Gregory Peck plays a man married to an older woman, a successful concert pianist. He falls in love with their maid (that never happens) and plots to have her kill his wife while he is away, waiting. He has a change of heart and hurries home to save her. Well, so he thought… It’s a good story and Peck performs quite well.
When an opening scene has him working on a bear trap, that’s a massive clue that it will play a role in the story. Yes, a bear trap.
This script and date was originally intended for Cary Grant, but his appearance was moved a few weeks earlier. That evening they presented The Black Path of Fear.
This was Marion Orth’s only Suspense script. She started in Hollywood as a screenwriter for silent movies. Her movie writing credits ended in 1944. Part of her successful career also included some novels. (Note: she is in RadioGoldindex as “Mary North” and some other radio references may have the same error).
The original title of this episode was “A Lonely Road”
There are two surviving recordings, a network one that has a three second pause to network ID and an Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#147) that is from the missing network broadcast. Times are approximate:
Network 1:48 there is a sound effect of hedge clipping under the dialogue “I was trimming the hedge and I got as far as the rear gate”
AFRS there is no hedge clipping sound effect
The surviving network recording is the one in the best sound quality.
This was the first appearance of many for Gregory Peck on Suspense. His marvelous career has an overview at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Peck
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP460321
THE CAST
GREGORY PECK (Steven Gair), Maria Palmer (Jenny), Cathy Lewis (Helen Gair), Wally Maher (Police Lieutenant), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Real estate agent / Doctor)
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