Elliott Lewis stars in a fast moving play by E. Jack Neuman and Arthur Ross. This production has a CBS Blacklist backstory. The script was held about 18 months before airing. That history is discussed after the broadcast summary.
Why is “concerto” in the title? The word comes from Italian and seems to originate from the conjunction of two Latin words: conserere (meaning to tie, to join, to weave) and certamen (competition, fight). The idea is that the two parts in a concerto—the soloist and the orchestra or concert band—alternate between episodes of opposition, cooperation, and independence to create a sense of flow. In this case, Lewis’ character, a convicted murderer named Edward Sitko, awaits execution. He can be considered the soloist. He travels through places and interacts with different people each time as he takes incremental steps toward his goal. The production is cleverly crafted in this regard and how the “soloist” interacts in a unique manner with each one he meets. The flow of the story is to his stated goal: to get revenge on the gangster boss (Dallas Kenyon) who turned “state’s evidence” against him and was responsible for his conviction.
This is a very different Suspense episode, and well executed (gee, that’s an accidental spoiler hint). It has a demanding starring role. It's not a surprise, then, that Lewis would hold this script as a special opportunity for the right actor. In this case, because of circumstances not of his control, that actor turned out to be himself.
This is a superb script and production, and if there is one flaw it is that Lewis gets a little close to the overacting line. Remember, his character is crazed, and is working against time, so it is somewhat appropriate.
There are seven different parts to the story, or concerto, and most parts have a unique first-person narrative spoken by someone involved in the upcoming scene where they confront Sitko.
2:05 First Sheriff Jesse Crandall explains how they are transporting Sitko by train to his the place of his upcoming execution in Joliet, IL. He is handcuffed to Crandall and Sgt. Delaney. This is the scene where listeners get the set-up for the story. The train has a rough ride and Sitko grab the key to the handcuffs and escapes through a window.
6:20 Second The story turns to Sitko’s mother and her apartment. She has been praying for him knowing his execution is near. She says “it was Angelus time.” That and other dialogue means it was 6pm. The Angelus is a prayer said by Catholics ( some Anglicans and others) three times a day. At 6am it is said in memorial of the Resurrection of Christ, at Noon in memorial for the Passion leading to the Crucifixion, and then at 6pm for the Annunciation of that Christ would be conceived. With the story taking place in Chicago, and with the Sitko name, we know that the character is Polish who grew up in one of the city’s ethnic neighborhoods. He was raised Catholic, and his mother is still observant. Church bells ring at the three times of the day when the Angelus should be said. They are not heard in this scene but will be heard later to mark a time of day. He barges into the apartment and demands his mother give him money. She has none. We learn that Sitko has been in prison for 15 years.
8:10 Third A pawn shop is the next stop. The owner is ending the day’s work and experiences something quite different. Sitko arrives and demands to be given a gun, threatening the owner. Sitko finds a suit he can wear to change his appearance and blend in as he walks the streets and goes to the places he needs to go. He takes all of the cash in the register, and attacks the shop owner. Sitko feels he should be grateful because he let him live.
11:15 Fourth A cabbie encounters Sitko hailing for a ride. He demands to be taken “straight ahead… I’ll tell you where to turn…” and barks various orders to the driver. The cabbie tries to make conversation but it only agitates Sitko, and when they spot police activity, Sitko gets panicky. The cabbie pulls over, jumps out of the car, and runs away. Police demand Sitko stop, shots ring out, but Sitko keeps running. (Commercial break is at this point of the broadcast.)
15:45 Fifth Sitko goes into a building to hide, and it seems to be an auction house where an event is going on. It’s not certain why the scene is playing out at this location, but a police officer comes in to advise one of the workers that there is a criminal on the loose, and he may be injured. If they see him, they should contact the police. The officer leaves, and Sitko emerges, subdues, the worker, and goes back on the run.
