This is one of the most curious Suspense presentations. The story based on a real-life event. The script intertwines two first person narratives, which is innovative for the series. One narrative provides clues to the thoughts of a wife suffering with mental illness. She is played by Virginia Bruce. The other narrative is the despair of a husband, played by Robert Young, who cannot bear to experience her psychological decline. In the end, these compelling details and performances are wasted with a clearly sanitized and implausible sponsor-forced and unsatisfying conclusion.
Listen to the story anyway. Everything leading up to the conclusion is superb writing and dramatic performance.
The script was written by Phyllis Parker and Arnold Marquis. Parker was a scripter for radio (Suspense and Family Theater) and also some screenplays. Arnold Marquis, whose birth name was Arnold Malmquist, was the writer and director of the radio series The Pacific Story, presenting stories about that region in WW2, and The Fifth Horseman about the threat posed by nuclear weaponry. He was also a producer for Cavalcade of America.
There are two recordings, the network broadcast and an Armed Forces Radio Service (#251) recording. Both are good recordings, but the network recording is preferred because of its completeness.
Celebration was based on an actual event in 1929 that Malmquist covered when he was a fledgling newspaper reporter for the Kenosha Evening News of Wisconsin. It was claimed to be the first major story of his journalistic career. CBS publicity noted that Malmquist was going through some papers and found clippings of the story. He thought it would make an excellent radio play. The script was inspired by the actual events he reported but does not reflect all them.
The following text is from Malmquist’s unbylined report in the Kenosha News of 1929-06-20
Unable to go on separated in life, William R. Grote, 45, and Emma L. Grote, 42, both of Chicago, were joined in death when they stepped into eternity in a suicide pact near here this morning. Each with a bullet hole in the temple, the couple was found dead in their automobile one-half mile west of Bristol road on the Plank road at 6:00 o'clock this morning. Two shots had been heard a few minutes before the bodied were found.
Malmquist further wrote that a devoted husband had trouble dealing with his wife as she slowly became insane. He took her from the institution where she was being treated for a day out together. He took her on a tour of the places they had visited during their courtship and early married life. Then he parked their car on a lonely road. They read their old love letters to each other— and then the man killed his wife and himself. The wife had assisted her husband in the planning of a ruse to be let out from the sanitarium so they could be together again. She knew what was being planned.
Malmquist reported that William Grote prepared a letter to his brother:
Dear Brother,
We can not stand it any longer. There is only darkness ahead, and it is better this way. Cremate us together. If possible place us in one casket as I want Emma in my arms. Place our ashes with Dad's and Mother's. – Will
P.S. Please get Emma's wedding ring out ot our vault box and have it placed on her finger. Balance of jewelry in box give to Em's sister, Minnie. All. things in Engve's attic to be divided between Rose and Min.
The ending of this 1948 production would not be possible based on the neurological knowledge of the time. It’s a great leap of faith and relies on an assumed lack of knowledge of the audience. The audience had to believe that it “just so happened” that a bullet to the wife’s head was so perfectly and accidentally placed that it cured her without any damage. It insults common sense, and some listeners may have been disturbed by the idea. But it gave the sponsor, Auto-Lite, a happy ending. This would not be the first time that the sponsor or their ad agency would meddle in this manner. It could have been that they were unhappy with the incident occurring in a car, or they may have grimaced at the idea of a murder-suicide being the end of the story. Good acts or goodness were supposed to triumph in the end. Would Sorry, Wrong Number have been approved by a sponsor? How paradoxical it is that because it was already an established and esteemed story that sponsors would gravitate toward it. But if it was the initial broadcast? Objections would have likely been made.
This production was about 75 years ago, and that must be remembered in assessing it. Neuroscience was primitive compared to what is possible in the field today. The only fact in the story that is correct for its time is the reluctance of doctors to operate in an attempt to cure her. This was a time when it was believed that lobotomies could be a valuable approach to some mental illness.
The script would be used again by William N. Robson for the 1957-05-05 Suspense broadcast. It is considered “darker” than this production. It is truer to the facts of the original events that Malmquist reported. It is likely that Robson found the original script before its Auto-Lite mangling. One might understand the change for 1948 because Auto-Lite was aware of Suspense being considered as inappropriate for a younger demographic. Those years were also a time when the radio in the home would be heard by a group of family members. Robson’s tenure did not have the burden of a sponsor, and could present the story as written without interference. That 1957 audience, however, was different in another way. Radio had moved from multiple person listening in the pre-television era to an individual and singular listening experience. It is easier to have a more intense story to an individual rather than have to take who might overhear it in a more open setting.
It is worth listening to both productions and to read about the original tragic events. As for this 1948 broadcast, it may have been better for the script not to be selected. If they were going to change it this much, why do so? The fact that it was used, however, gives us a glimpse into the thinking of the time.
(Many thanks to collector John Barker for the initial heads-up that there were differences in the endings of the 1948 and 1957 presentations.)
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP480923
THE CAST
ROBERT YOUNG (Todd Ward), VIRGINIA BRUCE (Emily Ward), Jeanette Nolan (Mrs. Bertha Hallick), Walter Craig (First Man / Waiter), Ed Colmans (Second Man / Doctor), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Ann Morrison (Operator), Gil Stratton, Jr. (Billy), Frank Martin (Announcer)
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