Nancy Kelly plays a “car-hop” who discovers she's in the company of killer after accepting a ride home from the restaurant where she's employed. He won’t let her out of his car. Blogger Christine Miller describes this as a “cautionary tale.” Suspense had many such warnings to be wary about nefarious persons or dangerous situations that seemed innocent at first.
Drive-in restaurants became popular in the 1920s. The term “car-hop” referred to waitstaff, often young women, who would take food orders and deliver them to the car occupants. Some car-hops would deliver while wearing roller skates, adding some good-natured fun to the drive-in experience. The popularity and necessity of these restaurants would wane in the 1960s. The current food franchises A&W and Sonic are the most similar to the drive-ins of the past era. The popularity of drive-ins likely peaked in the 1950s and were fondly featured in the movie American Graffiti.
The script was by Muriel Roy Bolton and adapted by Mel Dinelli. Bolton was early in her Hollywood writing career. She was the screenwriter for many of the Henry Aldrich movies and she played a key role in editing and writing the TV series The Millionaire. Dinelli’s big Suspense script is next week on Suspense with To Find Help.
The most popular version of Drive-In was broadcast on 1946-11-21 and starred Judy Garland. Kelly offers the more polished presentation of the story.
There are two recordings of this broadcast, one network and the Armed Forces Radio Service recording. The network recording is much superior; the AFRS recording is very low quality. It is not known whether the surviving network recording is east or west; its closing announcement to network ID is 2 seconds. The AFRS recording is from the missing network broadcast. At about 23:45 the AFRS recording includes a teaser clip from the next week’s To Find Help.
Surviving network: Kelly misses a cue at about 3:37 where Wally Maher says “Never mind the menu, just some black coffee, a pot of it, and a ham sandwich, please hurry it.” Kelly responds “When I….” (interrupted by a music cue) and then continues “When I took his order over to the car…”
AFRS: at approximately 2:33 Maher says “Never mind the menu, just some black coffee, a pot of it, and a ham sandwich, please hurry it.” (music cue as scripted) and then Kelly continues “When I took his order over to the car…”
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https://archive.org/details/TSP450111
THE CAST
NANCY KELLY (Mildred), unknown (Ruth), Wally Maher (The Man, alias Doctor Morgan), Joe Kearns (Man in Black / Rene / Highway Patrol cop), Peggy Rea (Rene’s assistant)
Peggy Rea was William Spier’s assistant and was an aspiring actor.
