The opening lines preview the conclusion of the story (mild spoiler alert). Johnson’s character, Danny, talks about lighting a cigarette with a piece of paper worth $400,000. That’s $5.3 million in US$2024!
Danny learns about the job from an ex-girlfriend. She recently broke off their relationship to marry an older and wealthier man, but he’s dreadfully annoying and a bully. She is already sick of her marriage and has persuaded him to hire Danny for his latest treasure hunting expedition. He is convinced that sunken Spanish galleons filled with gold are still at the bottom of the Caribbean. He may be looking for riches, but she hopes to get something different. She wants the trip to provide an opportunity to get the husband out of the way... permanently.
The pilot is needed to scout possible search sites as it travels low to the water, ahead of the salvage ship. The plane is stored aboard ship until the suspected treasure area is reached. Early in the voyage, it becomes apparent that they are sailing in the wrong direction and that the diving equipment is obsolete and worthless. This is on purpose. The husband said one thing to convince people to join the expedition, concealed his real plans, and his greed leads him to ensure that those on the project may not survive the trip. This would keep his riches secret and allow him to avoid legal and taxation authorities, and live life of great luxury. The story takes a really dark turn when he kills a crewmember in cold blood. It get even stranger when the wife admits to the pilot that she wasn’t interested in rekindling their relationship, but she planned to run away with the dead crewmember. The husband has what he wants to keep everyone in line: crew and travelers are terrified of him and must comply with his demands and otherwise may not survive the journey.
Cary Grant was originally intended star. This is yet another planned date for the now twice-delayed Angel Face with Ginger Rogers.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP500406
THE CAST
VAN JOHNSON (Danny Connor), Georgia Ellis (Gloria), Joe Kearns (Wendell Davis / Signature Voice), Elliott Reid (Scotty), William Conrad (Freighter Captain), Gus Bayz (Ad-Libs)
COMMERCIAL: Jerry Hausner (Cab Driver), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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Classic radio enthusiast Elizabeth Tankersley of the Old Time Radio Researchers Facebook group noticed a great similarity to a Whistler episode also by Sidney Renthal. The episode is Chain Reaction, and it was broadcast on 1948-05-12 on the CBS Pacific Network sponsored by Signal Oil, and also presented on 1948-05-12 for Household Finance Corporation. The Signal broadcast has survived, but the HFC one has not. This is important because the HFC shows often had different casts and the shows had conclusions that were written to the “less harsh” or “less stark” than the Pacific Network broadcasts. Elizabeth notes that this Suspense episode is a re-worked version of Chain Reaction. The stories diverge in the second half, but the foundations of the story are the same in the opening scenes. She notes the following:
The wife sits on the rooming house bed, she’s “still as approachable as a park bench,” as the protagonist looks at her he realizes how love can be as close to hate as the two sides of a thin dime (“of his last thin dime,” in The Whistler). The job has three parts to it: do as you’re told, keep your mouth shut, fly a plane. “How much does the third part pay?” “It's not piecework.” There's something about it the protagonist doesn't like, and when he sees the ship chartered by the corporation he likes it even less. She’s an old tub built back in the 1890s, there's “nothing left of her brightwork,” her varnish is peeling, “she doesn't look safe enough to sail in a fish pond.”....
The scene with the wife saying goodbye has a lot of the same dialogue in both episodes. The composition of the strange crew is the same except that in Suspense the drunkard captain is also mostly deaf. We get some of the same dialogue between the radio operator Scott and the protagonist, and some of the same description and dialogue after the husband shoots Scott and he and the protagonist take off in the plane.
The two stories diverge about the time the protagonist and the husband land in Florida.
In Chain Reaction, Walsh has explained that he's going to get away with it because he planted a bomb on the boat and now the boat is gone and he and Turner are presumed dead. They land to meet Diana, she doesn't come right away, and Walsh tells Turner to wait while he goes ashore -- and he will wait, because Walsh still has the valise of money. The plan is for Turner to fly Walsh and Diana to Mexico and then get paid off in money. Diana comes out of the cottage alone, with the valise, and says her husband is dead, she had to do it. They take the body and dump it out over the Gulf, and fly towards Mexico together with a half a million bucks...
After the break, a coast guard officer and a police lieutenant are talking aboard the salvage vessel. It turns out that Scotty, the innocent kid radio operator, was really in cahoots with Vogel the bomb-maker. Scotty had already dumped the bomb overboard, and was planning to switch bags and take the money. We end on the revelation that Scott drained the extra gas tanks and the plane couldn't have taken them more than a hundred miles out over the Gulf.
In Salvage, Gloria Davis meets her husband and Connor at the beach with a rented car. The plan is for Connor to get paid off right now, in bullets. Davis explains that he’s going to get away with it because he paid the captain to say their plane crashed into the sea. Davis goes to kill Connor, there’s a struggle, and Gloria kills Davis. Connor gets the dazed Gloria into the plane and they fly towards Mexico with the bag... the bag’s a fake, but the money’s at the express office and they have the ticket, so everything’s okay...
In this Suspense version of the story, it turns out that Scotty was really in cahoots with Gloria. Gloria loved Scotty and didn’t care about Connor, and she knows Scotty drained the extra gas tanks so they can only get halfway out over the Gulf. This time instead of presumably dying at the end, they survive the wreck and drift long enough for Connor to lose hope and smoke up the express ticket just before getting picked up.
Elizabeth notes other differences besides the endings and the names:
In Salvage, Davis has an outwardly good-natured, backslapping demeanor, and he delivers a bon mot which originally went to the protagonist. He also gets a couple of new lines generalizing about women.
In Chain Reaction, Scotty’s name is Melvin Scott, he sounds more youthful and uncertain, and (he says) he doesn't know they’re off course until Turner tells him and tells him to report their position accurately. In Salvage, Scott already knows he’s been told the wrong position and talks himself into reporting it accurately (and he isn’t called Scotty until Connor mentions him later).
In Chain Reaction, they're after gold that went down during the war; in Salvage, it's old Spanish gold.
In Salvage, the plane is described as old and in poor shape, like the ship. In Chain Reaction, the plane looks okay but it specifically mentions that it has no radio.
In Chain Reaction, when Walsh asks about the plane getting across the Gulf of Mexico, Turner says he wouldn't figure on setting her down, because the Gulf can get pretty nasty. In bad weather “this plane wouldn't last an hour.” This line isn't in Salvage, where they do survive going down in the Gulf.
Many thanks to Elizabeth for detailing these similarities and differences. Sometimes writers had a great idea that didn’t work out the way they wanted. Sometimes when they plotted out stories they realized they had two good ideas and had to pick one. If they believed a storyline was good at its core, they could re-work the script and give it a second chance to work better or differently. Sometimes it would be an exploration of an idea they liked and wanted to push it out some more. Re-used scripts are not always re-used for convenience or cost. Sometimes they are to allow the writer to take prior work and evolve it further.
Knowing that the script was used in the era when the Signal Oil broadcasts and the Household Finance ones had different scripts, there is a possibility that the Suspense episode could be based on the HFC script. Suspense is a mystery program that holds many mysteries inside its own history.
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