Alan Ladd plays Robert Tasker in The Defense Rests, a young ex-con who is rehabilitated by a criminal attorney who hired him to be a clerk in his firm. A lawyer in the same firm is the former DA who convicted Tasker. When that ex-DA is murdered, everyone knows who the likely suspect is: Tasker!
Ladd had just appeared on Suspense two months before, and this appearance was at the height of his popularity at this time. He was piling up a lot of radio appearances before his military service was slated to begin a few weeks after this broadcast. He was initially rejected as 4-F, but enlisted in 1943 and was accepted despite a medical issue. He was stationed in Washington state and the studios delayed his projects or replaced him with other actors. Despite his lack of new films, he remained immensely popular through the period.
East and west network recordings have survived. This is an incomplete aircheck, station not identfied, of the west coast broadcast. There is also an Armed Forces Radio and Television Service recording from the late 1970s / early 1980s that is derived from the east broadcast.
The aircheck has a gap at the end of the recording where some final announcements were made. The recording returns and has the CBS network ID at the conclusion of the recording.
The network recordings are the ones in best sound quality, with the west slightly better.
The story also appeared in Suspense Magazine #1 and a PDF can be downloaded at the same link for the recordings.
The author of the script was Rowland Brown. His career as a writer, director, and producer is so absolutely wild that you’re better off going to the Wikipedia page, it’s that crazy and hard to summarize. His better known projects were as the writer of Angels with Dirty Faces and wrote the screenplay for Johnny Apollo. This was his only Suspense script. He had some gangster ties in his past, and that may have informed some of this story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowland_Brown
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP440309
THE CAST
ALAN LADD (Robert Tasker), John McIntire (Max Craiger), Will Wright (Judge), Frank Graham (Prison warden / Cop / Bailiff), Hans Conried (Arthur Hines), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), Joe Forte (Police Captain / Johnson), unknown (Peggy), unknown (Harry Marvin)
This script was originally planned to air a week earlier, and Portrait Without a Face was performed in its place.
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