Agnes Moorehead stars in an adaptation of a famous autobiographical work by Emily Wooldridge in a play about the blood-chilling ordeal of a woman marked for murder on the high seas. The script is by Gil Doud.
Doud took liberties with Woolridge’s account of her experiences to make it more interesting to the radio audience. She is the captain’s wife aboard the brigantine, Maid of Athens. When the ship was swept by fire several hundred miles off the coast of South America, crew members acted on the ancient superstition that women bring danger of death on board a ship. Sailors on the vessel plotted to dispose of the captain’s wife to break the curse. The captain couldn’t take the hint, but his wife did. The crew sends one of the members to request that the captain give them navigation lessons. He doesn’t think that the timing is anything special, but that they’re a curious bunch and this is something they should know. He doesn’t suspect that they’re thinking of doing away with him and his wife. They divert his attention and a crew member makes threats to take her on shore and stage an accident that will do her in. This episode is not Suspense at its best.
Blogger Christine Miller has interesting comments about the original story at her blog https://www.escape-suspense.com/2011/04/suspense-the-wreck-of-the-maid-of-athens.html a portion of which are reproduced here:
Suspense’s version is interesting, but it bears little resemblance to events described in Wooldridge's journal. In Suspense’s version, the surviving crew members resent and blame the captain’s wife as the cause of their troubles. Superstition dictates that having a woman on board is bad luck, and they blame her for the fire that destroys their ship.
The true story is more interesting. The Maid of Athens caught on fire and was shipwrecked in 1870 on the Isla de los Estados (Staten Island) in Argentina, off the eastern coast of Tierra del Fuego. In Wooldridge's journal, the crew members are respectful and everyone works cooperatively. The only problem with the sailors she describes is their nipping from the small stash of alcoholic spirits kept aside for medicinal purposes.
The journal chronicles her experiences as a woman shipwrecked in a remote part of the world, and how her husband, the captain, managed the situation and eventually navigated them in a hand-made boat to safety at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Had they stayed at sea any longer, they would have had severe injuries from frostbite.
Wooldridge’s book can be viewed at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/wreckofmaidofath0000emil It was released by MacMillan in a new edition with high quality illustrations in April 1953. This is likely how the Wooldridge’s journal came to the attention of Elliott Lewis or Doud or both.
At the time of this Moorehead appearance, a 3-D musical, Those Redheads from Seattle, was in theaters. Moorehead had a supporting role. The film has an interesting history from a motion picture technology perspective and can be viewed at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/youtube-N53VecGnPtM
Moorehead was also preparing for a one-woman show tour, That Fabulous Redhead, from the end of January 23 through April 1, 1954. That usually included a reading from Sorry, Wrong Number.
The recording has very minor defects but has some remnants of wow and flutter from one of the reel decks used to record from the original discs, or to make a copy of the tape transfer. This can be heard more in the music bridges than anywhere else in the recording.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP531130
THE CAST
AGNES MOOREHEAD (Emily Wooldridge), Ben Wright (Lawson), Joseph Kearns (Captain Richard Wooldridge), Larry Thor (Narrator), Richard Peel (Hayward), Jack Kruschen (Oates / Man)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
###
