Friday, February 16, 2024

1949-06-02 The Ten Years

This broadcast is noted for starring Joan Crawford. Her “mic fright” led to this episode becoming the first transcribed (pre-recorded) episode of Suspense. The background of how it all happened is a fascinating intersection of a headstrong Hollywood star, sponsor meddling, broadcast technology, union contracts, public relations showboating, and much more.

This broadcast used a repeated script. It was not supposed to be that way. The script was originally broadcast on Suspense on 1945-02-08 as Tale of Two Sisters. It starred Nancy Kelly and Claire Trevor in a Mel Dinelli script about a mentally ill woman and her sister. Dinelli’s career was still in its early stages. Details about that prior broadcast are at

Getting Joan Crawford to appear on Suspense was a problem: she had “mic fright” and refused to appear in a live performance. She was so intent on appearing, she said she would pay for the costs of pre-recording the episode. That was just part of the intriguing backstory that took weeks to play out. They were in many ways more interesting than the show’s script. The script, yes, the script… that was the first hurdle.

The script didn’t lend a “Hand”

Joan was between marriages had divorced actor Phil Terry in 1946. Since that time, writer Mel Dinelli was often her companion to Hollywood dinners and events. Dinelli had written for Suspense and also adapted scripts for the series. His star rose in Tinseltown after his first screenplay, an adaptation of an Ethel Lina White novel, became the very successful 1946 movie The Spiral Staircase. He was in the news at this time because of his screenplay for The Window which was in theaters. It was a Cornell Woolrich short story, The Boy Cried Murder, that Dinelli built out into the movie. It was well-reviewed and had strong box office. In some ways, Suspense was looking to get strong ratings from having Crawford on the air, but also by grabbing coattails of the rising reputation of Dinelli, a reputation that Suspense helped create.

Dinelli was constantly writing and was one of the better practitioners of the craft in the way he captured and developed his ideas over time, and then adapted them for different media as opportunities arose. The best example of this is a short story he wrote, and then converted into a stage play. It was The Man, which had no traction as a play until he turned it into the notable Suspense script To Find Help. That received a lot of publicity because of the appearance of Frank Sinatra in the starring role. It would be repeated again with Gene Kelly. In 1950, it became a stage play. Then it became a 1952 movie, Beware, My Lovely, and starred Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan. Then it became a stage play again, and had great success and popularity in regional theater more than it did in bigger venues, in the 1950s and through the 1960s.

Dinelli had a screenplay, The Hand, and sold the rights for the unnerving mystery to Charlie Chaplin in 1946. The plot had a woman hitchhiker picked up by a man who gets fresh with her. During their struggle the car is wrecked and his hand is severed but it’s still gripping her wrist! Intended as a “B” movie, it was never produced. Chaplin was to be producer and not to act in it. The rights expired.

Dinelli proposed it as a radio script for Suspense “exclusively” for Joan Crawford. It was set to go. Leader started planning around it and the CBS publicity department started its promotion as one of the May programs. It was set for May 26.

Not so fast. Auto-Lite and its agency had to approve the script. When they read it, and realized it started with a violent auto accident, and included story elements of drug addiction and mental illness, they turned it down. The script was better suited for a show like Inner Sanctum, but it was never produced in radio’s golden age, nor was it ever adapted for television as best as can be determined. In mid-May, one of the California newspaper columnists said it “was kayoed by sponsor on grounds it was ‘too scary’.” All the script cover of The Hand says is “Unused – (sponsor objection).”

Now what?

Having Crawford make a rare radio appearance in a brand new script production was the kind of situation CBS, Leader, Crawford, and Dinelli were hoping for. The rug got pulled by a dismembered hand!

Lacking a script for May 26, Tony Leader inserted another production of Night Reveals with Fredric March instead. The Crawford appearance was delayed until June 9. With no new script alternatives available, it was decided to use the Dinelli script Tale of Two Sisters. It was originally produced in February 1945. Some of the thinking was that they knew it was a good script and that the composition of the listening audience had changed dramatically in the four years since that broadcast. They could do it and make it seem “new” because of the news of Crawford’s participation and her rare radio appearances.

The file copy at the Auto-Lite ad agency has the title of the episode as Tale of Two Sisters on the cover sheet. The next page has The Ten Years. The title was changed sometime in the revision process, but it is not clear when. New title, “new” script, or at least it sounded so. It was important to make it seem that way.

CBS publicity got into action again and started to promote the “new” story, The Ten Years, and glossed over the fact the script was used before and that the previously-promoted The Hand was killed by the sponsor. They concocted a quote in their publicity that went

“When Tony Leader sent me the script, I was so fascinated by it that I decided that this was one show I just couldn't refuse.”

