[NOTE: After the summary of the broadcast and
the cast listing,
be sure to read the special section about the
mysterious author of this script.]
Mickey Rooney returns to the series and offers another excellent performance, raising a somewhat average script to a higher level of entertainment. The author of the story was “Therd Jefre,” a mysterious persona, whose identity has eluded Suspense history until very recently. It’s a fascinating story, and might even make a good play on its own (details below). The “Jefre” script was adapted for Suspense by Walter Brown Newman, who would eventually become a three-time Oscar nominee for screenwriting.
Rooney plays Georgie, a small-time racketeer who murders the man he hates most in the world, Julie, a rival racketeer whom he has known since childhood. Julie has taken over Georgie’s punchboard racket. Those games are sold to billiard rooms, bars, and other gathering locales. They were common games, especially at bars, offering rewards for guessing where the best prize might be hidden in the board. This little barstool entertainment could be a lucrative business for the seller and the bar owner. Bars loved these kinds of games because they kept patrons drinking, and they also provided some cash income that was easy to slip into one’s pocket and bypassing the cash register. Purveyors of such games were always having their territories infringed by rival gangsters.
And that’s Georgie’ predicament. Julie muscled him out of the little territory he spent years developing, and now he’s having money problems. He visits Julie to complain and tell him to back off. Julie is insulting and contemptuous, and calls Georgie “a sucker.” Georgie grabs the telephone on the desk and gives Julie a hard blow to the head… and kills him. (Desk phones weighed about 6 pounds at that time!) Georgie remembers that Julie mentioned he had a meeting with his parole officer at 6pm, less than two hours away. A police detective who knew them for years was aware of their long-standing feud and warned that if anything ever happened to either of them, he would immediately look for the other. Georgie needs an alibi, and quick. It’s a race against time, because when Julie misses his appointment, he knows the police will come looking for him.
His alibi-seeking involves a lot of bad luck. His bartender friend says no, his girlfriend is insulted that he’s only interested in her for an alibi and nothing else. His friend in the hospital dies after agreeing to support his fraudulent alibi. He blackmails his landlord by threatening to expose her daughter’s past legal issues. He gets a police visit and it looks like the alibi will work, until he gets a delivery of a really big lollipop by messenger… who moans that he’s tired of trying to make delivery to Georgie who has been out all day. That lollipop was from Julie; his note calls Georgie “a sucker.” The messenger’s whining contradicts the alibi, and Georgie is taken down to the police station.
The story was done on Suspense this time and once again in 1958 (with Stan Freberg). It was used on the Suspense TV series in 1952 (with Rod Steiger as Julie and adapted by pulp, radio, and screen writer Max Erlich). The episode can be viewed at https://youtu.be/6JF0KFaq7RU It was performed again in 1956 on TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents (available on many streaming services).
The radio version used a strike to the head with a desk telephone as the murder weapon. The TV show used a more believable letter opener to stab Julie. How many people actually know what a letter opener is in this age of e-mail? A letter opener was a big productivity boost for secretaries and anyone else who had to open stacks of mail every day in the office. Every desk had a letter opener, and they were often left on a desk, out in the open, because it was used so often. The Hitchcock adaptation uses a gun.
All three Suspense versions use Julie’s encroachment into the punchboard business as the reason for the killing. Hitchcock changed it to the pinball machine business. The insult of the lollipop by messenger was all the more insulting in the Suspense TV broadcast. It’s an oversized lollipop in the shape of a heart as one might see on Valentine’s Day.
Punchboards were already losing their appeal years before and even at a greater rate in the years following the first radio broadcast. They eventually disappeared after the 1960s. This site has more information http://www.punchboard.com/whatisit.html
Alibi Me marks the final live broadcast appearance of Wally Maher in Suspense. His voice will soon be heard again in an episode recorded the week prior to this broadcast (Aria From Murder). Maher’s absence on Suspense was because he was working so much in other series the rest of the year, especially Lux Radio Theatre, The Whistler, and The Line-Up. In Alibi Me he plays a character who dies in the hospital, which is a bit unnerving for those who enjoyed his Suspense appearances. Wally passed away at age 43 on the day after Christmas 1951. In an interview with his son conducted a few years ago, he said his father knew he was dying months before from a serious lung problem. He kept working as long as he could to provide financial security for his family after he was gone. That Summer, he told his son that he set money aside so he could go to law school and not worry about the expense. He became a very successful lawyer in Washington, DC. Dennis Day sang at Wally’s funeral Mass and there was a large turnout of radio people for it.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP510104
THE CAST
MICKEY ROONEY (Georgie), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Lt. Larkin), Sidney Miller (Julius), Peggy Webber (Mrs. Ettinger the landlady), Wally Maher (Tim), Leo Cleary (Leo the bartender), Charlotte Lawrence (Joanie), Henry Blair (Delivery boy)
COMMERCIAL: Bert Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
* * *
Who is “Therd Jefre”?
While Alibi Me is a good story and succeeded in radio and television, the mystery of the author’s identity persisted the entire time the recordings have been in the hobby... and perhaps even longer. Until now.
“Therd Jefre” sounds like an Eastern European name. When Elliott Lewis got the script or the outline of it, he immediately liked it. The person in charge of the legal administration of the show for contracts exchanged information was contacted by film documentarian John Scheinfeld in the 1970s. John was in college and was researching the series in a wide range of topics. His contact recalled that Jefre was “either mute or blind” and implied that they did not have direct dealings with “him.” Recently, a Google search turned up a copyright entry for a 1948 stage play by “Therd Jefre.” This Google search for Jefre never been successful in years past. Searches of genealogy sites never worked either. But this time, the Google search brought up a play and its name and that finally led somewhere.
