Claire Trevor returns to Suspense in a Richard Vodra script. Trevor has a very good performance in a very weak and often confusing script. Listeners need to keep up with the story, but some details are missing. Their absence make the ending less satisfying and understandable than it should be. All the elements of a captivating story are there, but they never coalesce with certainty. This may be the worst broadcast of the Anton M. Leader producership, and likely also in the bottom ten episodes of the series.
SPECIAL THANKS TO BARBARA WATKINS AND JOHN BARKER WHO ASSISTED IN THE DISSECTION AND ANALYSIS OF THIS EPISODE. THEIR STEADFAST DEDICATION AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND CONTEXT IS AN INSPIRING AND VALUED CONTRIBUTION TO THIS PROJECT AND THE OVERALL HISTORY OF CLASSIC RADIO.
Spoiler alerts apply to this entire post; it’s worth knowing them before listening. It is hard to believe that so many keystrokes will be spent describing this story yet and serve warning listeners about it but also trying to figure the storyline out. But that’s the way it is with confusing productions. Great stories don’t need this much explanation. You have to keep listening again and again to make sure you’re not the crazy one. Then you realize it may have been a waste of time. Why couldn’t this recording be one of the missing Suspense episodes? If it was missing, we’d give it the benefit of the doubt and think more highly of it. We would be in happy ignorance of the truth.
The Light Switch should be a much, much better production than it is. The story seems unfinished, not just unpolished. The script cover indicates that it has a revising writer, Robert Ryf (a name many fans of the 5-part Johnny Dollar series may recognize). Ryf’s participation likely indicates that Tony Leader and others in the staff may have realized there were issues that needed attention before broadcast. The final script’s cover identifies it as the second revision. Just a few lines could have fixed it, or at least made it more plausible. They may have run out of time… even for changes in dress rehearsal, it seems. If Robert Richards and Bill Spier were on the case, as they were through the Roma Wines period and a little but after, would this script have made it to air? Would Spier have set the script aside for more work, and then go into the file cabinet and repeat one of his favorite scripts as often he did before?
What is the story here? It’s murky.
Does the wife, played by Trevor, want to murder her husband, John, for his cheating?
Does she want to kill his mistress, chorus girl Terry Williams?
Is the detective she hires interested in running a proper investigation?
Does the detective just want to take her money, doing as little detective work as possible?
Is this a setup by a wicked woman in cohoots with her detective boyfriend to scam the wife of a wealthy banker?
Is the wife mentally ill?
In the end you really wonder if the husband was definitely cheating at all. It is possible it is a delusioned misunderstanding.
Be sure to listen for mentions of the husband’s gray coat. Somehow her hired private eye ends up wearing it. How? We are never told. Did she give it to the detective? Did the detective steal it for his own purposes? What happened? We’re left hanging.
The cross-current of motives and speculation about the nature of the evil intent of some seriously bad characters should make for a great story. Listeners could be led down one path, then get the rug pulled out on that possible solution and then led down a different path toward a new one. This is a potential multiple schemer story line where the schemers work against each other. It’s the kind of story that Suspense often does very well. The great story with entertaining diversions never emerges; it just stays murky for lack of facts.
The story begins just fine. It opens with sound effects of someone going through drawers or moving around in a living space. (Remember, there were no carpets in classic radio drama. Everyone walked on wood or tile floors, it seems). We learn that Trevor’s character was opening and closing apartment windows, making sure they were locked and closed tightly. You soon learn why.
Trevor portrays the wife of wealthy banker (John) whom she suspects of using “his business trips” for selfish personal pursuits unrelated to banking. Obviously displeased, and seeking revenge, she sets up a gas stove accident. When a light switch is clicked on and sparks a fiery explosion, it will kill him and his mistress. As she finishes setting up the trap, she passes out from the flow of gas. She musters some consciousness, and recalls what led up to this situation and cluing listeners in via flashback. So far, this is classic Suspense first person narrative.
