Suspense presents another Ray Bradbury story. The broadcast stars an almost-12-year-old Margaret O’Brien. The script was adapted by Silvia Richards.
A man neglects to complete the murder of his wife and disposes of the body prematurely. A young neighborhood girl hears the screams of the woman coming from under ground at an area where people have been dumping junk and soil, but no one else seems to hear her. The young girl always being told it’s her imagination, but she knows she’s right and persists in finding out where the woman is to save her. The girl’s got spunk, as they say, and she starts canvassing the homes in the neighborhood. Her ideas is to find out if anyone in the homes have been missing since the day the screams began. Her simple investigation works… but now she’s in danger, herself.
It’s a good story, and O’Brien performs so very well. She was last on Suspense about three and one-half years earlier, in Cricket with Dame Mae Whitty.
For a few broadcasts, Harlow Wilcox has been heard to utter the phrase “by Cornelius” as part of his Auto-Lite commercial banter. The phrase is not used much in common conversation any more, so it sounds strange to modern ears. It seems to relate to a person mentioned in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 10. Cornelius was held in very high esteem and considered as very honest and trustworthy. The phrase “by Cornelius” has an approximate meaning in the ad copy read by Wilcox to be “what I’m saying is true and worth believing.”
There are two recordings of this broadcast, the network recording and an Armed Forces Radio Service release (#260). The network recording is much better than the AFRS one.
There is a myth surrounding this broadcast, and it involves Agnes Moorehead. Researcher and performer Keith Scott notes that according to Darryl Shelton’s book, Suspense, an unbilled Agnes Moorehead did the screaming woman’s muffled sounds. That cannot be documented. The following footnote can be found in Agnes Moorehead on Radio, Stage and Television by Axel Nissen, published by McFarland Books in 2017:
21. I have included only Moorehead's documented roles and other types of credits below that are found in the actual broadcast or in reliable sources. It was not until about 1950 that supporting cast members were routinely given credit, so it is possible, though not likely, that Moorehead played uncredited supporting roles on Suspense that have not yet been identified. Some modern sources, for example, indicate that Moorehead had an uncredited role as the screaming woman of the title in "The Screaming Woman" (November 25, 1948), starring Margaret O'Brien, but I have not found any historical evidence to support this claim. See Lynn Kear, Agnes Moorehead: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), p. 212; Tranberg, I Love the Illusion, p. 407.
An extensive online search of newspapers and radio industry trade journals had no reference to such an event. These kinds of cameo appearances eventually “leak out” and most end up in publicity releases by the network or the actor’s agent. They are also noted in cover sheets in the production scripts.
There are some articles that state that Moorehead was the “screaming woman,” but further research indicates a reason for this a mistake. There are some articles and comments, online and in print, that Moorehead played the “screaming woman” in Sorry, Wrong Number. It seems that some writers miss that last point. That is, she played a “screaming woman” on Suspense, so she must have been in the cast of The Screaming Woman! Indeed, some of the most common photos of the series and of Moorehead is as she is screaming. This means that search engines, like Google and Bing, are part of the problem. If you search “screaming woman” you can find references to SWN as well as The Screaming Woman and also references to the speculation of Moorehead’s role in this production.
Performer and researcher Keith Scott has seen the actual script cover page with its cast listing for this episode. As noted below in the cast list, Sylvia Simms plays this episode’s “screaming woman.” She was going to be in the studio, anyway, as the phone operator in the closing Auto-Lite commercial.
For the series most famous Suspense cameo, go to https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/09/1947-05-01-lady-in-distress.html
Also in the cast was Marissa O’Brien who played Mama and Mrs. Hyde. She was Margaret O’Brien’s aunt (as noted by performer and radio researcher Patte Rosebank at the Old Time Radio Researchers Facebook group).
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP481125
THE CAST
MARGARET O’BRIEN (Margaret Leary), John McIntire (Dad Leary), Jeff Corey (Police Officer / Charles Nesbitt), Ed Begley (Kelly / Mr. Hyde), Gilbert Barnett (Dippy Smith), Marissa O’Brien (Mama / Mrs. Hyde), Sylvia Simms (Miss Griswold / Mrs. Kelly / Screaming Woman), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Sylvia Simms (Operator), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer)
###
