The Fountain Plays was as 1933 short story by Dorothy L. Sayers and adapted for Suspense by Robert L. Richards. His role in importance to the success of Suspense every week. The departure of John Dickson Carr likely made room in the production budget to keep Richards deeply engaged with the series.
The story begins innocently enough. Archie Spiller owns a very nice home with an impressive new garden fountain. He decides to host a party, and one of the guests is Sam Gooch. He expresses dislike for the fountain and that such a thing is a waste of money. Let’s say Mr. Gooch is an expert at being annoying. The relationship between Spiller and Gooch seems odd. When Gooch keeps drinking and becoming more disagreeable with each glass, other guests wonder why Spiller puts up with it. Despite the party breaking up and everyone retiring for the evening, Gooch is still around and as nasty as before. We learn why Spiller was putting up with his abuse. Spiller was engaging in forgery and Gooch was blackmailing him to keep it quiet. Spiller decides he had enough, strikes Gooch and knocks him out. He thought he killed him, and needed to cover up the deed. He moved Sam to the fountain and attempted to position things to make it look like Sam had an accidental fall. Gooch shows signs of coming back to consciousness, and Spiller finishes him off. Sam may be done, but a new blackmailer who knows of this murderous deed comes forward.
What are these names? Spiller could refer to an overflowing fountain or something that fills a fountain or something that leaks. Gooch can be someone who messes up or is annoying, and in urban slang refers to an (ahem… keeping it clean and vague...) let’s call it an external aspect of the pelvic floor area. I can’t determine if the word had that anatomical reference at the time of the broadcast or of Sayers’ writing. Both are strange character names, for sure, perhaps planned to describe the situation and the personalities. In Spiller’s case, like a fountain recirculates the same water without spilling over, he has now recirculated the same problem, his fountain of trouble stays at the same level as before.
This picture of the cast is from the 1943-12-12 Radio Life feature about Suspense.
Edmund Gwenn stars in the production. He was always working, from the WW1 period in his native England through the 1950s here in the USA. He was in theater, movies, and of course, radio. With this broadcast, he is four years away from his most popular and enduring role as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP430810
THE CAST
EDMUND GWENN (Archibald Spiller), Dennis Hoey (Sam Gooch), Raymond Lawrence (Inspector Branson), Robert Harris (Masters the manservant), Jim Bannon (Man in Black + Voice of Conscience), Vicki Marsden (Betty), Helga Moray? (Mrs. Rosalind Digby), Byron Kane? (Ronald Proudfoot + Coroner)
This episode replaced the previously announced Sorry, Wrong Number, and it may have been a scramble to get it together. The CBS press release announces Gwenn as the star but has nothing about about the story other than it is “eerie.” Most times the press releases would offer a hint of a storyline. It’s one of the most bland CBS releases that can be done. The release is dated August 5, implying that the decision to delay Sorry, Wrong Number may have been the day after the broadcast of A Friend to Alexander.
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The end of this recording announces that Suspense is moving to Saturdays starting with SWN and announces times that indicate there would be two separate performances, east (Eastern and Central) and west (Mountain and Pacific). It was odd to have east and west performances for a sustaining program, This was likely a test, using the heavy publicity around a repeat performance of the controversial play, to assess the listenership for a Saturday Suspense broadcast. This may have been related to the possible sponsorship by Colgate which may have been looking for a Saturday program. Whatever the reason, the experiment lasted only two Saturdays, and there was no mention of Colgate in the trade media again. Suspense would not have east and west broadcasts again until the Roma sponsorship began in December.
At the end of the program, the new show with Robert Young, Passport for Adams, is teased for premiere on 1943-08-23. Keith Scott reports that William Spier directed four shows of that series, likely the first four of them. The series lasted only a few weeks.
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