Film star Ginger Rogers makes her only appearance on the series as a woman out to solve her sister's murder by imitating her in a psychological ploy to trap her murderer. It’s a B-movie style plotline, but it’s very well done, Rogers is excellent, and the (almost) surprise ending makes listening worthwhile. One aspect of the story is that we don’t realize what she’s doing until we’re well into the story, which means we, as listeners, get trapped, too!
The story is by E. Jack Neuman and John Michael Hayes from an original story by “Catherine Lee.” That person is “Catherine Lee Lewis,” aka Cathy Lewis, in the regular ensemble of the series and wife of Elliott. Some newspaper clippings originally noted that this was an Antony Ellis adaptation of a script by “Catherine Lee.” That was corrected to Neuman and Hayes and announced in the usual closing credits at the conclusion of the broadcast.
Her character arrives by train in a small town to start a job as secretary to a writer whom she never has met. This has an opening like some horror movies do. She asks the railroad station agent to hail a taxi for her, and tells him her destination. He tells her to take the next train back home, instead! She doesn’t get the chance. Before the agent can explain why, her new employer appears to take her to his home. Even if the agent explained why, she already knows her plan and would have no intention of going back, but as listeners we’re in the dark whether she would heed his warning. Her new boss, a very strange man, gets into conversation with her and fesses up to having a strange reputation in town. He tells her that he is generally believed to be his wife’s murderer, although there was no proof, and asks her if she wishes to take the job, anyway. The housekeeper tells her she looks almost exactly like the murdered woman… but that’s Rogers’ character’s plan, which is still secret. It’s not long before her new employer starts calling her by the name of his dead wife! Like many B-movies, there’s a local newspaper reporter to help complicate matters and create enough confusion about the true murderer to keep the story interesting.
The classic radio blog at Oldtimeradioreview.com notes that:
The tale shares themes in common with a couple of Hitchcock films, Rebecca (based, of course, on a Daphne Du Maurier novel) and Vertigo, since it similarly concerns a female character who is compared throughout to a dead woman, and because the latter's death occurred in mysterious circumstances.
The commentary continues:
...the lengths to which Rogers' character is prepared to go to expose her brother-in-law are quite startling… All this makes for a gripping, intriguing episode, with some strange undercurrents.
The title includes the word “vamp,” an interesting choice, in that the word has multiple meanings and both meanings apply here. In music, to “vamp” means to repeat a short piece of music, such as the opening bars of a song, before another musician starts to play or sing or to buy time for them to compose themselves before they begin. The musicians make their vamping seem natural, and may even improvise to keep the audience interested and hide the fact they are buying time for the singer or other band members. “Vamp” can also refer to a woman who is confident that she is very attractive and makes use of her “looks” to get what she desires. In this story, the “vamping” is playing along with the flow of the relationship until her trap of the murderer can be sprung. Rogers’ character is also using her alluring impersonation of her sister to have him do as she wants. We know that’s working because he starts calling her by her sister’s name. There’s also another meaning… that she will keep her dangerous and risky plan of entrapment until she’s possibly murdered, herself.
What is the correct title of the production? The script has the title as “Vamp ’till Dead” which is an obvious typographic error throughout. The contraction of the word “until” is “’til.” Newspapers all report it as “Vamp ’til Dead” which means it was supplied to them in that corrected form by CBS publicity. Therefore, the name of this blogpost and the recording has been adjusted accordingly.
Rogers’ character (and her murdered sister) played piano. The instrument is used extensively in scenes and orchestral bridges in this episode.
This is Ginger Rogers’ only appearance on the series. She was originally scheduled to star in Angel Face on 1950-03-30 and was rescheduled again for 1950-04-06, but the appearance for that script was postponed. Rogers was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for decades, known most for her dancing musicals with Fred Astaire. That’s just a small portion of her successful career, which is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Rogers
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP510111
THE CAST
GINGER ROGERS (Amy Watkins), John Hoyt (Paul Gentry), Jeanette Nolan (Jenny), Ed Max (Al Pender), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bert Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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