A toothpaste company needed a new slogan for its product and ran a contest with a prize of $25,000 to get it. That’s worth more than $400,000 in US$2003 dollars! A janitor at the office building, played by Hume Cronyn, stumbles into the winner’s name at the ad agency for the toothpaste company. The winner is “Pat Smith” from Boston. This means he has the name of the winner before the public announcement and develops a scheme to claim the money. He needs to find the “winning Smith” and will make a crooked deal with them (claiming to fix the contest so they will win) or possibly murder them to claim the money. There are so many Smiths in the phone book… it takes a while to find the right one, and the wrong ones pose problems to his plan along the way.
Writers cited large sums of money in the scripts to make it plausible that an evil act could be considered worth doing by an immoral or desperate person. The average cost of a home in 1946 was about $5,500. The prize in the contest was more than four times that, so it would have captured the attention of listeners.
The attributed author of the script is Arthur L. Gray. He may be one of the Suspense “one-hit-wonder” authors who never had a broadcast radio script ever again. No information is available in any of the data bases where one finds background on writers in any medium. There is always a possibility that the name is a pseudonym, but those are usually exposed eventually to be people involved with the program or an established author. The name is a common one, and no obituary of a person with that name mentions any writing interest. The search continues.
There are two surviving network recordings. The east broadcast is three seconds to network ID (“3s”) and the west is direct to ID (“dirID”). The west has Cronyn teasing the next broadcast while the east does not. It was likely eliminated because time was running out on that broadcast. There is a difference in dialogue that can be used to identify the source of an Armed Forces Radio Service recording (likely #159) should one be found. Times are approximate:
EC 3s 4:37 “...and the guy doesn't even know he won it yet”
WC dirID 4:44 “...and this dumb guy doesn't even know he won it yet”
Both recordings are in good sound quality; the west broadcast is preferred because it includes Cronyn teasing the upcoming episode.
The address of the Boston hotel in the story is 500 Commonwealth Avenue. There is a hotel there today, Hotel Commonwealth, that is a luxury hotel built in 2001. It was likely the site of smaller hotels in the past. It is near Fenway Park in Kenmore Square.
Yes, there is a “little town of Boston, Georgia” in the USA. In 2020, it had just over 1,200 residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston,_Georgia It is in southern Georgia near the Florida border.
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mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP460613
THE CAST
HUME CRONYN (Charles Wallingford), Bill Johnstone (Doctor), Elliott Lewis (Pat Smith), Wally Maher (Pat Smith # 2), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Policeman), Cathy Lewis (Betty, the girl), Jerry Hausner (The clerk), Harry Lang (Police sergeant / Man at train station)
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