Be suspicious of this first flashback. She recounts her initial encounter with “Skit” Webb, a shady detective who does not attract the best clientele. She may know more about Skit’s unsavory nature than she lets on, but that’s not very clear. As the production plays out, you suspect she might be the one setting up the mistress, or the detective and the mistress, or the husband and the mistress, and possibly not the husband at all. In her initial meeting with Skit, he describes a gas “accident” that he thwarted. It was set up by a woman named Juanita Cole using an alarm clock and a cigarette lighter. This exchange is what gave Trevor’s character the idea of her own trap, except she’d do it a lot better.
As she talks to Skit, she expresses disbelief that her husband has taken up with another woman. She says “girls, perhaps, but not another woman.” It’s as if having brief flings with multiple young woman would be more understandable to her than an affair with someone near his own age. In her mind, the latter may be a greater offense.
Skit does some detective work and learns the hotel where they meet, or at least where he says they meet. He tells her that she can either rush there and confront one or both of them or play it clever and “wait for the kill.” This is a key moment. Rather than confronting them, she chooses to be clever. You suspect Skit surmised that she would. This was a way of entrapping her into his own reprehensible plan.
Is she setting Skit up? He is constantly asking for money, yet she continues to employ him. You’d think she’d seek a different detective. Is this a clue that implies she is setting him up? If she has her own plans for him and keeps using his services, she may be scheming against Skit.
Finally, Skit tips her off to a romantic rendezvous which he claims was arranged by her husband for the following weekend. Skit calls her and tells her to wait outside the apartment building and not do anything until she sees her husband arrive with the mistress. She should wait for him, Skit says, explaining he might be a little late. Was this to buy him time to walk in with Williams in the husband’s coat and then sneak back out to meet her at the car?
Ignoring Skit’s directions, she manages to sneak into her rival’s apartment where she opens the gas jets and makes sure the windows are shut tight. She smashes the light bulb of the lamp near the door. The bare wire is still intact. When her husband and his love interest enter the dark apartment and snap on the light, those tiny wires, she figures, will ignite a blast that will blow them to bits. (Other possible victims in such a blast in the building do not qualify for her consideration).
The flashbacks conclude after the 18:45 mark and the implementation of her plan begins. She is in room 504 of the hotel where Terry Williams and the husband were to meet. She hears people outside the room and she stays there. She must avoid being seen coming out of the apartment after turning the gas jets on. This is the endpoint of the introductory scene that began the broadcast and led into the explanatory flashback.
Overcome with the trapped natural gas, she manages to leave the apartment and stumble into the hallway. Two drunken ex-vaudevillians, husband and wife, find her staggering there. She ends up in their room, 505. They know Terry Williams, the mistress, and mention that she has “a new boyfriend.” But who is that boyfriend? Skit or her husband?
They keep trying to get her to stay around, it’s like she’s trapped there by her wooziness and their desire for company. They’re crazed with explaining how big they were in vaudeville and they break out into “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” (It’s the only time we ever get to hear Wally Maher sing! Unfortunately, he’s playing a drunken has-been at the time). At 23:00 he looks out the window and sees Williams getting out of a taxi with “that new boyfriend.”
Trevor’s character finally gets out into the hallway at 23:25, and she starts taking the stairway down to the lobby. As she turns the corner she sees “John’s gray coat” trailing behind as he boards the elevator. This is a key moment. Is it John? Later, we learn it’s Skit. She stays in the lobby and sees the elevator floor indicator stop at the fifth floor, where Williams’ apartment is. Seconds later, there’s an explosion.
At 24:20, she’s headed down the street, away from the building, She feels quite satisfied. At 24:45 she returns to her apartment. She’s prepared to act surprised expecting a police or fire officer to come by later to tell her John is dead. But at 25:00, it’s John at the door! She lets out a scream! It seems sincere, meaning that she really thought it was her husband and Williams caught in the apartment blast. If that’s the case, then she did not know that Skit and Williams were scheming against her.
Why was the husband home? He explains that he came back for his gray coat, and it’s not there in the closet. She breaks down into tears. He says that he started on his trip, realized he had forgotten his coat, and decided to come back for it.
There may be an important segment of dialogue at 25:35 which implies something else may have been at play all along as he says “You’re not well. And here you go running around when you’re not supposed to leave the house.” And after a few more words she says “You’ve been a perfect husband.” She’s not well? That issue is mentioned briefly about 10 minutes earlier but had no context.
