This Lucille Fletcher script is beloved by many Suspense fans for many reasons. It has a curious backstory and a speculative legend, too. A widowed musician, played by Vincent Price befriends a woman, played by Ida Lupino. They are romantically attracted to each other by their mutual love of music. As their relationship develops, however, she learns that his children believe their mother’s body is hidden in a small room behind the mechanism of their father’s magnificent pipe organ. The instrument is so large it is part of the very structure of the house. It’s a creepy story, made creepier by the fact that children were involved, and they’re kind of creepy, too.
Suspense blogger Christine Miller says that this “the kind of radio horror that only Lucille Fletcher could write.” That’s not just from the script plotting and dialogue perspective. Fletcher also has a deep love of music. When she was at Vassar College, she won a scholarship to study in Spain for a certain musical instrument: the organ! This means she is writing about something she knows quite well. Her early job at CBS had her working in the music library and also in publicity, which is how she met composer Bernard Herrmann, whom she later married after a long courtship. She was also a music critic for The New Yorker magazine. Just like this story, the music brought Fletcher and Herrmann together, too. (It didn’t keep them together, but that’s another and totally unrelated story for someone else’s blog or book).
It’s a fascinating story, but it may not be appreciated upon first listening. It may seem a bit hokey at first, like a B horror movie, or a TV episode of Night Gallery, but listen again. Be sure to listen to the right recording for the best enjoyment.
Both the east and west network recordings have survived. The west recording is better, and not just because of sound quality. The east recording is actually good. The west is a better performance.
For many years in the classic radio hobby, a version of the west coast program that was circulating incomplete and missing its closing “next Monday” that would have identified it as that specific broadcast. The east recording was complete, but it seemed to have missteps in many respects caused many collectors to believe it was a rehearsal. Many collectors had no clue at the time that there were east and west copies as they only had one recording. They didn’t have the following details.
These are the big dialogue differences in the two performances (times are approximate).
East 7:56 They won't...they don't let me play when they're at home.
West 7:53 They don't want me to play when they're home.East 12:06 Please. Please don't start them off Amanda.
West 11:59 Don't start them off again Amanda please.East 17:26 Why doesn't Papa give us a key? If he'd only let us .... have it...
West 17:28 Oh, why doesn't papa give us a key? If he'd only give us a key…East 17:45 That's where they.. that's where the big pipes are. And inside it's all dark. But where are the.. but there are.. there are tunnels... there's a little room... a little room ... that's where she's hiding
West 17:37 That's where the big pipes are. And inside it's all dark. They.. There are tunnels in there and little rooms that go all throughout the house and that's where mama is.
At the 17 to 19 minute mark of the east broadcast, the child actors seem to be having trouble with their lines. There are long pauses, and Lupino sounds like she is being patient, encouraging, and concerned all at once. They do get through the scene. The west broadcast is much, much smoother.
One has to wonder if Spier’s absence from the studio was the reason, or a reason, for the problems in the east broadcast. He was still assigned to bed rest, recovering from his heart attack of the week before.
And now the happy legend. Is it true? Despite many hours of research, and the viewing of show scripts, this legend cannot be affirmed or denied: Joe Kearns is the organist in the performance. We don’t know if it’s true or false, but the fan in us wants it to be true, which means we have to be cautious about believing it. There’s a case for some valid speculation.
Joe Kearns is absent from the broadcast, and John McIntire is the “Man in Black.” If there was a production script that had the details of the assignments and the casting, we would know for sure; we have only drama scripts with no production details. If Kearns was on vacation, he would miss two different script performances as he does a month later when he misses one performance each of Search for Henri Lefevre and Beast Must Die. He both misses Fugue performances. There is a factor in the vacation factor: he also misses the 1944-06-12 Monday performance of Case History of Edgar Lowndes. The Thursday performance of 1944-06-08 has not survived to the best of our knowledge. But there are other factors in favor of the idea.
Kearns grew up in Salt Lake City and worked at KSL in all kinds of positions, including acting, writing, announcing, directing, producing… almost anything they needed. He was also the organist at the theater, playing one of those marvelous and big Wurlitzer organs to great applause. He would entertain there and at other similar venues. When he moved to Hollywood and built a home, he had a large Hammond organ installed, according to a 1945 Radio Life profile. He would later restore a Wurlitzer, sold after his death in the 1960s.
An easy question is whether or not Fletcher and Kearns discussed their love of the instrument and whether on not their conversations affected her crafting of the story.
The harder question that plays into legend is whether or not Kearns is playing the organ in the studio. Was he a member of the musicians union? There has been no luck in finding out. If he was, and he was playing in studio, that would explain his absence in a speaking role. If he was not a union member, then he would not be able to play in the broadcast. We may never know. But it’s one of those things that we’re trying to find in newspapers, magazines, documents, and perhaps, one day, we will find a production script. Until then, it’s a happy legend, and nothing more.
A news item in the 1944-08-29 Waterbury CT Democrat reports that a five-keyboard pipe organ was used for this performance even though the music in the program totaled only two minutes! Kearns would have been very familiar with such a configuration.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/440601
THE CAST
VINCENT PRICE (Theodore Evans), IDA LUPINO (Amanda Peabody), John McIntire (Man in Black), Bea Benaderet (Lizzie Cholmley), Mary Lou Harrington? (Daphne), Tommy Cook? (David)
This is likely Vincent Price's last broadcast before reporting for military service, according to newspaper reports.
Researcher Don Ramlow and disc collector John Tefteller discussed this episode a few months ago. Don was a guest on John’s Good Old Days of Radio podcast for commentary and a replay of the episode. They mentioned that the inclusion of kids made the story very different from other Fletcher scripts and a bit creepier. I hadn’t really considered that before until I heard their exchange. It’s worth a listen. https://goodolddaysofradio.podbean.com/e/episode-104-the-best-of-lucille-fletcher-fugue-in-c-minor/ (Here’s a happy behind the scenes hat tip to Daniel Chase, producer of the successful 2x/week podcast. It has a growing and a younger audience demographic than most classic radio endeavors).
Special thanks to collector and researcher Andrew Steinberg who documented the dialogue differences in the east and west recordings.
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