This is a rare “novelty” episode of Suspense that plays on the notoriety of its guest’s typecasting to create a silly but entertaining story that is played mainly for fun.
The script was written by Lesley Raddatz, a worker in the CBS press department and his only script. He had a long career as a successful and well known media writer for TV Guide and Variety.
The plot is purposely unlikely and amusing. A henpecked husband sees Robinson’s famous movie, Little Caesar, and decides to emulate Robinson in his daydreams and his daily interactions. When his wife discovers this personal secret and insults his masculinity, he decides that he must kill her. It “just so happens” that the real Edward G. Robinson will be in town for a lecture about his hobbies, which are nothing like the kind a “tough guy” would do. The man and EGR meet, and the real EGR plays along with the husband’s fantasy then works in the background to prevent the husband from acting on his plans.
How did they get through the broadcast without breaking up in laughter? Spier ran very loose rehearsals so they cast probably got all of their chuckles and guffaws out of their systems around the desk reading and stage rehearsal. Robinson had a difficult task, playing his celebrity self and the man who wants so desperately be the Edward G. Robinson he sees on the screen. After all, the EGR on the screen is exactly the way EGR is in private life, at least in his mind.
Robinson has a tough job and executes it well. Having a lighthearted script makes it a little easier. One must wonder, however, if the performance would have been enhanced in the tape era where the dialogue of the two parts could be knitted more closely together. You can hear EGR pause for a split second as he adjusts from one voicing to the other. In the tape era, which was not far away for Suspense, the pauses would have been tightened and even edited so the man and EGR might have talked over each other since such conversations go on in the man’s head. Remember, Robinson was not a radio novice. He had a lot of experience on radio as the star of Big Town and his appearances in other series. But his roles there and in movie-related radio programs were more straightforward. And, he had to perform this difficult role twice, once for the east, and once for the west. The New York Daily News reported that Robinson gave “a vivid performance.”
The underlying story could also be presented as a dark and dangerous one about a celebrity stalker, becoming a horror story or a police procedural. Creating this particular telling gives us some relief from such topics common in radio mysteries. Having Robinson participate in stopping the delusional subject by cooperating in his apprehension puts him in a role that is contrary to his popular typecasting. Is the bottom line that this story is about the actor’s challenge of typecasting?
In the 1948 performance of the script, the title was changed to The Man Who Wanted to be Edward G. Robinson. That’s a slightly different slant on the story, changing it from a delusion to a misguided aspiration of the man at the center of it.
There are three surviving recordings of the broadcasts. Both east and west networks have survived, and the Armed Forces Radio Service (#177) is derived from the east recording. Times are approximate:
WC 24:04 “I-I don't think we'll have to, uh, go through with it”
AFRS 20:14 and EC 23:31 “I-I don't think we'll have to go-go through with it”
The west coast broadcast is the much superior recording. The east broadcast has a PSA about contributing to the Community Chest (which would be renamed in 1963 as the charity “United Way”). The west broadcast does not have that announcement. The east broadcast has skips and might be an aircheck. The AFRS recording has narrow range.
The music of this episode is interesting because it was more serious than the story, adding to the amusement. You can hear a brief and loose variation of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, the music used for The FBI in Peace and War. That program was broadcast after Suspense for the east broadcasts, so there may have been a little inside joke there, and it was familiar to that audience. What’s more interesting is the first hearing of what some refer to as “The Suspense March” which was often heard at the end of Suspense episodes in the 1950s and used as closing filler in AFRS recordings of those programs. You can hear it at approximately 9:35 and 25:10. The history of “The Suspense March” is not known, but it was likely composed by Lucien Moraweck.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP461017
THE CAST
EDWARD G. ROBINSON (Homer J. Hubbard), Verna Felton (Ada Hubbard), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Ryan), Jerry Hausner (Gun Salesman), Wally Maher (Dinner guest)
###