At 26:00 she offers a little epilogue that casts doubt as to whether the husband was cheating and if the entire plot was to go after Skit Webb and the girlfriend. But this is counter to her reaction when her husband returns home and starts looking for his coat. She’s waiting for the police to come and arrest her. She seems to have an odd reaction to her murder of two people, Skit and Williams. Is it guilt or strange delight?
What are we supposed to believe? This was all in her head, that she’s been delusional all along?
Classic radio collector and researcher John Barker believes that the gray coat was stolen by Skit allowing him to pretend to be the husband walking into the apartment building with Williams. This makes sense and is the consensus of those who contributed or reviewed this blogpost. This is John’s explanation:
Skit broke into her house and took the husband's gray coat from the closet (we don’t know when). He had told her to be in the car across the street, watching the entrance to the alleged girlfriend's apartment house. This way she could witness the girl entering the building with her husband at 7:30. He had told her that he might be a little late. This set up his impersonation of the husband walking into the apartment building. She would see it and think he was in the building with his girlfriend.
Presumably his plan was to enter the building with the Williams, spend some time with her, then exit the building without being seen by the wife (through a rear exit?). Then he’d join her in her car where he told her to wait. He did all this in order to collect the $500 she'd promised if he gave her proof positive that the husband was carrying on with someone. His plan apparently hinged on his resembling the husband from the rear and from a distance, with the stolen gray coat being the distinguishing characteristic that would convince the wife that she was seeing her husband, and not Skit, with the girl.
John also notes the very strange relationship between the characters is established early in the broadcast. At 6:50 she screams at Skit that he’s a liar. Then she calls him right back, and is conciliatory. John remarks:
...how openly and almost hilariously hostile Trevor’s character and Skit are towards each other from the word “go” all the way to the end of the episode. The naked aggression between the two almost supports the theory that Skit was her intended victim all along, except that doesn't seem to square with what happens in the rest of the episode. Evidently Skit was the only detective available in a fifty-mile radius, or else she was too lazy, or too crazy, or too dumb to go looking for someone who wasn't so obviously sleazy. He has no scruples but he's pretty transparent about that from the beginning!
Collector and researcher Barbara Watkins has these comments after listening to the broadcast and following along with the script:
I am convinced that she wanted to kill her husband once her suspicions were apparently confirmed [at 13:20 in the script]. I am also convinced that Webb stole the coat and arranged the scene for her to observe in order to get his payoff.
It seems obvious in filling in the blanks of the story that Skit stole the coat. But it is not clear when or how (more about this below). He just wanted her money, that’s clear, and he’d do most anything to get it. (That $500 he’s looking for is about $6500 in US$2024 value). He set her up to pay him by wearing the coat. Skit never believed that she would act on the information he supplied and attempt to murder her husband, especially after he told her to stay in the car and wait. In and earlier scene he told her that he had foiled an attempted gas explosion, and it would be silly if she attempted one. What about that coat?
Establishing the importance of that outergarment could have been done early. Perhaps some dialogue like “John left the house this morning with his usual brown banker’s attache case and that ugly gray overcoat he always wears this time of year. For such a big job at the bank he keeps wearing that old coat” or something like that.
Despite her conviction that her husband is cheating, we don't know if it’s really true, if she’s misinterpreting a pattern of events, or if it’s a delusion. We do know that Skit is playing into this because he smells the aroma of money and suspects she's an easy target if he makes her think he’s cheating even if he’s not. It seems like Skit gets his money with the truth or a lie if he plays it right.
At 16:00 she is with Skit and mentions that her husband hired a private nurse to be with her. Near the end of the story the husband mentions that she shouldn’t be going out. Why? Why does she have a private nurse? Is it because she's sick or is it to be her "keeper" so John can go gallivanting around, confident she'll never see him? How do we know there is a nurse? Is she just saying that to Skit to keep him out of the apartment and have their meetings somewhere else? The first mention of the nurse is here at 16:00. The nurse has no lines in the script for listeners to know that she is there and what function she serves, even if there is one.
