Frank Lovejoy plays a returning GI who finds his entire community is paralyzed by racketeers who have intimidated them into submission and acceptance of their rackets. When he learns that his brother-in-law, Johnny Stewart, was killed in a drive-by shooting, he decides that something must be done. Everyone seems to know who killed him, but they are fearful of retribution if the identity of the shooter is reported to the police. He becomes suspicious of his sister and the higher-priced belongings in her home, and that she suddenly has savings when in the past she and her husband had problems covering their expenses. He realizes that Johnny, the brother-in-law, was actually taking payments from the gang, and he was shot because he was going to be the one who decided to offer testimony to the police that would break up the gang.
Lovejoy flubs a line where he mis-states his brother-in-law’s name as “Jimmy Stewart” at about the 8:00 mark. Notice how Herb Butterfield picks up the dialogue with a nonplussed and unscripted correction. Such is live radio drama. One supports their fellow cast members and always has the story continuity in mind.
The story is by Morton Fine and David Friedkin. With Lovejoy’s voice in the production, the opening half of the story feels like with a few minor changes it could become a good script for Night Beat. That exceptional series ended in September 1952. Fine and Friedkin did not write for that series.
The mention of the Wabash River indicates that the story takes place in Indiana. The fact that it takes place in a Midwest town adds to the tension of story, since gangster activities were usually characterized as big city problems. This suspenseful undercurrent to the story is that a terrifying circumstance like this can occur in presumed innocent and safe rural communities and that no one is safe from such organized crime.
LISTEN
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https://archive.org/details/TSP521110
THE CAST
FRANK LOVEJOY (Nick), Joan Banks (Jane), Lou Merrill (Donley), Herb Butterfield (Osborne), Paula Winslowe (Mrs. Osborne / Operator), Hy Averback (Tom), Charles Calvert (Nolan), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Tom Holland (Hap), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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