Eva Le Gallienne makes a relatively rare appearance on radio (she was best know for her New York theatrical performances and training of stage actors). She plays a wheelchair-bound eccentric, with a few months to live, who covers for her sister’s penchant for stealing valuable items from stores. She pays the store owner for the stolen goods whenever he asks rather than letting him report the sister to the police. Once the owner realizes that Le Gallienne’s character has a fear of touching metal (mettallaphobia), he decides to use that against her to force a marriage so he can inherit her fortune. It’s not your usual Suspense drama, and will not be in a top ten best episode list, but it is a nice change of pace. And… we get to hear New York actors in a Suspense broadcast for the first time in a little more than four years.
Plot hole? If Le Gallienne’s character is allergic to metal, shouldn’t she have a problem with sitting and moving her wheelchair? We have to assume she had a wood frame wheelchair, which were still common at the time. This would make sense considering the age of the character, and that she might have considered a wheelchair as “mobile furniture” in keeping with the style of items found in her home. Steel frame folding wheelchairs started production in the 1930s.
The author of the script was Joal Hunt, whose true name was Joseph Alfred Hunt. He was a freelance scriptwriter for much of his career from the 1930s through the 1950s. For part of the 1950s, he worked in the script department for NBC in Hollywood as a writer and an editor. This particular script was written around Christmas 1946 when Hunt was visiting his sister in Maryland over the holiday. Hunt became ill and had to stay in the house for a few weeks while he recovered. His being housebound led to his writing of this story. Hunt’s career had lots of ups and downs and had numerous problems over the years with the law and alcoholism. He had his shining moments, however, with this script for Suspense and two Night Beat scripts. Both programs had challenging standards for acceptance. Phobia was broadcast again on Mutual’s Murder by Experts series on 1950-09-11 (a recording has not be found) and was adapted as a TV play for a local station in Baltimore on 1949-03-10, and perhaps other stations. No kinescopes are available. Most of Hunt’s radio scriptwriting appears to be uncredited, so we do not know the true extent of his work. (As one might expect, his name “Joal” is often mistaken for “Joel” in various radio references).
One network recording of this episode has survived. It is believed to be a recording of the New York performance (8:00pm ET) that was transcribed (note the “transcribed” announcement at the open) and played for the west coast (8:00pm PT). An 8:00pm west coast broadcast would have required an 11:00pm ET performance to allow for the three hour difference in time. That would have required significant cost and inconvenience for the program in New York, and might have involved union rules requiring extra pay and different staffing for the performers, the musicians, and production staff.
The other two New York broadcasts had separate east and west performances. There is a possibility that a live performance for the west of Phobia was originally planned. The sketchy script documentation that has survived in the Spier-Havoc papers at University of Wisconsin and the KNX script collection now at University of California in Santa Barbara do not have final production scripts that would have the required details.
Eva Le Gallienne rarely appeared on radio, but was somewhat of a force of nature for theatrical productions and training of actors in their craft. Her long, colorful and controversial career and life cannot be summarized here, but details are at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Le_Gallienne One of the notable actors whose career on stage and radio benefited from her training and collaboration was Staats Cotsworth, known mainly for Casey, Crime Photographer, but was one of radio’s busiest and most successful performers.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP470626
THE CAST
EVA LE GALLIENNE (Emily Haydon), Nell Harrison? (Grace Haydon), Amzie Strickland? (Anna the maid), Ian Martin (Henry Lane), Ted de Corsia (Scorchy Wood the burglar), unknown (Sergeant Cole), unknown (Police inspector), Berry Kroeger (Signature Voice)
Frank Gallop is the Roma Wines voice and Ken Roberts handles the Cresta Blanca ads for the New York productions. Gallop was a firmly established voice for CBS and the “Hummert Radio Factory” of soap operas. Roberts could be heard on many programs, with many classic radio fans knowing him best for his announcing on The Shadow.
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