Charles Boyer plays a man who finds a package containing $98,000 in a field and reports his discovery to the police. That is almost $1.9 million in US$2024! He decides to hold the money, and make his find public. He wants the true owner come forward, and hopes no one will do so. This would allow him to keep the money. The police advise him that he could be asking for trouble with pretenders making false claims. He will screen the contacts and tell police about any legitimate claim. He soon gets a person-to-person call from Kansas City. The caller is threatening and tells him not to spend or dispose of the money, and should wait until he arrives to visit him. They meet in a secluded area. The man, Kranik, says that the money is from a $400,000 payroll heist made by three men, 18 months earlier. Half of the money was accounted for when one of the robbers was arrested and another escaped to South America. The jailed man is ready to claim that Boyer’s character was the unidentified third man, and wrote a letter to the police stating that.
The letter arrives and the police demand to check the money’s serial numbers. He brings them a few bills and they do not match the heist records. The police are frustrated, and ask him bring all of the money. He is flustered and so very confused. A final confrontation with the police and Kranik leads to the truth of the situation.
The script is by Arthur Ross. His screenwriting career began in the early 1940s and continued for film and television through the 1970s. He occasionally used pseudonyms of “A.A. Ross” and “A.A. Roberts.” He wrote the original story for the film The Great Race which earned him a nomination for “best written comedy” by the Writers Guild. He was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for Brubaker. Nostalgia fans would be familiar with some of his work for screenplays of Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Creature Walks Among Us. This ties him to another Suspense author, Maurice Zimm, who wrote the original story for the first Creature film. Zimm wrote the excellent Suspense script, Return Trip.
The drama portion of this broadcast was recorded on Friday, April 20, 1951. Rehearsal began at 2:30pm with recording commencing at 7:30pm.
Two recordings of this episode have survived and have flaws; there is no studio recording. The most widely circulating copy is a home-recorded aircheck from Los Angeles station KNX. The commercials were all deleted, likely to save money on recording tape or to be sure that the reel of tape did not run out. This home recording is the better sounding of the two and this particular one for this blogpost may be the best recording that has ever been available for this broadcast. The other recording is an Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) copy from the late 1970s or early 1980s. It has the composite opening that can be a little confusing to those who have not heard it before. This has serious flaws, mainly hum and narrow range.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP510517
THE CAST
CHARLES BOYER (Claude Bourget), Irene Tedrow (Alice Bourget), Herb Butterfield (Lieutenant Gastlin), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Tom Haskell), Paul Frees (Kranik / Joe), Truda Marson (Phone operator / Girl), Russell Simpson (Mailman)
COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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