Lloyd Nolan is a necktie sales representative who is looking for an apartment where he can sleep after long days selling his wares. A landlady says she has no apartment for him, but after chatting with him and sizing him up, she decides to show him a room that she has been holding for a tenant who is away. It turns out the room has been untouched, and unlived in, for ten years! The room belonged to a young woman, Laverne, who was trying to start a stage career. He senses that she is around… and hears her voice… and her crying. What happened to her? He wants to find a place to display his ties, and finds a small theater that has been closed, and the owner refuses to rent it… and that’s been closed for a decade, too. He’s intent on finding out what happened (she’s not coming back). We never really get an explanation about the crying on the phone.
The script is by Larry Marcus and Robert Light.
Nolan has another part with many monologue segments, but they have much better context than they did in Murder for Myra.
Bill Johnstone plays an ethnic character, Joe, who runs an Italian restaurant. We rarely hear him in such roles.
There are two network recordings and it is not known which is east or which is west. The better recording goes directly to network ID and is labeled “(dirID).” The other recording is only two seconds to ID, “(2s).” The recordings are very close in sound quality.
Nolan coughs about 21:20 in the “(dirID)” recording and it does not stop his momentum; he just continues reading. The words are “...let it go. [cough] He won’t rent...” There is no cough in the other network recording. These are the kinds of markers that help identify the east or west network source of AFRS recordings. There is no AFRS recording of this episode available at this time, but we are prepared when one becomes available. We often stumble upon these quirky things and they always seem to come in handy in the research.
The actual title of the script is unclear. Is it “19” or “Nineteen,” and does it include a comma? The KNX Collection of scripts has the title for the 1958 re-performance as “Nineteen, Deacon Street.” For the 1945 broadcast, most newspapers used “19,” which likely means that is what the CBS publicity department used. The Spier papers at the University of Wisconsin have “Nineteen” as appearing on the script cover page.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451122
THE CAST
LLOYD NOLAN (Morrie Swartz), Cathy Lewis (Laverne Claire / Phone Operator), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Jasper Florenz), Verna Felton (Landlady), Elliott Lewis (Cop), Bill Johnstone (Joe), unknown (Voice of Florenz’s secretary on phone).
Some of the casting details were a little sketchy, but a script resides in the Spier papers at University of Wisconsin. Those holdings do not have final production scripts and tend to be the scripts that Spier was working with in the week or so leading up to the broadcast. They offer great insight into the editorial review that was part of bringing each episode to its broadcast. There are more characters in Spier’s script than in the final performance!
Keith Scott reviewed the script and the broadcast and this is what he said:
“Man” and “Bartender” were cut from the original script for time reasons
“Man” was a bit part (a guy serving Morrie Swartz coffee)
“Bartender” was another tiny bit who pointed out Joe (the bar owner) to Morrie
The scenes had a pencil through their lines indicating cuts.
“Voice” referred to Jasper Florenz’s secretary who spoke on the phone to Morrie
It could be actor Alan Hewitt playing Florenz’s secretary but I’m not certain
###
