Love’s Lovely Counterfeit was a popular James M. Cain novel about political corruption in a Midwest town. Cain wrote the novel with a sale of movie rights in mind, but studios balked at its theme. They felt that wartime stories should have a more upbeat, patriotic sense of things and not this dark and gritty and sometimes brutal story. The novel was adapted by Robert L. Richards and is the only appearance of Humphrey Bogart on Suspense.
The episode was promoted as having “murder, politics, and racketeers,” and the “famed tough guy” and “sinister screen star” Bogart. The plotline has a reformed gangster who turns his racket over to the FBI. This starts a variety of encounters and killings that also involve the gangster’s girlfriend. The story seems strangely less engaging than other Suspense episodes, and Elliott Lewis is in a bit of overacting, but stick with it.
This episode is noted as the final appearance of “The Man in Black” voiced by Joe Kearns. His voice would still be heard as series narrator. Having a somewhat “spooky” narrator was common in radio, from The Witch’s Tale (“Nancy” the “old witch”) to Inner Sanctum (“Raymond, Your Host”), The Whistler (it is easy to forget that series pre-dates Suspense by a month), and Molle Mystery Theater (“Geoffrey Barnes”). The gimmick had outlived its usefulness for Suspense and eliminating the character around eventually led to greater flexibility and focus in the integration of commercial messages and general improvement for the overall format… kind of like when a person or two exits a crowded elevator.
The surviving recordings pose some questions in their composition. There are two network versions in circulation, but they are the same performance with one recording having a patched open. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording has more dialogue in scene that approximates the switch to the second network transcription disc (each disc held about 15 minutes). This may indicate a damaged disc, otherwise the recordings are the same. The AFRS recording origin is likely from the existing network recording, but that is not certain as other network recording is not in circulation; we just can’t tell. It is possible that the surviving recording is part one of the east and part two of the west, or vice versa. Is this an east or a west or a composite of the two? We just don’t know. Perhaps other disc sets will become available.
There are two network recording formats in circulation. The one that begins with “Now, Roma Wines present…” is the correct recording. There is another that begins with "Now, the Roma Wine Company of Fresno, California..." but that open is patched on and is not a valid recording. The Suspense scripts we have seen have a standard opening of “Now, Roma Wines present…” at this time in the series, and we have not seen the “Fresno” on in print or scan at any time, even though we cannot detect that such an opening has been patched on those other episodes. The current network recording has a time to the network ID of 52 seconds and is marked “(52s).”
We can say for certain that the AFRS recording is from the network broadcast that has not survived. Wally Maher’s lines are always a good anchor point in noting differences as he let his dialogue flow naturally and would have slight changes to it in each episode. And, as mentioned earlier, the AFRS recording has more dialogue than the surviving network. It may be that the network recording had a damaged disc. If so, it is likely to be the second disc. Early circulating recordings among collectors had a notable gap between discs where this extra dialogue was. The more sophisticated collectors either spliced the gap out from their master recording or corrected it when they made copies for others. We know from the missing dialogue that either the second disc was damaged at its edge OR the dialogue was edited out for one of the performances for purposes of show timing. If such script editing occurred, it was likely between broadcasts. This could indicated that the AFRS recording is derived from the east broadcast and the surviving network is west. But there's no real way to tell.
Here are the differences, with times approximate:
Network 4:29 A big guy with muscles and I'm just a little guy...
AFRS at 3:57 A big guy with muscles and…and I’m…I’m just a little guy….
… and…
Network 13:17 …thinking how much dough they got and what big—big shot public enemies they are.
AFRS 10:17 …thinking how much dough they got and what big shot public enemies they are.
And here is the missing dialogue...
Network 15:02
Elliott Lewis: Yeah? And then what do we do, that’s even worse.
Bogart: Oh, no. No, that’d be easy. We’ll be seeing you.
AFRS at 11:42
Elliott Lewis: Yeah? Well then what do we do, that’s even worse.
Bogart: Oh no, that’d be easy. Then we just take him out of here at night and dump him some place.
Lewis: Oh.
Bogart: And if the kid was to die, that’d be one less guy that had to get a cut, wouldn’t it?
Lewis: Huh? Yeah.
Bogart: Well, c’mon, Lefty.
Wally Maher: Yeah, okay.
Bogart: We’ll be seeing you.
Because of the missing dialogue in the network version, the AFRS version is the preferred listening choice.
Many thanks to two collectors whom we affectionately know at the Cobalt Club forum as the “C3DS,” the “Cobalt Dialogue Difference Detection Squad.” They are Barbara Watkins and John Barker who have been major time and talent contributors to the effort to document Suspense. They have the patient attentiveness to identify quirks like these that make the study of Suspense and the era so absolutely fascinating. (Cobalt Club https://cobaltclubannex.forumotion.com/ is free and a great way to immerse oneself in the hobby’s research and general collecting. I have been a member almost 20 years, and their members around the globe have been outstanding in their support and collaboration. If you want to add a new dimension to your classic radio obsession, Cobalt is the place to do it.)
This is Humphrey Bogart’s sole appearance on Suspense. There’s no need to go into details of his career because there are too many! For an overview, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Bogart Bogart did not do much radio work beyond variety show appearances and adaptations of some of his movies for Lux and Screen Guild. Getting him to commit to a radio series did not happen until after radio was starting to pass its peak. Syndicator Frederick Ziv convinced them to do so and the highly successful syndicated series Bold Venture was the result. He and wife Lauren Bacall recorded 78 episodes of that series, most all of which have survived.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP450308
THE CAST
HUMPHREY BOGART (Ben Grace), Lurene Tuttle (June Lyons), Wally Maher (Lefty Gaus), Joe Kearns (Man in Black / District Attorney / Archie), Elliott Lewis (Johnny / Doctor), John McIntire (Justice Department man), Norman Lloyd (Sol Casper)
This script was expanded to one hour for the (misguided) 60 minute version of Suspense on 1948-01-17 and starred Jimmy Cagney. Cain’s original story is complex, however, and probably deserved the hour-long treatment. That broadcast started with the Richards adaptation and was embellished by novelist (and radio scripter) Jo Eisinger. He used the nom de plume of “Jason James” for the episode. That production is unique because the author of the original novel, James M. Cain, is heard at the closing.
Cain’s book finally got to the silver screen and became a 1956 movie, Slightly Scarlet. https://youtu.be/RyDKqrntYo0 It did not get good reviews and critics complained about how badly the book’s adaptation to the screen was. It is an occasional feature at gatherings of film noir enthusiasts.
This is the first appearance on Suspense of actor Norman Lloyd, uncredited.
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