This episode was based on the Cornell Woolrich short story The Book that Squealed which appeared in the August 1939 issue of Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. It was adapted for Suspense by Silvia Richards.
Blogger Christine Miller writes about this episode:
This episode stars Myrna Loy as Prudence, a public librarian who stops at nothing to discover who vandalized the library's copy of Gone With the Wind. She is the stereotypical librarian - until she takes off her glasses. Then, for reasons she can't understand, men call her “toots.” Of course, the audience understands because Prudence is really Myrna Loy, the sexy star of The Thin Man movies. In her heyday in the 1930's, she was voted “The Queen of Hollywood” by fans.
Loy’s character is realizes that individual words are cut out of the book. She checks what words they are and realizes that when they are arranged in a particular order, they comprise a ransom note. She follows through the loan history of the book and investigates what happens.
If the “Eddie” character sounds a lot like “Froggy” in The Singing Walls, it should. It’s actor Ken Christy playing a gangster once more.
There are funny librarian jokes here as a young customer is taking out Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill believing it to be about radios. Gone With the Wind is supposedly about aviation but upon reading was nothing like that at all. The other is the running gag (and stereotype of its time) about nerdy woman librarians who wear glasses and become like Hollywood starlets when they remove them. Loy’s character throws her glasses out at the end of the story as she decides that the romantic advances of the police lieutenant who saves her are worth pursuing. It’s a story of its time, similar to movie fare of the era. Today, it would likely be adjusted and its edges sanded and rounded with the verbal interplay updated into a “rom-com” story. (Cornell Woolrich and a rom-com? Really?) It’s a light story and has none of the grittiness of episodes of prior weeks. The listeners needed a break to catch their collective breath.
Loy seems a bit stilted in her acting before the microphone here and there, so Spier may have held a script like this to suit an actor of her radio experience. One of the rules of Suspense in its relationship with the studios was to put the guest stars in the best possible situation to succeed. Scripts that would maintain or raise their profile with their fans and with the radio audience were important with the hope of stimulating box office revenues. This one of the reasons why Suspense was always planned out six weeks before and oftentimes more. There was always a backlog of scripts, and as the show continued with every week, the file cabinet grew deeper with scripts that could be performed again if necessary should a search for the “best skills match” arise. That backlog wasn’t always in case availability of a planned guest star changed.
Loy’s character takes a cab ride and the cost is $7.85; she doesn’t have the money for it. That’s $132 in US$2023 value.
There are two network recordings. One has a close that goes directly to network ID (“dirID”) and the other has an 8 second pause “(8s).” The “dirID” recording is the better of the two. The “8s” recording has some opening disc skips which is why it was not widely circulated. There are some copies that start mid-commercial with the disc skips edited out. The edge of the disc was obviously damaged with the usual opening unplayable.
There is a miscue in the “(8s)” version. At the beginning of the drama, Loy says she’ll answer the phone and says “public library” while the phone is still ringing. Audio segments like this help identify which network broadcast was used for the Armed Forces Radio Service recordings. No AFRS recording of this episode has been found, but this will be used to help identify its network source.
This is the only appearance of Myrna Loy on Suspense. She is likely best known for the 14 movies she co-starred with William Powell. Six of which were in The Thin Man series. Radio appearances were generally limited to the movie-based programs such as Lux and Screen Guild. Her very long career is summarized at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrna_Loy
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https://archive.org/details/TSP450920
THE CAST
MYRNA LOY (Prudence Roberts), Cathy Lewis (Maggie Hughes), Wally Maher (Lieutenant Murphy), Conrad Binyon (Boy in library), Ken Christy (Eddie), Junius Matthews (Older library patron / Duke), Peggy Rea? (Miss Baumgarten), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Police Captain), Jeanette Nolan? (Mrs. Rudnick), unknown (Melanie Stevens), unknown (Landlady), unknown (Cab Driver)
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