At 16:20 she says she's “...clever now, very clever.” This means she's playing along with Skit’s plan. Then Skit says “a switch,” meaning referring to her change in heart from verifying the affair to doing something to act on that information.
This could be “the switch” that is part of the title. What does "the light switch" mean, anyway? Of course, it's electrical, but it could also refer to the changing the plan, and the change where she acts on her own even though Skit tells her to remain in the car (later in the script). She tells Skit “you say where and when and I'll stay quiet” (16:25).
There is an important part of the script that could have saved much of the production. At 17:47 she says “wait here in the hall,” then music plays to indicate a change of scene or time. This could have been the pivotal opportunity for Skit to have the coat and have the script tie up many of the loose ends. Perhaps the could have been something like “wait here by the coat closet,” or Skit could have taken off his own coat when he got to the apartment and put it in the closet. As they’re ending their meeting she could be a polite host, retrieve Skit’s coat from the hanger, and give it to him. Then she could go back into the apartment and get the money. Since coat closets are near apartment entry doors, Skit could have grabbed John’s coat, toss it quickly into the hallway, still be standing near the closet waiting for her to give him the money. She'd be none the wiser. This is an exact part of the script where Skit could get the coat and it's not even used to establish that. Instead, they just change the scene.
There's another possibility noted by Barbara that can be summarized as:
if the husband was having the affair, he forgot... that he forgot... the coat at Terry Williams' apartment. That would easily place the coat within Skit's possession for his ruse.
Barbara notes that this certainly has all of the elements needed to make a good script for The Whistler. It certainly could. As soon as you hear the husband say “I came back for my coat” it is easy to imagine the big kettle drum followed by the show’s theme.
* * *
The detective’s name is sometimes hard to precisely discern, but it is definitely “Skit” and not “Skid” and not “Skip.” The script was viewed by Keith Scott many years ago as he compiled cast information, so that verifies the name. It is pronounced clearly much of the time. But there are times it’s not all that clear. As a nickname, “Skit” certainly is an odd one. The closest nickname has a Finnish origin, but that's a real stretch, and doesn’t apply here. The name is clearly made up. The closest real person with a name that sounds like “Skit” is Skitch Henderson. Wikipedia explains his name as coming his musical ability as an arranger. Lyle Henderson got the name from his ability to quickly “re-sketch” a song in a different key. Bing Crosby was the person who suggested he use the name professionally.
This is the first of three Richard Vodra scripts to be used on Suspense. One of them, Search for Isabel, was first used on Philip Morris Playhouse when William Spier was the producer of that series. Vodra also wrote for a short series produced by Spier, The James Mason Show. None of the Mason shows have been located at the time of this writing.
Wally Maher and Verna Felton play the ex-vaudevillians. They probably had a great time because they were close friends. In an interview with Wally’s son in 2022, he explained that the Maher family enjoyed visiting her (she may have been called “Aunt Verna” by them) at her Burbank home. The Maher kids thought she was great: she had a pool and they didn’t!
The hotel named in the story is “Bryn Carlton,” which is the name of a Los Angeles apartment building that opened in the 1930s. It was promoted as bachelor apartments. The practical meaning of that is the apartments were small, too small for a family. It likely had its share of aspiring actors as residents through the years. The script spells it as “Bren Carlton” which may be to obscure the name, but more likely to ensure proper pronunciation.
Leith Stevens replaced orchestra leader Lud Gluskin for this and the next two episodes. Stevens had a marvelous career in radio, television, and motion pictures. He was nominated for three Oscars for his musical endeavors. In a strange quirk of fate, his wife died in a car accident in 1970. When he was called with the news shortly thereafter, he had a fatal heart attack just minutes after hanging up the phone.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP490512
THE CAST
CLAIRE TREVOR (Mrs. Winston), Wally Maher (Harry), Lou Krugman (Skit Webb), Ted Von Eltz (Man / John Winston), Verna Felton (Eva), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
[NOTE TO THOSE GROUPS WHO RE-CREATE RADIO SHOWS: If someone took the time to fix this script, it could be turned into a marvelous production, right a 75ish year wrong, and win the hearts of Suspense fans everywhere.]
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