Herbert Marshall returns to the series and portrays a mountain climber faced with the prospect of losing his physical abilities because of he suspects may have had a stroke. Fearing a future life of daily dependence that may cause rather his fear of dying, he decides to continue his climbing and be less obsessed about safety. He’s an experienced and capable mountain climber. He’d rather take the risks of extreme mountain adventure that he may find challenging rather than surrender to the life limitations that are likely to await him as a stroke victim. He decides to seek climbs he might have dismissed without his new attitude. He also plans to do these dangerous climbs solo, without fellow climbers. For his first, he deliberately chooses the most difficult climb he can think of, one with an overhang. This is dangerously like climbing the reverse side of a ladder leaning against a wall. He has to carve his own ladder rungs, out of ice, with a sheer drop thousands of feet beneath him. He climbs to within a few feet of the overhang before his strength gives out. As he feels his grip loosening, he hears a cry for help from another climber, a woman, somewhere above him. She is in trouble. She has been climbing with her husband and is now in a precarious situation. She pleads with her husband to cut her loose, so as not to compromise both of their lives and leave their children parentless. Marshall’s character finds the will and the strength to assist them, his desire for life reinvigorated by the challenge.
The story is by C. E. Montague and adapted by Antony Ellis. Montague was a British journalist who wrote Action in 1928. The original story is in a short story collection that can be borrowed at The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/greattalesofacti00benn/page/254/mode/2up
The wife’s name is not mentioned in short story, but it is mentioned in this adaptation. Her name is “Hillary,” and is a likely nod to Edmund Hillary. He reached the top of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953. The story was done twice on Escape (1948-04-04 and 1949-07-21) and starred Joe Kearns. The Escape adaptation was written by Les Crutchfield. The wife’s name was “Anna” in those productions. Note at the beginning of the Suspense broadcast that Larry Thor says the episode is “a new dramatization,” indicating that it is not the same script used for the Escape broadcasts.
Forty of the CBS network stations were blacked out during this broadcast because of problems at the master controls at WTOP in Washington, DC. Affiliates as far west as Michigan were affected. Auto-Lite was offered a 22 percent rebate of their sponsorship money, which they turned down. It is not known how it was settled financially. The plan was to send mimeographed copies of the conclusion of the drama to anyone who mailed in. Auto-Lite would be able to judge the level of interest in the series. The announcement was made after the opening commercial of 1953-10-12 The Shot.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP531005
THE CAST
HERBERT MARSHALL (Chris Bell), Ellen Morgan (Hillary Gollen), Parley Baer (Gaspard), Herb Butterfield (Tillet / Brough), Richard Peel (Adrian [member #1]), Ben Wright (Conductor / Dr. Teddy Gollen), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Dick Beals (Johnny Plugcheck), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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