A friendly game of “license plate poker” turns into a deadly life and-death situation. Gregory Peck plays the role of a college student hitch-hiker who is offered a ride in a luxurious limousine. The driver turns out to be an engaging and generous companion who buys him lunch. He teaches him to play poker by reading the numbers on license plates of passing cars. Things take a bad turn as Peck’s character becomes involved in a murder plot—with himself as the victim!
The script was by radio veterans John and Gwen Bagni.
Long car trips were just starting to become popular in the post-WW2 United States. Scarcity was over, service persons and their families started to act on their pent-up aspirations, and started to buy cars. Many ventured about the country with the freedom auto travel offered. More roads were being built, and the US highway system was in its very early stages. Hitch-hiking was very common because half of all households did not own a car; that would be reduced to 25% by 1960. People would place ads in newspapers to recruit traveling companions in an effort to share costs and have some company (The Whistler episode Seattle, Take Three is an example of this). Hitch-hiking was mostly safe but the public was becoming aware of incidents that would make many think twice before embarking on such an adventure.
Riding in a car can be boring for passengers, and various games were created to stay busy on trips to help fill the time. Watching license plates and building games around them was an obvious one. Poker was familiar to many people who were in the service and also in homes and neighborhoods during the war. It was easy, then, to play a game because the concepts of winner poker hands were well known. This website describes some of the rules for one of the versions http://licenseplatepoker.blogspot.com/2009/09/rules.html
These are examples of how some of the hands were identified, from that same website:
A599RF is a pair of nines
K424AK is two pair of kings and fours
J908XQ is a straight - 8-9-10-jack-queen
A444BA is a full house: - fours over aces
AA4AW6 is 4 of a kind - (W is “wild” in this particular version of the game)
The network version is available. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#264) is known to exist but is not available to the project at this time.
Suspense production schedules had to be flexible! This episode was originally planned for 1948-09-09. The Big Shot was presented instead. Whether the change was the result of a change in Burt Lancaster or Peck’s availability, or both, is not known.
Is Peck really believable as a college student? He does sound too mature for the role. Colleges, however, had many discharged service personnel on campus. They received educational benefits under the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly referred to as the “G.I. Bill.” The program rewarded service personnel who left jobs or their occupations during WW2 to allow them to return to civilian life in the way that they had originally expected. College populations tended to be older and a bit more “street-savvy” in this period, and included many more married men on campus than at other times. Peck’s voice still may be too mature for the role, but the nature of college enrollment at this time may have made it less surprising to the listening audience.
There is always a question about spelling of “hitch-hike” or “hitchhike.” The script cover has the hyphenated construction. The concept was still fairly new linguistically. As the years passed, usage of the hyphen gradually disappeared, as it did for many phrases that became compound English words over the centuries.
The script was repeated on 1959-01-25 with the title “Four of a Kind.”
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP480916
THE CAST
GREGORY PECK (Ridge Fowler), Ed Begley (J. Stuart Belden), Kay Brinker (Virginia), Paul McVey (Desk Sergeant / Truck Driver), Charles Seel (Al), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Ann Morrison (Mary), Sylvia Simms (Operator), Frank Martin (Announcer)
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