17:45 Sixth The elevator operator of the apartment house where Sitko’s girlfriend lives sets the next scene. Sitko comes into the lobby and asks if she is in; she is not. He eventually convinces the operator to bring him upstairs and let him in. The operators comments that she said that she would be back in a few minutes, but chuckles and starts singing a song “Mañana,” meaning she may not be back for a while, meaning, “tomorrow” or at least after Midnight. He goes into the apartment… and collapses from exhaustion. She finally arrives home, and it soon develops into a hostile scene. At about 20:05 the Angelus bells can be heard ringing, meaning it was 6am. Their exchange ends up revealing, after she denies it first, that she has been having a relationship with the gangleader. At 22:03, Sitko remembers a line his mother used to say, but he did not remember where it came from. He says that there is “a time to live and a time to die” (based on Ecclesiastes 3:2). He says it is his time to live and it’s gangleader Dallas Kenyon’s time to die. She finally blurts out, in anger “we got rid of you then, and we’ll get rid of you again.” Sitko kills her for her betrayal. He leaves. The elevator operator soon walks into the apartment and takes in the brutal scene.
24:40 Seventh The scene changes to the home of Dallas Kenyon, and a narrative begins by a man whom we don’t know. He is standing in a stairway. Sitko arrives, beaten and bleeding, looking for revenge. He demands to see Kenyon, and is led to a room with a sheet over a body. Kenyon is dead, and at 25:50 we learn that the man is an undertaker. The narration continues… Sitko is frantic that he cannot exact his revenge in the manner he desired. He leaves the room but police are entering the house. Sitko has his gun, and fires, but is hit by a barrage of police gunfire. He is dead.
The soloist of the concerto is dead, and most of the eyewitnesses survived, but some were not so fortunate. The story is over.
Lewis acted his role wearing earphones and was still directing the program. He tossed cues to actors, musicians and sound effects men in addition to playing his part. CBS publicity made a big deal about this.
Classic radio enthusiast and researcher, and performer, Patte Rosebank notes that “Eddie's surname, ‘Sitko,’ is Polish for ‘sieve’ or ‘dredger.’ Appropriate, since he’s dredging up the past, to sift out the guy who double-crossed him.”
The program was pre-recorded, which was a safeguard in case something went awry with all of the tasks Lewis was juggling in the performance. The rehearsal and recording was on Friday, June 6. Rehearsal was from 10:00am to 1:00pm, with a break for lunch, and then from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Recording commenced at 4:00pm and concluded at 4:30pm. The recording included the musical and announcing portions, unlike prior sessions.
It is amusing to hear William Conrad as Crandall at the opening of the drama. Years later, Conrad would narrate the famous opening of the television show The Fugitive. That began on a train, there was an accident, and the convict escaped.
The original plan for this date was to broadcast Sorry, Wrong Number once more. It was decided to make it the opening drama of the next season, in September. The backstory about the decision and the rescheduling of SWN is below. Unfortunately, that SWN broadcast of September 1952 remains missing.
There are two surviving recordings. The network recording is in very good sound but the Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#415) has a richer sound. The network recording is likely preferred because it has performer credits and closing comments by Elliott Lewis thanking the listeners and saying that the series will be back in September. The AFRS recording is very clean and in rich sound. If you are not interested in hearing Lewis speak, or hearing the performer credits, the AFRS recording is a good choice and has the benefit of not being interrupted by commercials. The closing comments in the network broadcast note that Suspense will be on television through the summer.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP520609
THE CAST
Elliott Lewis (Edward Sitko), William Conrad (Jessie Crandall / Usher), Byron Kane (Cop), Jay Novello (Delaney / Milton), Martha Wentworth (Momma), Junius Matthews (George), Sidney Miller (Kenny), Charlotte Lawrence (Kitty), Gil Stratton, Jr. (Bellhop), Jack Kruschen (Porter / Reader), Larry Thor (Narrator)
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The Tragic Backstory of October 1950 and John Garfield in Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses
This script’s history is the most clear case of a scheduled Suspense performance being impacted by Red Channels.
On October 21, 1950, actor John Garfield was scheduled to record a performance of a script by E. Jack Neuman and Arthur Ross, Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses. This was early in the Elliott Lewis leadership of Suspense. It was four months after the publication of Red Channels.
He was known for movie roles in They Made Me a Criminal, Destination Tokyo, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and his Oscar-nominated role in Body and Soul. He appeared on Suspense in 1945 (Reprieve) and in 1948 (Death Sentence) at a time of rising popularity. That track record did not help him.
