Joseph Cotten stars in an Arthur Ross play about a corrupt prosecutor. It’s another good Ross play but is hampered by the staging of its final scenes… just “look the other way” when you listen. Cotten is his unseemly and sinister best, the Ross plotline is fine, and we get to hear Joe Kearns as a criminal. While not the best of Suspense, it is entertaining and engaging in its way.
Cotten plays a gang-busting district attorney who makes a deal with a gangster, with whom he is a bit too familiar, to “look the other way” during a planned underworld killing. Cotten’s character soon finds it necessary to commit that murder himself!
The DA has a solid case against the gang leader, and then offers to suppress it in return for a payoff that will give him financial independence. The gangsters persuades the corrupt DA to reveal the name of the only witness against him. His name is “Bartell.” In return, he sends the DA and his wife on a pleasure cruise to Europe while he arranges to murder the witness. It turns out not to be such a pleasure. The ship has no more than put out to sea, however, when he is approached by the supposedly murdered witness, who has escaped from his executioners and demands that the DA hide him in his suite. (It must have been quite the expensive ticket to have a room that’s big enough to hide an adult). The witness knows it was the DA who set him up for the killing, and he threatens to expose the DA’s connection with the gang leader. That means only one thing: the DA realizes he must commit the murder himself… but how will he do it on a cruise ship on the high seas? Simple… throw him overboard! But that goes very wrong. During a scuffle, the DA’s wife and Bartell fall overboard together. This leaves the DA with no choice but to grab a life preserver and jump into the waters, too. Now what?
The dialogue between husband and wife is a bit too calm for people who are trying to stay afloat, bobbing up and down in ocean water. When you’re treading water you may get out of breath, you’ll have water splashing in your face, and may swallow some, and cough now and then. Ignore the lack of realism. The dialogue gives key background which would be missed if delivered by actors enacting panic and exhaustion. The story has a theme of “look the other way,” and as listeners we have to do that ourselves in the closing scenes. This kind of scene is very difficult to stage in a radio drama, even now.
Is the name “Bartell” for the witness an inside-joke about radio actor Harry Bartell? Whether it is, or not, Joe Kearns is usual best in this role as the betrayed witness.
According to the Suspense book authored by Daryl Shelton, Ray Milland was originally considered for the lead role. No supporting documentation has been identified at this time. Cotten was one of the series’ favorite fill-ins, and never disappointed in his performance.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP520310
THE CAST
JOSEPH COTTEN (Callan), Mary Jane Croft (Betty), Stan Waxman (McNeely), Joe Kearns (Bartell), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Ken Christy (Senator), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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