That quote was probably developed for promoting The Hand. Likely under deadline pressure, they just crossed that script title out in the draft press releases, inserted The Ten Years instead, and sent them off for final typing and to the printer for mailing. This was a publicity charade. We know that Leader sent no script, we know that she and Dinelli were working together and consulting with Leader all along. Joan didn’t open her mail one day and find a script she had never seen before and say “oh my, Tony, you’re such a wonderful man for letting me be on Suspense.” This was a hard negotiated business deal through and through.

Joan had some radio grudges, it seems

While the script was in process of being settled, there was plenty of wrangling and negotiating about the logistics and nature of the Crawford pre-recording. Dinelli was part of this effort, too. We know about what was going on because news items published after the recording session was over describe the April maneuverings.

In mid-May, many radio reporters commented on the behind-the-scenes efforts that got Crawford into the studio on 1949-05-02. She was demanding that Suspense use the new tape recording technology for her appearance. Editor Walt Taliaferro of the Los Angeles Daily News reported this in his column of 1949-05-19:

“The differences in technique between radio and motion pictures are wide and vast,” she says.

“There is no time for error in radio. You're given one chance, aside from rehearsals, and no more. And as so many others, when I am confronted with the mental idea that I must be perfect this one time, I concentrate so hard on that errors are bound to occur. In motion pictures, naturally you try your best for a ‘one-hot-take’ but you still know that if word is mumbled, it can be done over again.

“And that, to is nicest part of recorded shows. I'm no more nervous than when facing a movie camera. I know things will go well, but if they don’t, all is not lost. It’s that extra added assurance that makes for greater comfort.”

There was more publicity around her microphone fear and that she would pay for the costs of pre-recording. Columnist Sheilah Graham reported in her 1949-05-22 column that her “phobia against live radio shows has just cost her $900. Joan paid all the transcribing charges for the June 2nd Suspense show.”

In reviewing the press releases and the resultant news items that appeared after the recording session of early May, Crawford was constantly crowing about the importance of her participation. She was the one to modernize the backward live show policy of CBS and Suspense. Her personal money lifted that policy from the dark ages. Now radio could achieve the same production quality benefits that movies already experienced by having multiple takes to select from. It was radio's fault for creating her fear of microphones when acting pros like her repeated movie scenes to learn the best tempo and nature of performance in their personal pursuit of professional perfection. Such could not be learned in rehearsals. The undercurrent of her comments was that radio was a lesser art because of it. I wonder how the steadfast ensemble of Suspense radio cast members felt.

Did it really cost $900 to cast off the demons associated with performing live? The 2024 value of $900 of 1949 is about $11,500. We don’t know what Crawford was paid, but we do know that in 1946 Jimmy Stewart received $4,000 and in 1945 Frank Sinatra received $12,000. Joan was likely paid a figure between those two amounts, and could afford it. The average family income in 1950 was $3,300. When newspaper readers saw that Joan paid $900 they probably gasped at the size of the amount. That was the idea… publicity.

Joan knows a publicity opportunity when she sees one

The Crawford publicity machine was on the job, too, not just the CBS department. Reporter Dorothy Manners wrote for the International News Service. In her 1949-05-20 dispatch said “Even before Joan gets before the mike to give you the ‘shuddering shivers,’ Jerry Wald is buying the drama to star her on the screen.” Seriously? A previously produced Suspense is suddenly a hot property?

Wald was a big Hollywood producer. In 1945 he led Crawford’s first film at Warner Brothers, the classic Mildred Pierce. That film won her an Oscar and a best picture nomination for him. He produced some of the famous Bogart movies in the late 1940s and many others. But this Suspense script as a movie? It would not be surprising if we learned that Crawford, Dinelli, and Wald had lunch together, Wald was told what they wanted, he was happy to play along, and Wald handed Dinelli $1 just to say they had a contract. That ability to say “Wald wants it!” would get them the pre-broadcast publicity they wanted even though there was probably no serious intent to create a movie.

There were positive aspects of Crawford’s rogue publicity efforts to build interest and curiosity about her Suspense appearance. The pre-recorded nature of it made it possible to create “buzz” in the weeks leading up to the broadcast. She knew how the recording session went. If it went poorly, she would not be as aggressive. CBS probably had little interest in the multi-week build-up, however. Focusing on Crawford too much could undermine the effectiveness of their regular publicity campaign for all the shows and guest stars leading up to her event. Crawford’s stunts could elbow CBS publicity out of the limited editorial space of newspaper radio pages. Whatever the case, The Ten Years had a lot of pre-broadcast publicity and great anticipation.

