Reginald Gardiner stars as a man with a delusion of fantasy about his importance and that he descends from royal blood. He does not. He is tormented by the music of the Merry Widow Waltz which plays on a music box. He fancies himself as Danilo, a key character in the operetta.
The baseline story is The Rubber Trumpet, by Roy Vickers. That story involves a child’s toy (the trumpet) and also a child murder. While a popular mystery story, it was likely that Roma turned the story down, or Spier and Richards suspected that such a subject would not be approved. Other than that, and the replacement of the trumpet with a music box and its song, the general pattern of the story is mostly retained. For example, in the original story, the main character buys all of the toy rubber trumpets in the store; in the Suspense episode, he buys all of the music boxes.
Many newspaper timetables cited “The Rubber Trumpet” as the source of the plotline. The timing of those news citations indicate that the change in the story may have been within a week of broadcast.
Vickers was known for “The Department of Dead Ends,” a 1935 collection of short stories about a fictional Scotland Yard Department that specialized in cold cases. The Rubber Trumpet was in the anthology of those stories.
One of the stranger aspects of Suspense and the Armed Forces Radio & Television Service is that some Suspense episodes were released with Inner Sanctum openings and closings. This was one of those episodes. No recording is available at this time, but a transcription label has been verified.
Only the west coast network recording has survived.
The Armed Forces Radio Service recording of Dateline: Lisbon (AFRS#72) includes a teaser preview of The Merry Widower. It was drawn from the east network recording. In the surviving west recording, Gardiner says at 8:48 “I'll---I'll have to hurry.” The AFRS preview has the corresponding line as “I'll have to hurry.” At about 28:10 of that preview, it seems there might be a missed cue in the east broadcast of The Merry Widower where the orchestra starts playing too soon.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP441012
THE CAST
REGINALD GARDINER (George Munsey, alias Daniel Prince), Raymond Lawrence (Street beggar / Inspector Davis), Ramsay Hill (Doctor), Alec Harford (Arrowsmith), Bill Roberts (singer for Prince Danielo), Joe Kearns (Man in Black / Birdie), Jeanette Nolan (Hilda Calameer), unknown (Ethel Munsey)
