Joseph Cotten stars in a Ben Hecht play. It was inspired by a movie idea of Hecht’s agent, Douglas Whitney. Cotten is a prison escapee who takes nefarious advantage of an opportunity to hide in plain sight from the authorities. The story concept is good but many aspects are not developed well in the limited time that a Suspense radio play has.
A young minister has been recruited to replace a retiring pastor in a small town. Cotten’s character kills him and takes his clerical garb. He steals his identity and masquerades as him. The elderly pastor has has medical issues that prevent him from continuing his position. He realizes that Cotten’s character is an impostor when he compares a picture of the murdered incoming pastor with Cotten’s character. Shocked by that reality, the pastor has a severe stroke and can no longer speak, so he cannot tell others about the scheme. Somehow, the fake pastor, who was a trained as a lawyer, provides enough platitudes and Bible verses to the congregation to survive months without detection. That is hard to believe because learning rubrics of liturgy or celebrated ministry take years of study and personal experience. Combined with the administrative responsibilities of leading a community, it does not seem possible without a planned period of transition or counsel of other ministers who surely would have been suspicious of the circumstances The listener just has to accept that it is possible to for the impostor to go along with the flow and successfully continue the elaborate ruse.
Over time, it’s not the parish that cracks under the pressure, but the masquerading pastor once he develops personal relationships within the town. The elderly pastor turn out to be the hero in the story. The story of “the good thief” (Luke 23:39-43) is referenced directly and indirectly in the story as its ultimate theme.
The title would have been recognized as the same as the 1886 work of the philosopher Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche. Where Nietzsche railed against religion and its negative effects on society, by the end of the story Cotten’s selfish and amoral character seems to embrace the idea that his acts were evil and seeks some redemption from them. Hecht may not have been defending religion with the conclusion of the story but likely realized it would be a good ending that would resonate with the listening audience of that time.
This play was originally intended to be a movie. There were news reports in late 1944 that this Hecht-Whitney idea would be perfect for Alan Ladd. The project did not come to fruition. Instead, it became this radio script, perhaps in hope that it would catch some studio attention. It moves with such haste that details about the main plotline and subplots are not developed. They could be explored and the plot weaknesses could have been explained in the span of a 90-minute movie.
There are three surviving recordings of the broadcast. There is a different commercial introduction in each of the network broadcasts after the 9 minute mark. The east recording has Truman Bradley starting the Roma commercial with “between the acts of Suspense...” while the west recording has "Here's a suggestion from…" The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#124) has not been determined as to its source. AFRS recordings have commercials edited out; detailed analysis still needs to be done to determine whether the source is east or west. Perhaps a fellow classic radio enthusiast reading this blogpost can contribute to the project by volunteering for that task.
The best sounding recording is the east coast broadcast.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451011
THE CAST
JOSEPH COTTEN (Dr. Howard Pierce, alias Philip Gentry), Cathy Lewis (Lucy McKillup), Wally Maher (Mack), Gloria Gordon (Mary), Norman Field (Dr. McKillop), Bill Martell (Tom Hubbard), Alan Hewitt (Reverend Pierce), Victor Rodman (Officer Owens), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice)
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