Merle Oberon stars in a story about a French doctor and his wife who are members of the French underground. They set a trap for a German colonel in their home. The wife lures the Nazi officer when she tells him that she suspects her husband of being the local “Bluebeard Killer.” That mysterious killer has been murdering Gestapo officials.
The story is by Silvia Richards, wife of Suspense editor Robert L. Richards. Silvia wrote many Suspense scripts and also some screenplays.
There are two network recordings of this episode, and is not known which coast they are for. One ends with Joe Kearns saying “Next Thursday, ladies and gentlemen” and the other ends with “Next Thursday, same time.” There is no Armed Forces Radio Service recording.
The better recording is the file named
Suspense 1944-09-21 The Bluebeard of Bellac ('Same Time')
The story was included in Suspense Magazine #4 as “A Sense of Smell.” A copy of the story can be downloaded as a PDF at the link below.
This is Merle Oberon’s sole appearance on Suspense. She was born in India and was of Welsh and Ceylonese descent. Her biggest role was in 1939’s Wuthering Heights, which brought her great accolades. She had a fine career and was in many films in the 1940s and early 1950s, with acting roles continuing at a lesser pace in the late 1950s and 1960s.
This is the second and final appearance of Ludwig Donath who was in the earlier Strange Death of Charles Umberstein, also a story about WW2 European front espionage. He began his acting career in Vienna, and fled the Nazis in 1940. He was a very busy actor, best remembered for playing Al Jolson's father in The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again. He had and many ethnic character roles in movies and on television.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP440921
THE CAST
CAST: MERLE OBERON (Mlle. Cecile Cambre), LUDWIG DONATH (Kreutzer), John McIntire (Dr. Pierre Cambre), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), Bill Shaw (Streletez), Jeanette Nolan (Mlle. Boget), Ferdinand Munier?, Stefan Schnabel?
###