The recording session: Is it live or transcribed? Yes!

It may seem easy to just go into a studio, record a show and then play it on the air, but there were lots of considerations that needed attention. The technology was there, but everything around it was not.

There were union contracts to deal with. One was with the musicians. It was actually less expensive for them to perform live. Recording was viewed with suspicion by the unions because it eliminated future performance income. For that, contracts had them perform for a higher rate to compensate for the lost income for future performances that would not be necessary. The way around this was to record the show with gaps for all of the music and to have the orchestra perform live while the tape or transcription disc was being broadcast. Only incidental music was used in the drama recording, or perhaps that was recorded on a different day. The home audience would not know the difference. This was a one-time broadcast. There was no need to pay the extra fee for pre-recording.

Harlow Wilcox was likely in the studio for the recording session but was more of an observer. The ads with Wilcox and Bill Johnstone as “Hap” were done live on broadcast day. It is possible that the ad agency had not prepared the advertising copy in time for the recording day. They may have been waiting for some kind of directive for which products to highlight or other details.

Five different recordings have survived

The surviving recordings were all on discs. The Ampex tapes of that day have likely not survived so it is not known how many re-takes there were of scenes or dialogue lines. The discs that have survived were created from the edited tapes from the recording session. It is possible that the reel tape recordings were made, edited into final format, and then transferred to discs. Reel tape recordings was still relatively new and there was a long period of co-existence for discs and tapes in production. A final set of discs with the gaps for announcing, commercials, and orchestral accompaniment was made for broadcast day. That seems to be the most likely chain of events. The reel tapes were probably erased and re-used at some later time. Tape was expensive and in limited supply during its adoption period. Re-using tape was a big selling point to the broadcasters and music industry.

The discs survived and were transferred to tape in the 1960s and 1970s. The widest circulating copies of The Ten Years found among collectors had none of the gaps that were reserved for music and ads. They were removed by an early collector to have each segment flow into another. There was great confusion in the hobby at that time about why the recording had gaps. The story behind it was not widely known. This is why the “gap-free” recordings are only 26 minutes or so long. There are surviving recordings with the original gaps but they were not widely circulated.

A full recording of the broadcast did survive but did not get much circulation among collectors, either. It is not clear why, but it may not have been in the discs that were in the disc library of the Pacific Pioneers of Broadcasting where so many of the Suspense recordings were held. It was probably from another source, but it sounds like it was from a network feed. It is a noisy recording, and it may have been that issue that led to collectors of the time preferring the “gap-edited” recordings.

In 2021, a set of discs made off the air from WCBS radio’s broadcast in New York became available. They were recorded, likely for an ad agency, at the WOR recording studios. WOR may have been a local radio station, and one of the flagships of the Mutual network, but the station had a separate and large business making custom recordings of all kinds for agencies and sponsors. They also had a thriving business for music performers, especially jazz bands and soloists, as they prepared their albums and records for release.

It was odd to see Mutual Broadcasting System labels on the discs, but this was a for-hire recording of the Suspense broadcast. Because it was recorded in New York, it was probably for an advertising agency. This WCBS-AM aircheck is the recommended recording for enjoyment of this episode. It is exactly what listeners in the New York metropolitan heard, including the local commercial for Campbell soup after the Suspense sign-off.

The FIVE surviving recordings are:

  • Suspense 1949-06-02 The Ten Years 1949-05-02 full session WITH GAPS & alt open at end
    This recording has the gaps for announcing and music; the recording begins with Frees who does not say “transcribed” but after the end of the drama recording is an alternative opening that says “transcribed,” which is the opening used for the broadcast.

  • Suspense 1949-06-02 The Ten Years 1949-05-02 full session GAPS REMOVED
    This recording is good quality and is the one that was most commonly in circulation; the gaps for music and announcing have been edited out; note that Frees does not say “transcribed” at the open.

  • Suspense 1949-06-02 The Ten Years (possibly from disc used broadcast day, GAPS REMOVED)
    This recording is good quality and is possibly the one used on broadcast day; the gaps for music and announcing have been edited out; note that Frees     does say “transcribed” at the open.

  • Suspense 1949-06-02 The Ten Years FULL BROADCAST
    This is a recording of the complete broadcast but it is noisy; the source is not known, but it may be from the studio feed and the discs were damaged sometime over the years; note that Harlow Wilcox is in the opening of the program.

  • Suspense 1949-06-02 The Ten Years WCBS-NY AIRCHECK
    This is the preferred recording for listening because the sound is very good and it is the complete broadcast as heard in the New York metropolitan area and includes the national and local commercials.

