Radio “bad boy” Henry Morgan plays a writer who keeps getting distracted by music coming from another apartment. A neighbor is murdered, and that makes the music all the more curious. Was the music playing to cover up the murder? Then, a second murder occurs… The story’s conclusion becomes fairly obvious as we never really meet any of the other tenants. We know they are there by indirect reference. You can sense the skepticism about Morgan’s character in the reactions of the police and the landlord. The script is not particularly compelling, and Morgan does not have that much to work with.
This is yet another writer’s block episode. It is odd that writers sometimes find that writing about writer’s block helps them break it.
The story is by George Bellak and Ben Kerner. They had good careers as writers of radio, television, and movies. Bellak eventually won a Writers Guild award and an Emmy nomination for television writing. He wrote two Suspense episodes for television; both were for the final season and no kinescopes are available. Bellak wrote for many of the popular TV series of the 1960s and 1970s. He was later involved in the science fiction television series Space: 1999 (but that should not be held against him).
The song Morgan keeps hearing is the 1924 Isham Jones “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” https://archive.org/details/78_ill-see-you-in-my-dreams_isham-jones-and-his-famous-orchestra-curt-massey-isham-jo_gbia0417280a The song was popular for many years and recorded by many vocalists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_See_You_in_My_Dreams_(1924_song) The song is a clue in the story in itself.
Two network recordings have survived, and it is not known to which coast they were broadcast. One recording has an eight second pause to network ID (“8s”). The other has a one second pause (“1s”). The 8s recording is the better of the two.
This was Henry Morgan’s sole appearance on Suspense. The “bad boy” of radio was one of its most creative and difficult personalities, skilled in satire, and annoying to broadcast and sponsor executives. His work led to a 1946 Peabody Award in April 1947, the same season for the award to Suspense. The organization stated:
A special citation in the field of drama goes to Henry Morgan, a humorist who learned radio as an office boy, disc jockey and announcer, and whose skill in burlesque, mimicry and deadpan makes him a delightful one-man show. In going big time, we hope he will not lose the surprise and impertinence with which he started.
He is best known to late baby boomers for his appearances on prime time television game shows, such as I’ve Got a Secret, and his influence on radio humor, disc jockeys (especially the later DJs with silly contests and skits, and by extension the later “shock jocks” such as Don Imus and many others), and other forms of satirical audio. His own advertisers were often belittled by him, always protested, and then realized sales were increasing, but eventually tired of it all,. He occasionally dabbled in radio drama, such as the Corwin Plot to Overthrow Christmas and performed well in it. His up and down and often amusing career is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan_(humorist)
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP471106
THE CAST
HENRY MORGAN (Charles Kenyon), Wally Maher (Inspector Sam Fields), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Torsten the janitor), Frank Albertson (Policeman), Grace Gillern (Operator)
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