Lloyd Nolan plays a detective trailing a murderer who employs some of the most fantastic ruses ever devised to conceal his crime. Instead of portraying the usual super-sleuth who can solve the most baffling crimes through sheer powers of deduction, Nolan’s character is an average, real-life type. He says “My feet do 50 per cent of the work, my head does the rest.” What is claimed to make this story unusual is that the criminal uses imaginative efforts to conceal his victim’s identity. It takes a year or detective work to find the killer. The cover-up of murders by the crafty perpetrator was meant to confuse police investigators by putting hair samples and dental work with the wrong body. Eventually the initial theories start breaking down after further examination, as does the suspected timeline. Each piece of new evidence seems to change the entire case.
The script is by James Moser and is based on one of the true crime stories in a collection of writer Alan Hynd works, Alan Hynd’s Murder. The collection of Hynd stories from True Magazine was published in September 1952. Hynds wrote about espionage originally, and then became a successful and prolific true crime writer, mainly for magazines. The crime for The Man with Two Faces is the 1915 murder of Daniel McNichol in Philadelphia.
The script’s title was first sent to newspapers as “The Man with Two Heads,” which was later corrected.
Earlier Nolan Suspense appearances have been marked with difficulties with making long monologues interesting. This episode does not have long segments that posed problems. At 16:45 he has problems with the word “break” and says “the next brek.. break came in October.”
“Quicklime,” mentioned in the story, is Calcium Oxide. The chemical facilitates the decomposition of flesh and bone. This is why the body in the story was found in the steamer trunk with the chemical. Quicklime was used in mob killings to thwart identification of their victims. The initial belief was that the person was killed three years earlier.
Good smart aleck detective line: “He was six feet tall and four feet under.”
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https://archive.org/details/TSP521215
THE CAST
LLOYD NOLAN (Gus), Joe Kearns (Doc / Wagner), Jeanette Nolan (Mrs. Henderson), Martha Wentworth (Emma), Tom Tully (Sam), Rolfe Sedan (Tailor), Lou Merrill (Captain), Eddy Fields (Higgins), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Gil Stratton, Jr. (Sam), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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