Was Crawford in the studio on broadcast day? Did she do a live segment?

Hearing the full broadcast recording leads to a question. Was Crawford there? There is a section in the complete broadcast that was added after the May 2 recording date. It may have been added live with the advertising and the announcements.

At about 26:50  Frees thanks Crawford and then she starts a scripted banter with Wilcox. She calls him "Harlow Wilcock," a flub, as she may have felt interrupted, or felt uncomfortable. This section is not in any of the pre-recordings and may have been done live because it went out on the air this way. After the Auto-Lite commercial, at 28:00 she thanks Leader and the cast. This "thank you section" is in the pre-recording. This means that she may have been in the studio on broadcast day, even though the main portion of the show was airing from disc!

Reaction to the broadcast

The broadcast was generally well-received. The anonymous reviewer in the 1949-06-04 Venice Evening Vanguard of California stated

...so excellent is the story that Miss Crawford, a rather unimaginative actress, catches fire and turns in a really moving performance. Her hysteria and fear are frighteningly real as the drama moves to its fateful climax...

The Ten Years left this reviewer frightened – but we understand it left Miss Crawford completely hysterical. The weeping was real…

Watch for Miss Crawford to do this little gem on the screen in the near future.

Weeks after broadcast, the curmudgeonly syndicated radio critic, wrote in his 1949-06-20 column that the story “went way beyond the bounds of propriety.” It was clear he was not pleased. He continued:

If this is entertainment, I suggest the Columbia Broadcasting System simply rig up a couple of microphones at the Matteawan State Hospital for the criminally insane. There are people up there who scream much louder than Joan Crawford. Also, they'd save all that money for scriptwriters and actors.

Crawford’s longer term vision

Later in June, newspapers reported that Crawford was being contacted by record companies to make a recording of The Ten Years for consumer purchase. After a while of all of these news items you begin to wonder if Crawford is jealous of Agnes Moorehead or at least wanted to emulate the way Moorehead used Suspense as a career and notoriety springboard. Did she desire to be recognized as a premier acting talent across multiple media?

Is the Moorehead-Crawford parallel radio path plausible? Joan's script should be a movie, too, just like Agnes’ was. Joan's script should be a best selling record set, too, just like the smash hit 1947 Decca release of Sorry, Wrong Number. That record set was released multiple times as a result of its higher than anticipated sales and the shift from 78s to long-playing records. It created an interest in the possibility of other radio productions being staged for their own record set releases. Only Sorry, Wrong Number was successful in this format, in the long run. Moorehead turned SWN into a side business. For a while, she had lucrative traveling one-woman stage show comprised of dramatic readings, especially sections of Sorry, Wrong Number. Did Crawford have any interest in that? Doubtful.

Crawford did realize that her appearance on Suspense could be leveraged into a new aspect of her career and broaden her opportunities. But 1949 was too late to fully develop such opportunities.

There was no The Ten Years movie. There was no The Ten Years record set. She did appear on Suspense one more time, in 1951. Pre-recorded, of course.

Suspense finally embraced the inevitable… slowly

Crawford’s insistence on pre-recording did affect Suspense, especially when Elliott Lewis became producer. There was wisdom in adopting the process, sooner rather than later. Radio was starting to give way to television. TV was capturing the time and interest of radio’s guest stars, the movie studios, and their agents. Lewis started to use tape recording, here and there, to accommodate the schedules of the stars who appeared and make it easier to fit appearances into their schedules, even recording on weekends, sometimes at strange hours. The scrambling to rush substitute guests or change scripts because of disruptions to guest schedules happened often in the “live” era. Those incidents eventually stopped. The issues that union contracts posed over live performances and pre-recording eventually were ironed out or made irrelevant with “canned” music. The spark of “live” performances slowly ebbed from the broadcasts through the 1950s.

The Ten Years was an important transition point as all of those issues of technology and broadcast economics were coalescing into a very different entertainment marketplace. One can only identify transition points in retrospect after many years pass. The transition to tape and pre-recording production policies would have occurred in a time of its own. This broadcast probably hastened it for Suspense.

Joan Crawford’s career was long with many successes and many challenges. Her career and life has an overview at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Crawford

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP490602

THE CAST

JOAN CRAWFORD (Clara Foley), Lurene Tuttle (Adele Foley), Joseph Kearns (Judge), Pat Lowery (Adele as a child), Gloria McMillan (Clara as a child), Jerry Farber (Roy, aged 10), Gil Barnett (Doug, aged 10), Eda Reiss Merin (Mrs. Wallace), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)

COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)

###

at
Labels: ,