Garfield got caught in the undertow of the continuing Communist scare in 1950, and testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He refused to name Communist party members and said he knew none in the movie industry. He was listed in Red Channels. His reputation was damaged by his listing and his testimony. He did find ways to work, but not in the kind of properties that the trajectory of his career would have earned just a few years earlier. He tried to rehabilitate his image to get back to bigger roles. Just prior to his death, he wrote an article “I Was a Sucker for a Left Hook.” The title was in reference to his successful movies about boxing. He explained that he was duped by communist ideas and was staunchly against them. It was too late.
Garfield died of his heart problems on May 21, 1952 at age 39. Many attributed his death to the stress of his career’s challenges, especially friends who knew how troubled he was about it. He was diagnosed with heart problems a few years before. Heart imaging and diagnosis was primitive in the late 1940s compared to today’s medical technology. It was not possible to know the full extent of his problems – doctors had to make educated guesses with the tools they had. We will never know the exact medical cause of his demise. It is easy to attribute it to the stress of his situation, but his heart defect may have been the sole cause regardless of his stress level.
Because of Red Channels, CBS executives did not want Garfield to appear on their programs during the peak of his public problems. The network devised a process to approve or not approve the appearances of various types of talent on their programs. They had special concern (called “fear”) for keeping advertisers happy that there could be no complaints from consumers about their sponsored programs. They soon hired former RKO movie executive Daniel O’Shea, whom Lewis and others referred to as “the vice president of treason” to coordinate this function. The loyalty test at CBS was devised by William Paley and Edward R. Murrow. O’Shea raised its implementation to new and punitive levels. (It eventually blew up, especially after Murrow’s reporting about the Army-McCarthy hearings three or so years later)
Lewis knew he had a good script and was ready to go into the studio with it. John Garfield was his choice, and they were also friends. This was the cast assigned to that 1950 performance:
JOHN GARFIELD (Eddie Sitko), William Conrad (Jesse Crandall / Usher), Jay Novello (Delaney / Milton), Ed Max (Porter / Reader), Irene Tedrow (Momma), Junius Matthews (George), Jerry Hausner (Kenny), Peter Virgo (Cop), Gil Stratton, Jr. (Bellhop), Michael Ann Barrett (Kitty)
We do not know if a Garfield’s performance ever made it to the studio for a rehearsal, or if there was ever a recording made. We just know that it was scheduled for this particular day. Most recorded drama segments were broadcast anywhere from a couple of days days or one or two weeks later. This one, however, had no broadcast date on the script cover, just its recording date.
Garfield was rejected by someone, likely Auto-Lite and its agency. Lewis decided to hold the script, thinking that Garfield would be cleared at some point in the future. That was not to be.
With Garfield’s death, Lewis decides that the Concerto script, which would be promoted as “a story about revenge,” would be performed.
Earlier, CBS planning and publicity announced and promoted that the season-ending performance of June 9, 1952 would be a reprise of Sorry, Wrong Number. That news appeared in many newspapers, as SWN always got the attention radio page editors. Replacement publicity was sent and reported that SWN would be moved to September, to start the show’s new season. (This also meant that Auto-Lite would not be having its “traditional” highway safety broadcast to start a new season). The press releases noted that Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses would replace it, and it would star Elliott Lewis, himself. They made somewhat of a big deal that Lewis would be directing at the same time he was acting.
Holding the script for Garfield no longer mattered.
It is possible that Lewis “told” Agnes Moorehead that she should suddenly be unavailable for a June 9 SWN performance. This was interesting in that she had a perfect “out”: she was appearing in Don Juan in Hell on Broadway as “The First Drama Quartette” with Charles Laughton (who also directed), Charles Boyer, and Cedric Hardwicke. When they issued press releases about Sorry, Wrong Number, it was known that Moorehead was on Broadway. The play had its first performance on April 6, and its last on May 24, 1952. She could have made it for a June 9 performance without difficult logistics. He wanted to do Concerto to snub his nose toward the CBS bureaucracy who gave his friend, John Garfield, a hard time. He also wanted to honor Garfield by acting in his place. It was a story about revenge, after all. Agnes, you’ve been doing all those shows on Broadway. Take a rest!
We will never know the full story, but the scheduling and performance of Concerto served multiple purposes for Lewis, make CBS executives uncomfortable, pay homage to an unfairly maligned and departed friend, and to let CBS know who was really in charge of Suspense.
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NOTE: Conrad, Novello, Matthews, Stratton were all planned to be in the 1950 recording session with John Garfield. They were in this 1952 broadcast.
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