The Night Man is another Lucille Fletcher offering. It has you wondering if the quandary of the lead character is imagined or real, if other characters are placating her through anxious moments or if they believe them, if they are cold to her pleas for help or realize no help is possible, or is it something else? She is convinced that her building’s elevator operator is an escaped murderer out for revenge for her testimony against him a decade ago.
The concept of an elevator operator is lost for recent generations, but the position in big city apartments was often well-paying, unionized, and of great responsibility (and the Christmas tips were great!). It was usually a uniformed position in posh apartment buildings, with suits and coats and hats, making them very recognizable. They knew the tenants, their schedules, and their habits, and often assisted bringing groceries and packages into their apartments. This is why there is such tension and suspense in the story, and likely for most urban listeners when this was broadcast. Elevator operators were carefully hired, and had to be trustworthy and reliable as well as knowledgeable about elevator operation. Our push-button elevators are so very different, making this historical context important to appreciating the story.
William Spier also used the script on 1949-04-15 Philip Morris Playhouse for his single season with that series (only a handful of recordings have survived of his year with that program). The Night Man script was also used on Suspense in 1959 and 1960. It’s a good script. As you listen you know something is up but you just don’t know what. Then when it’s revealed, you may get the sense that the end is a letdown because it is too simple and a gimmicky, and to pull off such a gimmick in real life would require very complicated coordination between numerous parties, and especially, the landlord of the building. Impractical? Maybe. It’s still a likable script, but not in the class of SWN, Fugue, or Thing in the Window, Hitch-hiker, or other Fletcher scripts. It’s still better than so many other scripts that were on the radio, and even on Suspense.
We do not know if the sole surviving network recording is from the east or west broadcast. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording is from the surviving network recording. Dialogue matches the two recordings and is also confirmed by one of the trumpets going very flat playing a note during the music cue at the close of the drama.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP441026
THE CAST
VIRGINIA BRUCE (Stella Rhodes), RICHARD WHORF (Lt. Tom Nixon “the Night Man,” alias Charles Foley), Wally Maher (Warden Graves), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), Harry Lang? (Gallagher)
