delivered at the wrong time and some of our listeners were uncertain as to the outcome of the story. For them, be it known that the woman, so remarkably played by Miss Agnes Moorehead, was murdered by a man whom her husband had hired to do the job. We should also like to announce that in response to many hundreds of requests, this Suspense play will be repeated within a few weeks.
What were they to think about that? Upon first hearing of this announcement, the collectors myth snowball began its downhill descent and accumulation. For those whose only knowledge of the flub was this announcement, it was easy to assume it caused was panic and chaos in the studio. If it was confusing enough to necessitate an announcement, then it’s not a big leap to believe that news like that must have been in the papers and the industry trade magazines. No, sorry, this was not a post-War of the Worlds news moment.
Those pioneer collectors did not have the research tools that we have today. If the Banquo’s Chair announcement was all they had to go on, what they assumed was not unreasonable. In their mind, the key reason Sorry, Wrong Number was big was because there was a big mistake at the end and that’s what made the broadcast noteworthy. Such sentiment was unfortunate, and drew attention away from how good the script and the performance was.
And then there’s the myth of the flawless west coast performance. Many collectors assumed that all series had east and west broadcasts. This would mean that west coast listeners were fortunate they heard SWN the way it was intended to be. Again, those early collectors did not have the research resources that collectors of our times have. If there was such an event, it would be a news story: “Suspense drama confuses east coast and midwest listeners; other regions spared.” There wasn’t.
The timetables in each time zone make it clear. Suspense was broadcast and fed to its network once, at 9:30 Eastern time, 8:30 Central time, 7:30 Mountain time, and 6:30 Pacific time. Years later, some hobbyist of hopefully honorable but misguided intent, “created” a west recording through tape editing. It was “flub-less,” just like the west heard it. You can still find that recording in many collections and in some logs all these years later. We know there was no such broadcast, and the well-intentioned “reconstruction” of a west coast broadcast was a confusing fraud.
Another way we know that there was no west recording is that an Armed Forces Radio Service transcription of this inaugural Sorry, Wrong Number broadcast has survived. It has the error. If that error was so gigantic and disorienting, and there was a west coast broadcast, AFRS would have been supplied “the flub-less” west coast recording for their distribution. But there was no such recording to give. The AFRS recording matches the network recording, flub and all.
Sorry, Wrong Number was confusing to many listeners because it was so very different, and so contrary to their expectations, especially their expectations of style that were reinforced in the weeks and weeks of Carr-style presentations. To blame it all on the “flub” is to dismiss the innovation the story was in its time.
Sorry, Wrong Name
One of the more intriguing parts of Suspense history is the relationship of producer William Spier and his second wife, Kay Thompson, and her influence on the series. They were not married for long. But Kay may have been one of the most broadly talented people in show business. She was a choreographer, music coach, singer, dancer, and had numerous other talents, especially for MGM.
It was Bill and Kay who helped Fletcher with the ending of the story. One of their other key skills was in developing story titles. Fletcher was admittedly not good at it. Her title for the script was “You Can Always Telephone.” Researcher Don Ramlow and Keith Scott uncovered many names for the episode. Among the names they found were “I’m So Nervous,” “She Overheard Death Talking,” “She Overheard Death Speaking,” “She Overheard Murder Speaking,” and “If at First You Don’t Succeed!”
Here is the full cover page of the edited version of the Sorry, Wrong Number script. This script image was supplied by Don Ramlow who has spent extensive time with the University of Wisconsin archives materials (where this script is archived) and also archives of the Suspense advertisers and others. He also had discussions with Lucille Fletcher about this episode and her career. (Don was the guest for a series of installments of Good Old Days of Radio podcast for their retrospective about Fletcher's career. The playlist of the Fletcher podcasts can be accessed by clicking here. Or, find them at their website goodolddaysofradio.com )
“She Overheard Death Speaking” was the title announced at the end of The ABC Murders the week before, and the title or a variation of it was in all of the newspaper listings. This means that Sorry, Wrong Number was selected as the title less than a week before the broadcast. No newspaper listing can be found with this final and now-legendary title.
