Alan Baxter stars as a money-obsessed con-man who patiently works at a bank to find the right situation and angle for a hefty embezzlement. He finds another same-minded bank employee who wants to join his effort so they could run away together and live happily ever after. Little does she know that it’s only the money he cares about, and that her life is in danger. She’s just in the plan because he needs her cooperation, and nothing else. Where some Suspense villains are menacing from the outset, Baxter’s character is a smooth character who knows exactly what to say and how to say it as part of his larger, and ultimately violent plan.
This is an original story and script by Robert L. Richards.
Two network broadcasts have survived and it is not known in which region each was heard. There are very subtle differences in the broadcasts, but one difference is easy to spot. Coming out of the mid-show commercial, Baxter’s dialog is different:
One is “If you've got a plan...”
The other is “If you're... cool-headed...’ and sounds like he has some mild trouble getting his thoughts and lines in sync.
The times to ID, one of the ways of differentiation are really too close to be obvious but they can be measured:
The “If you've got a plan...” recording is 3.2 seconds to network ID
The “If you're... cool-headed...” recording is 2.6 seconds to network ID
The “If you’ve got a plan…” recording is the better of the two.
What? Joe Kearns on a New York Suspense? He traveled to the Big Apple for some work on Suspense and Sam Spade and stayed behind for some vacation. Suspense isn’t the same without him in the Roma episodes.
Researcher Keith Scott notes that this week is the premiere of Escape on 1947-07-07.
This was Alan Baxter’s only Suspense appearance. He had a very long stage, movie and television career that spanned from the mid-1930s into the early 1970s. A summary of his career is at IMDb https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0062667/bio/
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP470703
THE CAST
ALAN BAXTER (Cliff Goff, alias Clarence Gage), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Mr. Purley), Alice Frost (Anita Willoughby, nee Gorman), Frank Readick (Sam Gorman), Murray Forbes (Detective), unknown (Miss Logan), unknown (Mr. Ambrose)
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