William Powell is excellent in a very demanding role. His character runs from cool and calculating about his crime to smooth talking to get out of trouble to hysterical panic when things don’t go his way. He has a very wide range for this performance. Producer Tony Leader was likely very careful in matching this challenging script to a guest star with the right abilities. It works well, and is an excellent episode.
Powell’s character steals $250,000 and is found guilty of the theft. No enticement by police or the court could get him to reveal the hiding place of the money. He decides that being convicted and serving prison time would be a worthwhile price to have access to the money upon his release. In 2023 US dollars, that heist is worth about $3 million.
The story is about his escape in a train wreck where people assume that he has died. The train was taking him to prison, which required him to be handcuffed. He escapes the wreck, and much of the episode revolves around his attempts to become free of the cuffs by looking for tools and sympathetic people for help as he works his way from place to place to retrieve his loot. Each failure tests his patience and the calm demeanor in the courtroom changes throughout the episode to become more and more impatient to the point of violence. He is a truly despicable character and the ending makes listeners feel happy about his absolute failure to achieve his goal.
Though it was 15 years later, but the train wreck scene has to remind people of the opening sequence of the television series The Fugitive.
The script is by Herb Meadow. This is the first of his scripts or adaptations for Suspense. He wrote for many radio series, but his most numerous efforts were in the TV and radio productions of Have Gun Will Travel.
The first of the two transcription discs for this episode was damaged in storage. There is a persistent hissing disc noise for the first four minutes and 30 seconds. Attempts to filter the noise from the recording results in diminishing the clarity of the voices of the actors and the music. It was determined that it was better to leave that noisy section alone. It is still listenable. After that section passes, the recording is in excellent shape.
The July 1949 edition of Radio Mirror included a short story version of this episode with the title "The Cuffs." It is available for download from the page with the audio files. Thank you very much to the website worldradiohistory.com for maintaining the library of broadcasting magazines from which this was extracted.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP481021
THE CAST
WILLIAM POWELL (Earl French), Ann Morrison (The Woman), Paul Frees (Signature Voice), unknown (Detective), unknown (Boy), Dave Light? (Jack, the dog),
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Ann Morrison, Harlow Wilcox (Announcer)
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