A newly hired teacher at a girl’s finishing school discovers a faculty member holds seances to bring the dead to life and that a student had died of fright.
The story is from Ethel Lina White’s 1937 novel The Third Eye. It was presented in the Summer 1942 series of Suspense on 1942-07-22, adapted by Harold Medford. This is another situation of producer William Spier taking advantage of the new audience for Suspense, most of whom had not heard that Summer 1942 broadcast, and re-presenting early Suspense scripts in which he had confidence and believed deserved a bigger audience.
The casting of this episode plays into that storyline in a curious way. Actress Janet Beecher’s highly publicized 1935 divorce from her second husband involved “spiritual messages,” not unlike messages that might come from a séance, that her mother claimed to receive about Beecher’s husband. These messages were very negative and cruel messages, and affected the marriage negatively and the conduct and result of the divorce proceedings. It’s bad enough when mothers-in-law say things about their daughter’s husband, but when she’s just passing messages from beyond, it can create a little tension in the relationship. That Beecher agreed to do this script may have been a bit of self-deprecating and subtle humor.
The program was promoted as an “all feminine cast,” which was often rare for the era. Since the story took place at a young women’s finishing school, it was a natural way for breaking whatever perceived barriers there would have been against such casting as a means to draw an audience for a drama. The White novel was already highly regarded.
Critic Ben Gross, in the New York Daily News edition of 1943-12-31, liked the broadcast:
A group of talented gals went in for some fancy scaring and horrifying on last night's Suspense airing. Margo, Elsa Lanchester and Janet Beecher made the blood run cold in a none-too-dainty concoction, titled Finishing School. A gripping episode in a series that is a "must" or shudder addicts.
There are two recordings that have survived: the Thursday east performance and the Armed Forces Radio Service recording which was derived from the Monday west performance. The AFRS recording has the west coast date; its sound quality is low and harsh. The east recording is the much better of the two. Times of the dialogue difference are approximate.
East is 1:45 “Just as I saw them the very first time”
East is 3:34 “I'll, I'll hear about it...”AFRS 1:55 “Just as I saw them that very first time”
AFRS 3:36 “I'll hear about it..”
Margo was on Suspense at the beginning of November, just a few weeks ago, in Cabin B-13. Elsa Lanchester was a stage and movie actress, known among nostalgia fans for Bride of Frankenstein and in the 1971 horror film, Willard. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, twice, and often appeared in movies and on stage with her husband, Charles Laughton.
Janet Beecher played a wide range of theater and movie roles, but was usually cast as a matriarch of some type. She retired from movies in 1943, a few months after this broadcast, after a nearly 30 year career. Her final film was Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour. She was 60 at the time of this broadcast.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP431230
THE CAST
MARGO (Caroline Watts), ELSA LANCHESTER (Dean Sterling), JANET BEECHER (Melodie), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), unknown (Flora Nash), unknown (Aunt), unknown (Helen), Bill Johnstone (Second character in commercial)
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