Susan Hayward plays a singer who offers a song at her own wedding anniversary party. That’s where the innocence of this story ends. (Everything that follows is a spoiler alert). An unsavory ex-acquaintance phones her at the party and says he’s out of jail and they have to meet. Uh-oh. That can only mean one thing on Suspense. Her husband knows nothing about her past life and this makes her a prime candidate for blackmail to keep it quiet. This never goes well and someone always seems to end up murdered. In this case, he wants the rich husband out of the way so he can blackmail his way into grabbing a big chunk of the inheritance. She fesses up to her husband who doesn’t want to delve into her past life but wants to help her deal with the blackmailer. She thinks he’s calling the police, but the husband is calling his own “fixer” instead, a detective named “Mr. Sparks.” The story starts to take a creepy turn: she starts to like the idea of having her husband’s fortune for herself. Perhaps she can frame the blackmailer into killing her husband!
Hayward’s character is pretty resourceful and has knowledge of the mechanical operation of cars from some wartime work she had. She works on the “steering knuckle” to sabotage the car her husband was driving. The phrase may be unfamiliar, but refers to a linking part of a car’s suspension, wheel, and brake assembly. The intent of her sabotage attempt was to frame the blackmailer by causing an accident in which her husband would perish. The accident occurs, her husband survives, and the happy couple goes on vacation to forget about it all… but things eventually go awry. In the end, her scheme backfires and concludes with her husband dead in a hunting accident and the blackmailer committing suicide when the police attempt to arrest him. There’s no one left to alibi her, so she ends up being convicted for a killing she did not do… but she certainly created a circumstance that made it possible.
The bribe money being mentioned doesn’t seem like much. Multiply it by 15 to convert it to today’s US$2023 value. So $1000 then is about $15,000 at the time of this writing.
When Hayward sings “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” it is actually the then-Mrs.-Spier, performer Kay Thompson at the microphone. She is uncredited in the role.
Bill Johnstone sounds “too nice” to be the “fixer” that the husband employs. It’s pretty clear that the husband might be involved in some unsavory dealings because he seems a bit too familiar with Mr. Sparks and the process of “fixing” situations to his liking. Perhaps “being nice” is an important tool of being an effective “fixer.”
There are three recordings of this episode. East and west coast recordings have survived, and there is an Armed Forces Radio Service recording. One network recording goes directly to network ID after the closing announcements (“dirID”) and the other has a two second pause before the ID (“2s”). The AFRS version is derived from the direct to ID version. Times are approximate:
dirID 2:05 someone says “encore, encore” after Thompson sings I've Got You Under My Skin
AFRS 1:13 someone says “encore, encore” after Thompson sings I've Got You Under My Skin
2s there is no “encore” dialogue
The 2s network recording is the best of the three.
The story is by Max Wilk and E.R. “Ted” Murkland, and adapted by Robert Richards. Wilk and Murkland were screenwriting collaborators for a while, with Wilk having a longer and more notable career. Wilk wrote a book about screenwriting, published in 2004, that sounds quite enjoyable. He interviewed some of the best known screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s and others. The title is Schmucks with Underwoods. Those are the derogatory words studio boss Jack Warner used to describe the screenwriters he employed! There is a long interview of Wilk about his career and the development of the profession and its people at the Television Academy Foundation https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/max-wilk
Wilk and Murkland’s story concept could have started as a screenplay idea. The story has a lot of moving parts and some incidents are explained by a single sentence of dialogue that would take multiple engaging minutes of a film presentation. An example is the suicide of the blackmailer when surrounded by police. There are many other plotline events that could have similar expansion but are condensed in the production. Radio relies on listener imagination for so many aspects of its presentation, and the acceleration of timelines or reference to complex events in matter-of-fact single phrases or sentences without having to stage them is not always recognized as an essential part of the form.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP461024
THE CAST
SUSAN HAYWARD (Jean Nicholson), Bill Johnstone (Sparks / Party guest), Wally Maher (Frank Nicholson), Hans Conried (Charlie Prescott), Paul Frees (Olsen), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Doctor), Kay Thompson (Singing voice for Susan Hayward)
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