Sheldon Leonard plays a hired thug, which is not exactly the casting against type that Suspense was noted for. Perhaps this is why he’s so very good in this episode. His character is directed by his boss to kidnap a man and make sure he is eliminated.
The discussion at the website http://www.oldtimeradioreview.com/ makes a very good point about this episode:
The conversations between the two central characters that make this a superior episode, with some very good writing used to build tension and portray the increasing sense of despair of the man in fear for his life. There is also some striking symbolism in the form of the never-ending motion of the waves, which is referred to a number of times as the characters wait at the shore's edge of the beach at which they arrive, representing the remorseless inevitability of the story's events. Moreover, the episode is very cleverly structured, presenting first the perspective of the criminal, a man of limited intelligence but who nonetheless has his own (admittedly twisted) code of honour, and then that of his captive. Thus, we get to hear both sides' points of view.
This is a superb episode, standing apart from many others, with excellent dialogue. If you’re sympathizing with the intended victim of the killing, Leonard’s dialogue and delivery makes you really squirm. You know what’s going to happen. The hitman keeps acting like he wants to be the friend of his victim, which makes it worse. As the story progresses, we finally learn the method of the killing. The idea of waiting for the tide to come in so your victim drowns while tied to a pier (spoiler alert, whoops, forgot) seems worse that an outright mob hit. The fact that Leonard’s character is supposed to sit and wait for it to happen is even more disturbing. Then there’s the surprise ending. That will remain unspoiled until you hear it yourself. It’s rarely in any “top 10 best episodes” list, and it should be.
A mystery remains:
who wrote it? The on-air broadcast credit is given to David R.
Gillespie, the same author as Your Devoted Wife. But the
script in the Spier-Havoc papers at University of Wisconsin says it’s
Sanford Schlesinger. The Spier script copies are not final production
scripts. Why is the name circled for the announced writing credit in
Spier’s script? Did Spier note it as an error for correction before
printing the final script for broadcast? Is “David R. Gillespie”
a pseudonym? There is very little information available about
Gillespie, but there is a lot more information in numerous historical
sources about Sanford “Stan” Schlesinger. It’s a mystery that
needs some needed more study. Unfortunately, the production scripts of the
KNX Collection at University of California at Santa Barbara have a
gap in scripts that begins with this very script.
NEW INFORMATION ADDED 8/6/2023
Thanks to Jerry Williams, maintainer of script scans for SPERDVAC, we were able to get an image of the Murder by Experts script when it was performed on that series:
So it appears that the Spier pre-broadcast script for the episode had an error in attribution. This is probably the reason why Spier circled Schlesinger's name in his editing copy of the script. An updated draft had the correction, since we know it was announced as Gillespie. The author remains a mystery in many ways, with few surviving recordings and almost no mentions in newspapers and trade magazines. That's one of the things that happens with sustained programs. No sponsor budget, no publicity budget, so you only end up in the stark detail-free radio timetables in newspapers.
Many radio scriptwriters were into recycling long before the environmental movement made brought the concept into broad recognition. SPERDVAC also had the other Gillespie script used on Suspense, the recently mentioned Your Devoted Wife. The series also had scripts used on The Whistler. It is a shame that more Murder by Experts recordings have not survived to document further "recycling."
What about the title? It refers to an ancient Greek festival and mythology related to Nemesis and Erinyes. The latter were “the furies,” three goddesses of vengeance and retribution who punished men for crimes such as homicide. More details are at https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Erinyes.html
There are surviving east and west network recordings, and both are in very good sound. Any recording you select for listening will satisfy. The east recording has an 8 second time to the network ID (“8s”) and the west goes directly to network ID (“dirID”).
This was Sheldon Leonard’s first appearance on Suspense. He was known for his gangster roles in numerous movies and in the mid-1940s had the endearing role as the “racetrack tout” on the Jack Benny Show. He became an extraordinarily successful television producer. Among his successes were collaborations with Danny Thomas, and programs such as The Andy Griffith Show. A good overview of his career is a Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Leonard His name became familiar again in recent years because of the popular television series The Big Bang Theory. The producer, Chuck Lorre, and the writers, named the lead characters Sheldon and Leonard as an expression of their affection and admiration of Sheldon Leonard.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP460711
THE CAST
SHELDON LEONARD (Casey), Cathy Lewis (Clara), Elliott Reid (Sam), Wally Maher (Jake), Bill Johnstone (Signature Voice)
###
