Donald O’Connor makes another appearance on Suspense, this time as an ex-con dishwasher who developed a great dislike for women after his conviction for a harassment crime he did not commit. But he’s so evil, you start to think his habit of stalking and murder had been an ingrained aspect of his persona all along. He’s obsessed with his hands… and keeping them nice-looking. Dishwashing, his current profession, and any manual labor thwarts that desire for soft and pristine hands, and his constant commenting about his hands makes him even more menacing.
It’s a good script, though not a top 10 or 25, and the against-type casting of O’Connor makes it quite disturbing. The writer of the episode is Charles Glenn, a prominent figure in the Hollywood flirtation with Communism and Marxism of the time. He was a reporter in Chicago for The Daily Worker and later in Hollywood for People’s Daily World. Hedda Hopper, in her May 30, 1947 column as published in the New York Daily News and elsewhere, had the subheading “Well Red” for one of his activites:
“Contemporary Writers,” which advertises itself in the People's Daily World as a world-wide organization of Marxist and anti-Fascist writers,” held a meeting in Hollywood. Charles Glenn, acting chairman of the chapter here, explained that they're not satisfied with getting material published in magazines like New Republic, New Masses and Mainstream. They want to get into slick such as Collier's -- as well. They also need more scenes plugging their ideology in motion pictures.
Attending those meetings, which included members of some ad agency staffers as well as freelance writers and others, would even be used against the employment of people in the 1960s. An Alabama professor was fired in the 1960s, with his attendance at one of the late 1940s events as noted in a newspaper as one of the justifications.
Glenn was not mentioned in the notorious Red Channels publication, but he didn’t have to be. That publication and its poor, derogatory, and sloppy research and innuendo, was intended to “out” closeted Communists to the public, ruining or derailing careers in the process. Glenn, however, was out in the open, proudly professing his beliefs. And, in what most have seemed very odd, he was in the press gallery of various 1950s public investigations into Communism in Hollywood. He was reporting on it, shoulder-to-shoulder with other journalists, for People’s Daily World… even when some witnesses mentioned him as an acquaintance and a known Communist. Glenn was easy for anyone to name because he was well-known for his beliefs and activities. In this way, anyone nervous about testifying could claim that they cooperated with the committees by mentioning someone the committees already knew about, but minimizing the professional harm to others by not mentioning “new” names. The swirl of post-WW2 crosscurrents of political philosophies is playing out in the background while writers and actors are producing some of their finest work... and some of that is on Suspense. As that famous curse says: "may you live in interesting times."
Two network recordings have survived; it is not known to which coasts they were broadcast. One recording goes directly to the network ID (“dirID”) and mentions several upcoming guests. The other has nine seconds to network ID (“9s”) and mentions only John Lund as an upcoming guest. The “9s” recording is the better of the two.
Sidney Miller is in the cast, and has been on Suspense before as well as many other comedy and drama radio programs. Blogger Christine Miller (no relation, as best we know) notes that Miller and O’Connor were friends who often worked together in movies and other projects for many years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Miller_(actor)
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP470814
THE CAST
DONALD O’CONNOR (Gerald “Smiley” Smythe), Lurene Tuttle (Cookie), Sidney Miller (Curly), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Judge), Lucille Meredith (Scared woman), Bill Johnstone (U-Drive man / Bystander), sound men Gene Twombley & Carl Schaele (crowd Ad-Libs)
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