This episode stars Richard Ney in an Evelyn Waugh classic story. It was adapted by Richard Breen. The story is considered a classic. Stephen King’s novel Misery was partly inspired by Waugh’s original short story. King has been known to like radio drama, and he may have heard either of the radio adaptations.
Richard Ney’s character is injured on a trip to the Brazilian jungle and is helped back to health by a man obsessed with the work of Charles Dickens. It seems he had “helped” others in the past. They were forced to read Dickens stories to him – in fact, the entire library – a few hours a day. It becomes clear they were never able to leave, and Ney’s character fears he may have the same fate.
Blogger Christine Miller makes note that the Suspense adaptation
of the story has a more optimistic ending than the Escape
version (1952-12-21). The latter was true to the original story’s
pessimistic ending, and was adapted by John Meston, known most for
his original writing for Gunsmoke. The likely reason
for the difference is that Suspense had the interference
oversight of a sponsor, while Escape was a sustaining program
and did not have to deal with the interference
oversight of nervous advertising executives. In Suspense,
Ney’s character overcomes his strange captor. In Escape, the
character realizes his situation is hopeless. This is a reminder to
classic radio fans to never assume that just because the show titles
or the short story for the broadcast are the same that the
adaptations are equivalent. The style of the adaptor and the
constraints of the producer and especially the sponsor can change the
nature of the story greatly.
Joe Kearns plays “Mr. Todd” in both the Suspense and the Escape productions and is superb in both. At the beginning of the broadcast he announces himself as co-star “Mr. Joseph Kearns.”
One network recording has survived. It is not known to which coast it was broadcast. It has a 15 second pause before network ID (“15s”).
This was Richard Ney’s first of two Suspense appearances. Ney's movie and television career had sporadic success. He was better known at the time of this broadcast as the former “Mr. Greer Garson.” Their divorce decree was issued just two weeks prior to this broadcast. Garson was 12 years older than Ney, and played his mother a few years before in Mrs. Miniver. That was Ney's biggest movie role, and he never really had a notable role after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ney
He was an economics graduate of Columbia University and his career gradually moved to investing and as an investment advisor. Ney was eventually more successful as an investor than he was as a performer. A brief overview of his work can be found at http://www.volumespreadanalysis.com/Richard%20Ney.asp His three now out-of-print books can still often fetch “big bucks.” The first was The Wall Street Jungle (1970), followed by The Wall Street Gang (1974), and then Making It in the Market (1975). He would likely be thrilled by today’s availability of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other passive investments. His work seems to be in the same spirit of dissatisfaction with brokerage industry as investing classics like the 1955 Fred Schwed Where are the Customers’ Yachts?, and Burton Malkiel’s Random Walk Down Wall Street (first published in 1973 and constantly updated). Ney's books are dreadfully out of date, but his opinions were part of an important popular movement to undermine the old structure of investing.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP471009
THE CAST
RICHARD NEY (Anthony Last), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Mr. Todd), Eric Snowdon (Dr. Messinger), Tony Ellis (The stranger), Hans Conried (Missionary)
###
