A Friend to Alexander is one of the more curious selections to become a Suspense episode. Writer James Thurber was a humorist, cartoonist, writer, playwright, and so much more. A childhood accident where he was playing William Tell with his brother led to the loss of an eye when he was struck by an arrow. The injury affected his remaining vision the rest of his life. Some people with vision deficits suffer from “Charles Bonnet syndrome,” a condition that causes them to have hallucinations. Some have credited this unfortunate situation as contributing to Thurber’s vivid imagination and character development is his stories. Is this why the main character in this story is having hallucinations about Aaron Burr? Writers always seek the spark of a story idea. It’s clear that one of the reasons for Thurber’s popularity was the odd and amusing characters and their odd situations. This seems to be one of those stories.
The story is about a man, Harry, obsessed with the delusion he is Alexander Hamilton about to duel with Aaron Burr. After much target practice with a pistol in preparation for his impending “duel,” Harry is found dead in bed, his finger frozen in an imaginary pistol grip. This is not your typical Thurber story in The New Yorker magazine.
This picture of the cast is from the 1943-12-12 Radio Life feature about Suspense.
At first, you can’t really tell if this is a comedy or a drama (I’ve never liked the word “dramedy”). Some of the lines in the story are very, very amusing... in the beginning. Then others imply the deep sadness of dealing with mental illness. Whatever it is, it’s one of the most creative stories done on Suspense. The story grows more and more disturbing, especially for his devoted wife who is so concerned about him, but is helpless to turn it around.
The adaptation of this Thurber story is by Freya Howard. The name is often misspelled as “Fria.” Howard did not do much radio writing, but provided scripts for Dr. Christian and Author’s Playhouse, and likely others.
Christine Miller of the superb Escape-Suspense blog (and is some inspiration for the entire Suspense Project) notes that
“A Friend to Alexander” was closely adapted from the short story of the same name by James Thurber and is available in the 1942 collection of stories My World and Welcome to It. If you have a copy of the text, you can read along while listening to the episode. Most of the dialogue in Freya Howard's radio play comes from Thurber, but she did make some interesting additions. Her adaptation was used in the 1943 and 1944 episodes.
https://www.escape-suspense.com/2010/07/suspense-a-friend-to-alexander.html
Robert Young stars in the story with Geraldine Fitzgerald. Many of us know Young as the lead in the radio and TV series Father Knows Best and the later TV series Marcus Welby, MD. While many screen actors have difficulty adjusting to radio, they are both comfortable at the microphone. Young appeared on Suspense many times.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP430803
THE CAST
ROBERT YOUNG (Harry Andrews), GERALDINE FITZGERALD (Bess Andrews), unknown (Alice Crowley), Jim Bannon (Man in Black + Bob Crowley), Robert Harris (Dr. Fox), Horace Willard (Madison the butler)
Christine Miller notes that the 1956-08-15 Suspense presentation is different than the Howard productions. Fran Von Hardesfelt re-imagined the story and included dramatized dream sequences.
At around 3:10 Robert Young carefully clears his throat. It’s really subtle. In radio acting you become aware of such things and keep them from the microphone or find a way to speak through it. I mention this for a particular reason. The recordings we hear of these decades-old broadcasts are often very clear and so very good. It is easy to forget they didn’t sound this way over the air for most households. The AM signal was constrained and sometimes noisy and often varied, subject to interference, especially if you were at a distance from the transmitter. No one would have heard the throat clearing while they were listening at home. The recordings we listen to were made in the production studio or created from a feed from that studio and are so very amazing. Enjoyment of these programs is much greater than could be possible at their time of original broadcast. This aids in the ability to follow the plots, appreciate the music, and have a better connection with subtle aspects of the acting performances.
The next Suspense episode was announced as Sorry, Wrong Number but that was delayed for the very brief Saturday east-west experiment on 1943-08-21. The Fountain Plays was substituted for 1943-08-10. This means that having two Saturday broadcasts was not decided until after this show aired.
Robert Young was starting a new series on CBS. It was announced that Passport for Hunter would debut on 1943-08-17. The premiere was delayed to 1943-08-24 and the series was retitled Passport for Adams. One episode survives; the series only lasted about 8 or 9 episodes.
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