An amnesiac must find his real identity and clear himself of being a murder suspect. It’s a good Cornell Woolrich story, repeated on this date, and was discussed in a prior blogpost https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/03/1943-12-02-black-curtain.html The script was the first of the Roma Wines series. This repeat performance was not planned.
This date was another scheduled date for the Mel Dinelli radio adaptation of “The Man,” titled To Find Help and starring Frank Sinatra. His schedule was in flux and he became unavailable. The change in plans was in plenty of time for the newspaper publicity of this episode to reach their pages and timetables. Cary Grant’s availability, and the fortunate situation of it just happening to be the one-year anniversary of the Roma sponsorship made it seem like repeating this very script was genius programming. But there was likely controlled panic and alternative scenarios being bandied about in the days that led up to the decision.
Suspense was managed in a rolling six-week schedule. They likely had scripts ready for a slightly longer time. William Spier believed that matching the right script with the capabilities of the guest star was really important. If a script was very demanding, it would be held for some of the best actors. If a skilled actor was not available, and there was no actor of similar talent available, they would switch scripts, too. If a change was looming without much lead time to broadcast, they would go into the files and get a familiar script that the production staff and supporting talent could handle on short notice.
There are two surviving network recordings of this date’s script. The west coast recording is the better of the two.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP441130
THE CAST
CARY GRANT (Frank Townsend alias Danny Nearing), Lurene Tuttle (Ruth Dillon), Wally Maher (Doctor / Franklin Dietrich), Pat McGeehan (Officer), Harry Lang (Pop the store-keep), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), Conrad Binyon (Boy), unknown (Gray Eyes alias Slattery), unknown (Mrs. Ada Dietrich)
The 1945-01-06 Harrisburg PA Telegraph had an item about Binyon and Grant meeting for this episode. A little extra research adds little illumination to the story. Four years earlier, Binyon played in his first movie with Grant. That movie was The Howards of Virginia with Binyon cast as a “neighbor boy” in an uncredited part, according to IMDb. The newspaper item stated that Binyon “was amazed that the movie star remembered him.”
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