Loretta Young makes her only Suspense appearance in a William Bruckner script. She was originally scheduled to be on the series in its inaugural season, Summer 1942.
This is a police corruption story about the cover-up of a gambling operation. (Oh, forgot, “spoiler alert”). The story fits together logically but it does not really have the fast moving Suspense action and fact discovery. The character relationships are stilted and feels like people standing around the microphone and reading their lines rather than creating the vivid illusion that radio provided so often. Young was better in romance dramas, where her performance could be more believable. The overall production just doesn’t coalesce the way it should.
One amusing aspect of the presentation is the glimpse into the nature of air travel of the time. Don’t let that affect your acceptance of the plotline; those were different times and they are reasonable elements of the story.
Young portrays an insurance investigator named Peg Lincoln. She unexpectedly needs to go to Capital City and makes her way to the airport without a ticket. She hopes that someone cancels their seat for the packed flight. A woman in the airport lobby sells her a ticket she realized she did not need after hearing Peg conversing with a ticket agent. She gets on board, even though the ticket was not in her name (that would not happen today). A telegram is delivered to her, brought on board by a Western Union agent who handed it to a flight attendant (that would not happen today just in practical terms). The man next to her asks if she would open the telegram, but she said she would not. (After all, it was addressed to the woman who sold her the ticket; and why was he so curious about it?). The man gives her chewing gum to help make the flight more comfortable to counteract the effect that air pressure changes have on ears. Suddenly, she feels awful, and suspects she’s been poisoned. Her fellow passenger alerts the attendants that the flight needs to stay on the ground and that she needs to get to a hospital. Later, she thinks she was poisoned by the man who sat next to her using the chewing gum he gave her. Did he save her life by getting her to the hospital so quickly, or was he the one who caused the harm? Did he mistake her for someone else? The police tell her that he is above reproach and that she is imagining danger where there is none.
He visits her in the hospital. Though her instincts tell her otherwise, she allows him to drive her home from the hospital. Just before the car ride reaches her home, however, he runs over a pedestrian! He claims it was an accident, but Peg suspects it was murder. Why would he want to hurt Peg or that pedestrian crossing the street? He’s a man of impeccable reputation, the police still insist… or is that a set-up, too? (He’s not. Oops. Sorry; spoiler alert missed again).
The conclusion of the story involves a long pause that likely had listeners checking whether their radio was still working. It was well done. You can imagine director Norman Macdonnell standing in the control room, or possibly with the actors, making sure the extra-long pause was executed properly. It may have seemed like an eternity, delighting the production crew, and surprising the listeners.
That glimpse into air travel in the show’s opening sequence is a curious aside worth some exploration. Passenger flights today are obviously not the way they are described in the story. There are major differences in security and the transferability of tickets to others. In 1950, only a small percentage of the general public had ever been on a plane flight. There was a general sense of curiosity about air travel. Writers could get away with glossing over various details of public air travel because only a small percentage of listeners would be familiar with them. The airlines did what they could to make air travel seem glamorous and minimized ideas about how passengers made the compromise of certain travel discomforts against the benefit of shortened travel time compared to rail or auto. In 1950, propeller planes flew at low altitudes were uncomfortable and “bumpy” for portions of the flights. Today, conditions are more tolerable once airborne because jets fly at high altitudes and have much smoother rides. Airlines have mostly eliminated the “air sickness bags” that were available at every seat because they had fallen into disuse.
The show has chatty dialogue about chewing gum and flight comfort and that no one can really explain why it did. But this was actually common knowledge. It would have wasted story time to explain why. The ear’s eustachian tube, behind the ear drum helps equalize pressure between the external air and that inside your ear. If you’re hiking up a mountain, the ascent is slow, and the adjustment is gradual. A rapid ascent in a plane, or even in a fast elevator in a very tall building, does not allow for gradual adjustment. Chewing forces more movement of air. See how much time they saved in the script because they did not include this explanation?
This digression into air travel of 1950 compared to today has some other aspects. Airlines made up for the discomforts of air travel by creating an ambiance that equating flying to being on a cruise ship. The very attentive service, and attendants anxious to cater to your comfort needs was intended to keep customers calm, as flight personnel had little reaction to the bumpiness and other issues being nonplussed about the process. They cultivated a sense of prestige (it was very expensive) and a reassuring orderliness. So many parts of the flight experience depicted in the story is long gone. But you get a sense of it in the opening scenes of the broadcast.
This script was used in the previous season of Philip Morris Playhouse on 1949-06-03 and starred Cathy Lewis. Some newspapers mention that she was off the airwaves for a while recovering from an illness. A recording of that broadcast is not available. Since she was a radio regular, it is reasonable to speculate that her performance would be better than Young’s, who was not often on radio.
The next week’s program is announced as The Pit and the Pendulum with star James Mason. He did appear, but they substituted a repeat performance of Banquo’s Chair instead.
This was Loretta Young’s only Suspense appearance. Her film career began in silent movies as a very small child. Her career was long and notable in movies and television, and is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Young
Hal Erickson at the Old Time Radio Lovers Facebook group noted that the episode was used again. William Bruckner wrote 36 scripts for TV’s Loretta Young Show and this script was made into a teleplay for that series. It is available at https://youtu.be/36WXwDXgNTQ and https://archive.org/details/Loretta_Young--Lady_Killer
Young was originally cast in the third episode of Suspense, the production of a fictionalized version of the Fall River, Massachusetts murders attributed to Lizzie Borden. The title of the script was The Life of Nellie James and was broadcast on 1942-07-01.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP500302
THE CAST
LORETTA YOUNG (Peg Lincoln), Elliott Reid (Clerk at Hotel Ludwig), Jerry Hausner (Jack), Joseph Kearns (Telegram clerk / Signature Voice), Jeanne Bates (Stewardess / Operator), Larry Dobkin (Grant Benton / Airport P. A.), John McIntire (Chief Ray Longman)
COMMERCIAL: Ken Christy (Remingchester Shotgun), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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