Paul Douglas portrays a postmaster who receives an anonymous telephone warning that somewhere among the thousands of undelivered packages in the stations delivery trucks and personnel is a time bomb. The telephone tipster says the person who mailed the bomb forgot to set the timer to 7pm, as he intended, and it is adjusted to go off at 2:30 in the afternoon, just five hours away. He explains that he has telephoned because, “maybe some poor guy like mailman will get it instead of the guy who's supposed to." The postmaster sends out an emergency call for postal inspectors, and has a fluoroscope flown from a nearby city in a frantic effort to locate the bomb, which is set to go off if the package is opened. Despite their furious (while careful and systematic) efforts, however, the hours, minutes and seconds tick off relentlessly, with no clue as to whereabouts of the deadly package.
This is the second of two John F. Suter scripts used on Suspense. Suter was a chemist at duPont with radio scripting and mystery writing as sidelines during his professional career. His first Suspense script was Short Order, and was an excellent production. This script is also quite good. It was presented once more in 1956 under producer Antony Ellis. That second broadcast, starring Vic Perrin, is considered the better performance of the two. Perrin, an accomplished radio performer, seems better able to communicate the pressure the postmaster is under than Douglas was able to.
This story was likely inspired by a real event, and perhaps was one of the inspirations for Suspense to change its strategy to include more real-life stories starting with the Fall 1951 season. The event is mentioned at about 9:50. In January 1949, there was a bomb in the mail at the Bowling Green, Kentucky post office. A 29-year-old postal worker, William Henry Osborne, was handling a package with an inaccurate address when it exploded. He lost both hands and sight of both eyes. Four other postal workers were injured. The bomb was small, about 2.5x2x1.5 inches in size. Despite being confident they would find the bomber, they never did. The package was in the bag of a Bowling Green letter carrier for part of the day before it was returned to the station.
Osbourne, a veteran, was married three years with two children. Local fundraisers were held for him and his family. He died in December 2000 at 82. His wife died in 1999; they were married 53 years. They started a successful frozen foods business and he also worked selling advertising. More details about him can be found at https://www.bgdailynews.com/man-injured-in-a-1949-postal-blast-dies-at-home/article_48f27d0e-9622-595f-bcfd-abb47c169faa.html
There are jargon and details in the story that need some context; below are the approximate times:
7:10 “Special Delivery” was mentioned. It was 20 cents to send a letter by Special Delivery at that time; a first class letter was 3 cents. That made Special Delivery more than 6x that of First Class. That’s about $2.50 and about 40 cents in US$2024, respectively. The Special Delivery service was discouraged by the USPS in the late 1960s and forward as First Class Mail service improved with the shift to more and more air transport of letters. Express Mail was introduced in 1977 by USPS. As overnight services like FedEx and others became more popular, especially because of their package tracking technology and heavy discounted contract prices to high volume users, Special Delivery volume eroded considerably with these other services, and USPS having greater emphasis on sorting and distribution productivity. The service was discontinued in 1997.
7:55 At the time of this episode, it was very common for people to drop small packages into streetside mailboxes. That practice essentially ended after the 9/11 attacks as postal officials worked to change regulations and have all packages dropped off at post offices rather than mailboxes. USPS also decreased the number of curbside mailboxes since that time to reflect the reduced volume of First Class Mail, but also for greater security and safety in the flow of mailed materials.
9:20 A fluoroscope is flown in from another city to screen suspect packages. It is an X-ray device, and is now a mainstay in airport security and other applications. X-ray technology revolutionized the practice of medicine, and also the routing and inspection of packages, and even the inspection of structures, airplanes, and many other things. The “fluoroscope” term is not heard often today.
20:40 The bomb is submerged into water with a “wetting agent” added. This chemical reduces the surface tension of water, allowing it to penetrate a porous material faster and more thoroughly. It was added to water in this episode to seep into the shipping box and help disable the explosive. Today, there are numerous chemicals in this category. Suter, a chemist, would be very familiar with them.
24:15 At about the 24 minute mark, it is mentioned that a package had “advertising pencils.” These were usually pencils painted in a non-yellow color with an advertising message printed on them typically a retail business name and phone number. It could also be a plain pencil with the name of a company or person foil embossed into the pencil. They are usually called “promotional pencils” today.
IMPORTANT: This recording has wow and flutter (similar to Aria from Murder) and is more evident in the closing scenes and music of the broadcast. This is a problem with many 1951 recordings.
The correct punctuation of the title is on the script as “Fragile – Contents: Death.” This title has a colon, which is not an acceptable character in computer file names since it is used in operating systems for other purposes. For that reason, the recording’s file name excludes the colon.
In a 1952 interview, Elliott Lewis said he thought this script would have been more compelling on television as they could have created a greater sense of terror by one box with the bomb among thousands in the postal facility. These comments were found in the New York Daily News of 1952-02-26:
...we once did drama called Fragile — Contents: Death. The story concerned the planting of a bomb in the post office the due to explode within three hours, and all the desperate efforts by police to find it. Can you imagine, in terms of TV, the terror effect of cameras panning up to one package, among thousands, containing the bomb? I’m convinced we should have left the story for television.
We know of Lewis’ long and deep affection for radio drama. Having viewed Suspense TV episodes from that period and the seeing the limitations of the small screen and the small studio sets they had to use because of the large size of early video cameras and other issues, it is unlikely it could have been done with the same impact. The Suspense TV show did use filmed segments of outdoor scenes, and perhaps some indoor scenes from a warehouse filled with packages could have been added to such a broadcast. But like Dead Ernest was vastly better as a radio production than it was on television, it’s likely the same would have been the case with this story as well.
This broadcast was the first of two appearances for Paul Douglas. His Broadway career began in 1936 and continued in theater until he started in Hollywood in 1949. His career overview is at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Douglas_(actor)
LISTEN
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https://archive.org/details/TSP510201
THE CAST
PAUL DOUGLAS (Douglas Jordan), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice/ Ed Williams), Howard McNear (Joe Stewart), Lee Millar (Hartley the clerk), Lou Merrill (phone voice / Sergeant Malloy), Joy Terry (Operator), Herb Butterfield (Fox / Sergeant Rock the driver), Mary Lansing (Alice Jordan), Naomi Stevens (Mrs. Bates)
COMMERCIAL: Ken Christy (Oscar), Harlow Wilcox, Sylvia Simms
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