A wartime manufacturing worker is insanely jealous of his boss’ love relationship with a woman who works in the plant. His delusional obsession for her leads him to develop an intricate plot to frame the boss for her murder. It’s one of those “if I can’t have her, nobody can” plotlines by someone who thinks they’re smarter than everyone else and they haven’t overlooked a single contingency. The performance includes his beating and murdering the woman, another reminder that Suspense is not for kids. It’s another story where home audio recording technology plays into the storyline.
The script was likely written sometime in Spring 1945 and has references to the progress of the war. The narration introduces a flashback to a story in a war production plant after Germany surrender which was a little more than three months prior to the broadcast. The Pacific war was still being fought at the time. Japan’s surrender was on 1945-08-15, eight days before this broadcast. Dane Clark’s character walks down death row to be executed at the end of the story. Events unfolded and were resolved in much too short a time for all the events of the story and the justice process to occur (Hat tip: classic radio researcher John Barker).
Even the factory’s products were no longer essential in the manner described in the story. The 1955 production had no such timeline context problems and had minor changes, such as changing the manufacturing company’s products from wartime equipment to aviation equipment. The script was obviously caught in the rapid unfolding of wartime events, and they decided to proceed accordingly and tolerating some of the anomalies, hoping that listeners would gloss over the continuity issues without any idea that people almost 80 years later would be picking apart their work the way that classic radio researchers do. Even though that’s exactly what we’re doing, it’s meant to gather a greater understanding of their times and the technological state of broadcasting at that time.
The story is by “I. A. Finley,” who was actually Irving Fein. He was a publicist for CBS at the time and would become the agent for Jack Benny and George Burns. He would eventually become a business partner of Benny in his television production company. The story was re-performed about 10 years later and broadcast on 1955-11-29. The script credit at that time was to “Peter Ashley.” It is not know why those particular names were selected. An overview of Fein’s successful and influential career can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fein
There are two recordings available. The one surviving network recording is the better of the two. It is not known if it is east or west. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#117) was derived from the missing network recording. Times are approximate:
Surviving network 1:34 "...one of those..ah..big good looking guys...";
AFRS 0:49 "...one of those those big good looking guys..."; there are many other differences in the recordings;
This story was included in Suspense Magazine #1 as “This’ll Kill You.” A downloadable PDF is available on the Internet Archive page with this recordings.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP450823
THE CAST
DANE CLARK (Joe Jordan), unknown (Harriet Slate), Elliott Lewis (Sullivan / Workman), Wally Maher (Charlie Harris), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Warden / Workman), Jerry Hausner (Workmen # 1 & 3), Jim Nusser (Priest), unknown (Judge)
Classic radio fan and performer Patte Rosebank notes the obsolete use of the word “white” in Clark’s dialogue. She wrote on the OTRR Facebook page “The use of the term ‘white’ [may seem] unsettling by today's standards. I had to remind myself that, back then, it meant ‘upstanding and on the level’.” Indeed, some ears may think they’re hearing Clark saying “right” because the use of “white” in this context has plummeted. If the story was written today they’d use “honest” or “trustworthy.” The obsolete use fell out of common usage decades ago as sensitivity to possible misinterpretation as a slur became more evident.
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