1943-05-25 Des Moines IA Register
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The Spiers eventually agreed they would separate and divorce. They decided Kay would establish residency in Nevada to take advantage of their more accommodating divorce laws, and that she would work there for the required time. In that brief time away from Hollywood, she developed what is remains the prototype multi-act Las Vegas night club show. By the time the Spiers were legally able end their marriage in Nevada, her influence over Suspense had ended, and instead she transformed Vegas entertainment for the decades that followed.
After SWN, Suspense finally earned the consideration of potential sponsors
Prior to SWN, Suspense was just another mystery program. It was getting the attention of the big Hollywood stars, their agents, and the studios, but you could hear stars on other radio programs most every night. SWN set Suspense aside from the other mystery and Hollywood programs with compelling scripts, innovative integration of music, and exceptional performances. Their embrace of against-type casting that put comedians and singers and dancers in dramatic roles was a publicity and audience magnet. The mistakes of the Forecast pilot had faded from memory. Its growing stature and reputation meant that Suspense could be offered to a sponsor without reservation. Who would sponsor the series? There’s much more work for CBS and Suspense production staff to do before a sponsor signs on to the project. And there are more performances of Sorry, Wrong Number that can be used to discuss them.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP430525
THE CAST
AGNES MOOREHEAD (Mrs. Stevenson), Hans Conried (Man on phone), Harry Lang (George), unknown (Operator), Margaret Brayton (Chief Operator / Information), Paula Winslowe (Henchley hospital woman), Joe Kearns (Western Union / Man in Black), Charles Seel (Sergeant Martin)
NOTE: Of the two recordings available, the network recording has better sound than the AFRS one.
Agnes Moorehead would eventually become “the first lady of Suspense.” That did not happen with this broadcast. She was in the entertainment news pages more often for her role on the radio program Mayor of the Town and her role in the 1942 Orson Welles film production of The Magnificent Ambersons. Her “first lady of Suspense” reputation grew because of her fine work in broadcasts of The Diary of Sophronia Winters, The Sisters, To Find Help, The Yellow Wallpaper, and many others, as well as all of the repeat performances of SWN.
There is obviously lots more to know about the role that Sorry, Wrong Number played in the history of Suspense. This page https://sites.google.com/view/suspense-collectors-companion/click-for-home-arrow-for-more/agnes-moorehead-and-sorry-wrong-number has many more details about this and all the SWN performances on radio and early television, in the USA and in England.
And we barely mentioned the record set, of the television broadcasts, or the movie or… the opera? Yes… the opera… That will be described in a commentary of a later broadcast performance.
Kay Thompson was also responsible for saving a Suspense classic from the garbage can. A script titled Articles of Death was rejected by husband Bill and she asked him to reconsider it. It would become Dead Ernest, one of the most beloved Suspense scripts and performances. It was the broadcast that would win the series its Peabody Award.
Thompson may have had an in-joke mention in the script. Mrs. Stevenson mentions that her maid is named “Eloise.” In the 1950s, when Thompson was living at New York’s Plaza Hotel, she wrote books about a little girl named Eloise, a young girl who lived at that very same hotel. Biographer Sam Irvin notes that the “Eloise” character was developed by the Thompson based on her childhood imaginary friend and alter ego with that name. The imaginary friend, according to Irvin, had “a voice in which Thompson spoke throughout her life.” It’s possible that as the Spiers were working with Fletcher in finalizing the script that they needed a name for the maid… and it became “Eloise.”
The next week’s show was announced as “The Extra Guest,” but the name was changed to “Banquo’s Chair.” But that’s a strange situation – the original stage play was named “Banquo’s Chair” and Suspense was going to change the name of an established play! Perhaps Spier thought better of it, and reverted to the original title, even after the newspapers were listing “The Extra Guest” in their timetables.
IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME ON THIS BLOG...
You will enjoy the post about another Lucille Fletcher script, The Hitch-hiker, which starred Orson Welles. Click this link:
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/01/1942-09-02-hitch-hiker.html
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