Suspense is into its second week of the new year, and one of the newspapers with a well-known critic notices a pattern to the series and radio mysteries in general. The 1947-01-09 Cincinnati Enquirer, where noted critic Magee Adams wrote, ran this sarcastic description of the episode:
Suspense presents Dan Duryea in a drama about an executive’s wife who murders her husband for the first use of this plot for 1947.
It’s been quite a few weeks for Suspense with wives killing husbands and husbands killing wives or wanting to do so. There were concerns expressed about radio violence in the golden age, but what ruled the day was whether or not the stories were good. On Suspense, they usually were. The dramatic tension of marriages in trouble that could lead to terminal violence had the elements of a riveting story. But after a while, it can become tiresome if it is heard week after week. This is likely a Magee Adams critique, but it is a little unfair. Suspense had just gone through some very different episodes in recent weeks. The ESP story Lazarus Walks, Drive-In about a kidnapping, House in Cypress Canyon about a spooky house, Strange Death of Gordon Fitzroy about mistaken identity and revenge, They Call Me Patrice about identity swap to start a new life, and The Thing in the Window about a nefarious plot to drive someone out of an apartment through lies and deceit. (Adams had complained about Thing after its broadcast because its conclusion rewarded evil acts). Not all of the shows involved the planned elimination of a spouse, but it can’t be denied that plotlines about it have a high frequency.
That explained, this episode has twists on that basic theme. Even common plots can have twists and circumstances that still make them interesting. In this broadcast, Dan Duryea stars as a private secretary to a wealthy but sickly man. He schemes with the man’s wife to take all the man has… including her… and to marry her… and then he frames her for the crime! He marries her so he cannot be compelled to testify to the nature of the crime, and to get his hands on a portion of her inheritance! Of course, a blackmailer sniffs out the plot and the plan goes awry.
The script was written by Frank Taubes. He wrote scripts for Inner Sanctum, Counterspy, Nick Carter, and other series. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he wrote for detective pulps. He also was behind the story idea for the 1961 cult favorite 3-D movie The Mask, and was credited as a writer. In the 1950s and 1960s Taubes became a noted executive in the advertising business and was a founding director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America.
East and west network broadcasts have survived, with the marker that the east concludes with a tease for the next program of the evening, The FBI in Peace and War. The east recording is the better of the two.
This is the first Suspense appearance for Dan Duryea. His distinctive manner of speaking led him to play some very unsavory characters in movies, but his generally good looks on screen had some people call him “the heel with sex appeal.” (There are some lines of dialogue it sounds like he could have portrayed The Whistler well). At the end of 1947, he stars in the post-Roma broadcast of The Man Who Couldn’t Lose and delivers a superb performance, his voice and style enhancing the story. While he often played characters with evil intent on screen, he starred in the 1951 radio series The Man From Homicide playing Lieutenant Lou Dana. His long and unique career is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Duryea#Notes
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP470109
THE CAST
DAN DURYEA (Charles Ross), Cathy Lewis (Roseanne Donovan), Wally Maher (Lieutenant Braddon), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / John Donovan / Jailer), Howard Duff (Elevator Operator / Jury Foreman)
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