This episode is a rather lighthearted episode that involves illegal gambling, “bookies,” and some embezzling to fund it all. And when they think they’ll be thrown in jail, something else happens that’s really good luck. “Double entry” has multiple meanings in the story, whether it’s the a concept in bookkeeping, two characters are making bogus bookkeeping entries, multiple entries in a horse race, or an entry into jail. It’s a good title that plays on both words in one way or another. It’s Hume Cronyn’s first appearance on Suspense and he’s joined by Keenan Wynn who always delivers a good performance. Wally Maher is very entertaining as he calls the horse races they are betting on.
Part of the story is a bad bet on a long shot horse who wins the race… and perhaps the writer of the script was a long shot to get onto Suspense when so many other writers were trying to get the attention of Bill Spier and Robert Richards.
The author is Robert Minton, a 26 year-old graduate of Princeton University who at one time won a scriptwriting contest sponsored by MGM. That award led to a year in Hollywood as a junior scriptwriter. After graduation, he began his professional writing career began as a reporter for the New York World-Telegram where he also became their book reviewer. That paid the bills, but he still enjoyed scriptwriting, which led to this Suspense submission.
About six years after this Suspense success, he worked for the State Department as spokesperson for the Marshall Plan. He was the first public relations director of Radio Free Europe. He became a local newspaper publisher in a suburb of Boston, and then became a PR Director for Boston University. It is not known how many radio and TV plays he authored, but this Suspense episode is the only credited and surviving one; he has two television writing credits in IMDb. He had many articles and opinion pieces published in leading magazines through his career.
Double Entry was performed twice on radio and also on the Suspense television series. There were some revisions to bring it to TV https://archive.org/details/Suspense_201705/Suspense+++S03E25+++Double+Entry...with+Virginia+Gilmore.mp4
Minton’s experience is similar to another journalist who had one script performed on Suspense: Walter Bazar, author of On a Country Road. It was Bazar’s only radio script as he became a reporter for government and science topics for The New York Journal-American after he graduated from Columbia University. Bazar’s script was also performed multiple times on the radio and performed on television.
Three network recordings have survived, two studio recordings (east and west) and a KQW San Jose, California aircheck. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording has also survived (#134). The AFRS version is from the east recording. Cronyn has some difficulty with a line; times are approximate:
WC 25:56 “I’d never sleep again if I escaped scot-free”
EC 25:39 “I’d never sssssleep again if I escaped scot-free”
AFRS 22:53 “I’d never sssssleep again if I escaped scot-free”
The east network recording (EC) is the best sounding of the four.
This story was included in Suspense Magazine #3. A PDF may be downloaded from the same page as the audio recordings.
This is the first Suspense appearance of Hume Cronyn. He was not on radio often except for some of the movie related series and but he did appear on Suspense five times during 1945 and 1946, and also appeared three times on the Suspense television series. Cronyn’s career was long and very successful, and acted in many productions with his wife, Jessica Tandy. They especially loved theatrical work.
One of them was a play, The Fourposters, a married couple. Their interest in portraying marriage on stage eventually led to a 1950s radio series, The Marriage, on NBC Radio. The series was highly regarded, but interest in radio was ebbing at NBC. How interesting that Cronyn’s radio work was minimal in the golden age, but he found great interest in this particular project. It is one of classic radio’s “hidden gems.” An overview of Cronyn’s career can be found at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume_Cronyn
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451220
THE CAST
KEENAN WYNN (Eddie Sullivan), HUME CRONYN (Sam Crockett), Wally Maher (Race announcer), Jerry Hausner (Fink Martin), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Bartholomew), unknown (Jail guard)
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