General researcher and classic radio enthusiast and author Karl Schadow was contacted. Karl has been a valuable and generous contributor to this Suspense project. For background on Karl and his research at the Library of Congress, go to this 2018 profile of him at the Library of Congress blog https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/05/inquiring-minds-bringing-radios-golden-age-back-to-life/ Many collectors know his work authoring booklets for Radio Spirits CD sets.
Karl was able to find the 1948 copyright filing for the stage play, but there was an another document in the folder that was atypical. It was an affidavit from 1967 indicating a pseudonym was used in the original registration. Karl remarked how odd this was, because pseudonyms were typically included in the filings of the original registration or added quickly thereafter. This one, however, was 19 years after the filing.
The sisters, Ruth and Mae Brandt were freelance writers to 1940s NY radio advertising agencies and producers. They were listed as “Brandt Production Services” in various business guides, providing “program production and writing of scripts, radio commercials, and jingles.” It appears that they had “subsistence” freelance careers, never hitting it big, but making enough money to get by and continue their work. They had many copyright registrations of plays and musicals, and some radio ideas, but there is no indication that any of them were ever presented based on newspaper searches for each title.
They had many ideas for new radio series. Some were mentioned in columns of industry publications. One of the trade magazines had an annual supplement where such ideas could be pitched. This catalog listed many shows that were already in syndication but also had many programs that would become available once funded by a sponsor or a station.
In the mid-1940s the Brandts tried really hard to get a show concept that would catch on, and they had many. They needed just one to get them more firmly established in the business. Among the ideas they pitched were a panel discussion by literary critics and authors “The Best Short Story of the Week,” game shows “Eight Bits” and “Top and Bottom,” and a daily show about a small town old judge who dispensed life advice, “Hickadee’s Judge.” A show called “Complaints Adjusted” was about giving people advice about their problems. It was like the Brandts made a list of genres and tried to develop and idea for each one. Mysteries were always popular, so they pitched a concept similar to Christie’s Miss Marple about a spinster sleuth named “Innocence Threadleaf.” With the war still in process, there was always audience interest in people in the service and those returning home. They proposed an inspiring program about veterans returning to civilian life called “Looking Forward.” They also suggested a show about those still in the service and their thoughts of home and the love they left behind. Their idea was how service personnel had “a date” using the wartime V-Mail postal service appropriately called “Via V-Mail.” None of these seem to have caught on.
There was a hint of possible success about a radio script being picked up as a movie. One 1940s trade newspaper claimed that “Brooklyn’s scriptwins have Universal Pictures plenty interested in their latest radio script, ‘Tete A Tete With Thais’.” No record of its radio production could be found, nor of a motion picture. Karl Schadow says it sounds like something that might have been used on Grand Central Station, but we may never know.
In the 1950 Census (where it appears they claimed to have barely aged since the 1940 Census) they lived with their widowed mother, a sister who worked as a secretary, and a brother who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Ruth and Mae’s occupations were listed as “writer.” They all lived in one side of a brick duplex house, built in 1930, near the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.. They used their home address as their business address.
There is one surviving radio script that the Brandts wrote that made it to a network broadcast. It was the 1943-03-20 Stars over Hollywood “I’ll Never Forget.” No recording has survived, but they are credited and announced as the authors, according to the script. This is the only complete hard copy radio script that is available to our knowledge.
A 1961 edition of trade newspaper for the theatrical business, Back Stage, mentioned of an upcoming theatrical project by the Brandts. In that news item, it said that they had written for Grand Central Station, Silver Theater, and Armstrong Theater. The broadcast log information for these series is lacking, and there are no newspaper mentions of their specific programs. The clip also mentioned the TV series Bat Masterson. A check of IMDb listings for this western program has no mention of the Brandts (or Therd Jefre). In some cases, they may have worked on script revisions and not received screen credit, or used yet another pseudonym that has yet to be discovered. (There is more information about that Back Stage news item below).
“Alibi Me” seems to stand alone as a big success and it’s not even under their name. That’s what makes this so very curious. When they were contacted about the script, they likely claimed to be “Mr. Jefre’s agents” and he was “always out” or “unavailable” or if the mute ruse was in play, “he can’t speak on the phone.” It may be a pseudonym, but it almost borders on hoax. Suspense staffers seem to have accepted the excuse at face value, and accepted the script, which they liked.
Why did the Brandts even invent Mr. Jefre? Were they not being taken seriously by the business and needed a male-sounding name to sell the story? So many woman authors through the centuries adopted what would be taken as men’s names as pseudonyms for their work. Why did it take so long for them to change the attribution of a 1948 play, 19 years, that has no record of ever being produced?
What happened to the Brandts after Alibi Me was on Suspense radio and TV and on Alfred Hitchcock Presents? We don’t know. It’s likely that they kept up freelance writing for ad agencies and public relations firms, but there is a newspaper clipping that said they were working for law firms, too. They were still pursuing their writing dreams. As late as 1961, Variety reported that “Mae and Ruth Brandt, a sister scripting team active in radio and television, are to be represented off-Broadway this fall by a production of their courtroom drama, ‘Pick My Peers’.” A similar notice was posted in the Back Stage newspaper about the same time noting that the play was scheduled to open in November. No record of the production has been found in any of the theatrical data bases for previews or official opening. It was likely never produced. There are copyright registrations for new Brandt plays and songs as late as 1969. After that, there is nothing.
Mae and Ruth are buried in a family grave in a Long Island cemetery. Mae died in 1998; Ruth in 2002. No obituaries have been found as of this writing.
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