Joseph Cotten returns to Suspense in a George and Gertrude Fass story adapted by Morton Fine and David Friedkin. The story has problems, but Cotten’s performance rises above them.
He plays a businessman being framed for a murder. He’s been been kept awake by a police interrogator for seventy-two hours (that’s three days in case you didn’t know) to break his resistance to signing a confession. In his fuzzy state he admits to murdering his business partner just to get some sleep. When he awakens, he tries vainly to repudiate and the confession and makes a sudden and successful, break for freedom. There’s a general alarm out for his arrest, his only hope lies in finding the witness who had given false testimony against him, and then find out who paid that witness to lie. He learns where that witness’ office is. But when he gets there, he finds him dead, with bullet hole to his forehead. He realizes that the gun used to kill the witness is his very own, making his framing for murder all the more believable to others and the police.
Even though police had wider latitude to interrogate witnesses at the time of this story, whether ethical or not, it seems like the strangest of interrogations. Not that such things did not happen, but it’s closer to the kind one might imagine being used on war prisoners to find out when and how the enemy will attack next. It seems gangster-like, with thugs trying to crush a cross-town rival by learning their whereabouts and habits. You also know something is up because the interrogation is not conducted in a police station but in a home. It turns out to be fake, a charade, that credibility of the story right from the beginning, just like other Fass scripts. They did so in Mortmain and X-Ray Camera, especially, and also Quiet Desperation. The only redeeming feature is that we get to hear Joseph Cotten as the framed man, anxious to clear himself, but so disappointed to discover that the conspiracy against him includes his wife. [Sometimes spoiler alerts prep you for disappointment; as Tony Shaloub’s character in the Monk television series says after doing something annoying to others, “you’ll thank me later”]. The conclusion of the story includes too many tangled “just so happens” elements. One has to wonder how much Fine and Friedkin had to fix original story to get as presentable as it is. Enjoy Cotten, push the flaws to the background.
LISTEN
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https://archive.org/details/TSP500928
THE CAST
JOSEPH COTTEN (Mickey Manning), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Druggist / Julius Benning), Herb Vigran (Sergeant Kogan / Man), Larry Dobkin (Charlie Borden), Ed Max (Lt. Driscoll), Mary Shipp (Mary Manning), Cathy Lewis (Irene Conway), Peggy Webber (Woman in theater), Billy Halop (Usher), George Baxter (Shreyer / Cop)
COMMERCIAL: Bert Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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