John Hodiak plays a wartime American news correspondent, William Baldwin, operating in Lisbon. Because of some of his past associations back in the States prior to WW2, he says he is unlikely to be welcomed back home, even though his is now supporting the Allies. A Nazi general wants to ensure he is not tried for war crimes, and enlists the assistance of Hodiak’s character. The story begins with Baldwin on trial for murder and then the complex flashback story begins.
The Harold Medford script was originally used on The Whistler 1944-03-12 as Lisbon Adventure. It is a missing episode. Since that series was a CBS Pacific Network program, and not a national one, it was not considered to be an issue for Suspense to use a script that was on a different series only seven months prior. (Still, I wonder if some California listeners had a sense of deja vu when they were listening).
Both the east and west recordings have survived, but it is not known which is which. One episode has no gap between the final announcement and the network ID. That recording has the notation “(dirID).” The other has a 17 second gap with music between the final announcement and the network ID. It is marked as “(17s)” The direct to ID recording is the better of the two.
There is an Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#72) that has survived. The AFRS recording was taken from the 17s to ID broadcast. In 17s recording, John Hodiak shoots the Nazi villain 6 times; in the dirID recording he shoots eight times:
dirID 25:51: 8 shots
17s 25:30: 6 shots
AFRS 21:44: 6 shots
The AFRS recording has a teaser preview for the next broadcast, The Merry Widower. There are some skips at the very end of the AFRS filler music. At about 28:10 it seems there might be a missed cue in the east broadcast of The Merry Widower where the orchestra starts playing too soon.
The story may seem to be out of sorts in its time frame as it anticipates certain events that do not occur until after the war ends. If you’re thinking of the post-war Nuremberg trials, that impression would make sense. But the United Nations established a war crimes commission on October 20, 1943. To our ears 75+ years later, it may seem that the story is “predicting” or “assuming” that there will be a “court of world democracies,” but is just using a different name for a concept that was already established in the news flow of events almost a year before this broadcast, and six months prior to The Whistler broadcast.
John Hodiak was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Michigan. He started in radio in local productions in Detroit and performed in The Green Hornet. He moved to Chicago where he was very active on radio and performed the lead role in the short-lived L’il Abner serial adaptation of the famous comic strip. Some scripts for that series, of which no recordings are known to have survived, can be viewed at https://archive.org/details/LilAbnerScriptsJHMC/
Hodiak was 30 years old at the time of this broadcast. His career was rising with many of Hollywood’s leading men were in wartime service. He was rejected for service because of high blood pressure, while likely led to his very early passing at just 41 years old. He was a fine character actor and was married to actress Anne Baxter.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP44105
THE CAST
JOHN HODIAK (William Baldwin), Jeanne Bates? (Teri Moore), Ramsay Hill (Judge), Charlie Lung (Bellboy / Jury Foreman), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), George Sorel (Man speaking foreign language), unknown (General Von Klaus), Sidney Miller (Moska)
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