Glenn Ford stars in a Suspense adaptation of a Cornell Wool… oh, wait… Lee Bowman stars in a Suspense adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story. Robert Tallman adapted his 1940 short story, Finger of Doom, and gave it a new title. A 1965 anthology of Woolrich works used this Suspense title for this story.
Lee Bowman’s appearance was not planned. Yet again, Suspense production had to be flexible as the work schedules of its guest stars took precedence. This news item from the 1946-02-21 Indianapolis IN Star explains what happened:
Sometimes the calamities that happen during the broadcast of Suspense cause more suspense for the participants than the listeners. The program Glenn Ford was to appear on seemed hoodooed from the start. A few hours before air time Ford couldn't get away from his movie set in time so Lee Bowman was called in to sub at the last minute. Truman Bradley, the announcer, turned up with a high fever and a hoarse voice, but his pipes were pretty good for the broadcast. Then the sound-effects girl slashed her hand while crushing a berry box to represent the sound of a breaking door. So the program was sewed up with three stitches on the hand.
One has to wonder… was Bowman the first person they called? Was Spier privy to the schedules of potential fill-ins as they moved closer to broadcast day? Did potential fill-ins know they were on the call list? If, suddenly, there was no big Hollywood guest star available, who from the ensemble cast would be called on for that lead role? Did they know they were the “understudy”? Bowman performs very well on short notice. Once production shifted to tape recording, these kinds of situations were virtually eliminated.
Bowman’s character is with his fiancé for an evening out. Before they go to their first stop of the evening, she just has a brief errand for her employer: deliver a small package to an apartment building. She never comes back. A policeman (played by Wally Maher, who is very entertaining in the role) tries to help, but the story becomes more unbelievable every time he gets more information. In the end… it’s a spy story! It’s very entertaining and Bowman and Maher play well together. It’s not great Woolrich in terms of radio, but it is still listening very well spent. Woolrich’s style of stories where everything seems to go uncontrollably wrong and have to get resolved in the end fit Suspense like a glove. How they fit it all in about 24 minutes of story time is a wonder, but that pace is one of the things that makes the series so fascinating.
There are three surviving network recordings. The east recording (“EC”) is the best of the three. There are two west recordings. One is a studio recording that is also in good sound, and the other is an aircheck from KQW of San Jose, California. That recording has narrow range, but airchecks like this remind us how lucky we are to enjoy classic radio from rich-sounding studio recordings. The airchecks are examples of the narrow range of sound that many listeners experienced over AM radio.
The east recording has a time to network ID of about 26 seconds; the west is about 15 seconds.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451206
THE CAST
LEE BOWMAN (Kenny), Cathy Lewis (Stephanie Ryska / Brat kid), Herbert Rawlinson (Hessen), Wally Maher (Lt. Gilman), Junius Matthews (Building Super), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Calhoun), Lucille Meredith? (Fake Stephanie, alias Olga), unknown (Mother / Landlady)
It is believed that the sound effects artist who hurt her hand working on this episode was Becky Barnes, assistant to Berne Surrey. (HT: Karl S. and Keith S.)
The Woolrich story was produced in 1949 on Escape under its original title, Finger of Doom. That was a different adaptation by John Dunkel under Norman Macdonnell.
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