Agnes Moorehead returns to the series in a William Spier script. Her character is in a psychiatric hospital, traumatized by an event in which she murdered someone. It appears that her character is protecting herself by developing amnesia about it. Gradually, a therapy of reliving the moments leading up to the event, little by little, will cause her to learn and adjust to the truth, and return to normal life. She struggles against the little tricks of her psychiatrist in word association and other methods. She begins paint therapy, but always draws a faceless man. Every day, she has the same chatter with the staff, and draws the same images. The staff plays along, hoping that she will have a breakthrough, eventually. The “murder” occurred on a train, and she gradually pieces that together. It seems she is dealing with survivor guilt of some sort, as the man who died switched places with her on the train, while she avoided that fate.
It is a good story, it takes a little while to catch on that the repeating days and dialogue are part of script and her situation. Moorehead plays it well. Joe Kearns is excellent again, this time as the psychiatrist who tries to help her.
The drama portion of the program was recorded on Tuesday, October 21, 1952. Rehearsal began at 11:00am. The recording began at 3:30pm.
Spier’s submission or discussions about the script may have been part of his trip west to direct the opening of the season with Sorry, Wrong Number. Next week is another Spier script, Mann Alive, which is actually a near word-for-word re-use of a Sam Spade script.
Spier gets a reference to his native Connecticut when the script mentions “snow on the Connecticut Bridge.” There is no such bridge.
Moorehead would receive a “Golden Mike” award next year for this performance and others of this season.
This episode has never been available in crisp and clear sound. This is the best copy available at this time. It is highly listenable despite slightly dull sound and narrow range. Most circulating copies are noisy.
At the end of last week’s The Frightened City, this episode was teased as a William Spier script and that he was “the originator of Suspense.” The same wording is used in the opening of this broadcast. In the CBS publicity, the statement was “William Spier, the original creator and producer of Suspense, is the author of this dramatic offering. It is possible that Spier did not see this wording for his approval, but it is hard to believe that Elliott Lewis did not sign off on this. Charles Vanda must have been seething if he saw this. Vanda was the creator of Suspense, starting with the CBS Forecast pilot in 1940, and Spier was an assistant to him at that time. They fought together to get Suspense on the air after the failed pilot. Military service called in 1942 and Vanda served, and was on the team that created the Armed Forces Radio Service. Vanda covered for Spier when he was hospitalized and prescribed bedrest in the mid-Roma years and was never really credited. Spier always insisted that Vanda was the creator of Suspense. Lewis would have known that. So why is this wording being used here? The Vanda-Spier situation would blow up in some heated letter exchanges in the mid-1950s.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP521117
THE CAST
AGNES MOOREHEAD (Rachel Turner), Joe Kearns (Grice), Paul Frees (The Man), Jeanette Nolan (Miss Briggs), Charles Davis (Mr. Putney), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland? (Sheriff), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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