Joan Lorring stars in a George and Gertrude Fass script about a woman who believes her mind-reading husband’s grip on her thoughts extends beyond their mentalist stage act and can span a distance half a world away.
The Horrells have a long-strained relationship, and Lorring’s character wants a divorce. Her husband refuses, and decides that some time away and apart will ease tensions. He heads for Australia. She decides to pursue the divorce (for desertion, it is presumed) while he is away so she can marry the man she with whom she has been having an affair. She meets with an attorney but she cannot even utter the words to start the conversation about the topic. Lorring’s character is paralyzed by the belief that her husband can still detect her thoughts and exert control over her behavior though he is so very far away. As the story plays out you realize that Lorring’s character is psychotic and her obsession is getting worse and leading toward murder. Lorring is superb in her performance, and the musical score raises the script to be much better than it really is.
One network recording has survived, and it has a 17 second pause before the network ID (“17s”). It is not known to which coast it was broadcast. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#169) has survived and it matches the surviving network recording where there is a problem with dialogue; times are approximate:
17s 2:01 “The Great Horrell, the marked mentalist…that’s the masked mentalist, jury…”
AFRS 1:28 “The Great Horrell, the marked mentalist…that’s the masked mentalist, jury…”
The network recording is the better of the two.
Lorring was one of the very small number of actors who were in the 1942 Summer series and in the 1962 final series of Suspense. She was just 20 years old in this starring role, just a few years from her season on A Date with Judy under her true name, Madeline "Dellie" Ellis.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP460822
THE CAST
JOAN LORRING (Alma Horrell), Lou Merrill (Martin Horrell), Elliott Lewis (Paul Wilson), Wally Maher (Dr. Emil Hochman), Bill Johnstone (Signature Voice / Jury Foreman / MC), Will Wright (District Attorney), Jerry Hausner (Banning), unknown (Judge), Mary Jane Croft? (Secretary)
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