Mickey Rooney offers another successful performance on Suspense. This time he portrays a young pianist in an affair with an older woman. She convinces him they can live happily ever after if he murders her older and very wealthy husband and stages it as a robbery. He commits the brutal act while she is in the apartment, at her prodding, he injures her, to make the incident believable to the police and to hide her involvement. The deed is done, but he starts to realize that she may not have plans to start a new life with him at all, and he’s been played for a patsy.
This John Shaw script was originally planned to air on 1947-12-05. Since Roma’s sponsorship was discontinued a couple of weeks before, it was filed away. To save money, a previously used script was substituted and reserved this new script for production sometime in the future, assuming Suspense found a new sponsor. John Shaw had provided scripts to Suspense earlier (Statement of Employee Henry Wilson and Murder by an Expert). Spier was pleased with his work in the Roma years and in his year producing Philip Morris Playhouse. When Spier returned to produce Suspense for the 1949-1950 season, this Suspense script was still sitting in the file cabinet, likely all marked up and edited from two years before. He dusted it off and finally produced it. Shaw left freelance scriptwriting and its uncertain income when he got married about 1950 and took a job in Rhode Island government to have a steadier paycheck.
Jackie Cooper was originally planned to star in this broadcast, replaced by Rooney.
Old Time Radio Researchers Facebook group participant Ryan Ostenkowski notes that the "Gershwin music featured in the episode... really adds to the atmosphere."
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP491208
THE CAST
MICKEY ROONEY (Tommy), Lurene Tuttle (Anne Thomas), Joe Kearns (Old man / Billy the doorman), Barney Phillips (Mr. Thomas / Officer Dan Ryan), Ted Reid (Jimmy / Neighbor), Edgar Barrier (Voice on phone), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Ken Christy (Remingchester Shotgun), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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