Jack Carson plays a carnival pitch-man who uses his gift of gab to literally talk to death everyone who stands in the way of his ambitions. He was great in One Millionth Joe, but here the script calls for much yelling and screaming. Oh, and a mauling by a tiger. It’s a Walter Brown Newman script, and it disappoints after all his excellent prior work on the series.
Carson’s character, Nick, is certain he can kill anyone he pleases without lifting a finger himself, just by speaking the right words to the right person, at the right time. His first target is the co-owner of the show, a former lion-tamer who’s lost his nerve and quit after having been clawed once, many years before. Catching his victim in a mood of alcoholic despondency, Carson draws him into a nostalgic boasting of his former prowess as a lion-tamer and flatters him into offering an immediate private demonstration of his ability to handle Jezebel, a notorious “killer-cat.” It does not end well, but it advances Nick’s career. This pattern repeats itself, and it just seems to not work as a Suspense storyline, but be more appropriate for a lower-tier series like Diary of Fate or something like it. He gets rid of more people (not worth getting into details or the characters because that will make it all seem worse) because it’s all about Nick’s career and stature, of course. The escape artist, however, got out of the trick Nick sabotaged, and hours later surprises Nick that he’s still alive. That’s the supposed surprise ending of the story you could sense it coming a mile away because this story was otherwise running out of characters to have dialogue.
Listen anyway. It’s Suspense, and in this case sub-par Suspense can be better than other shows, but this time, not by much.
The surviving recording, like others from 1951, have some wow and flutter and may have some missing, but small segments of audio. The drama is fully intact.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP510329
THE CAST
JACK CARSON (Nick Arnold), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Peter Valenka), Frances Chaney (Nora), Georgia Ellis (Annette), Dick Crenna (Robbie), Ed Max (Duke Arnold), Herb Butterfield (Lee Duncan), Byron Kane (Voice / Police Chief), Eddie Marr (Circus “Talker”)
COMMERCIAL: Jerry Hausner (Sam), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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