Ronald Reagan makes his second and final appearance on the series as an innocent man who finds himself arrested for murder. An argument over a pack of cigarettes sets up a chain of circumstantial evidence that threatens to send him to prison and possibly the electric chair. Reagan’s character is a short-tempered young man who gets into a verbal beef with a liquor store owner. The proprietor doesn't want to stop talking to a friend long enough to get the impatient young man a package of cigarettes. Later, Reagan's character realizes how wrong he was and is embarrassed over the incident. He walks back to the store to apologize and buy the cigarettes. Just as he arrives, he hears a shot and sees a man rush out of the store, leap into a car, and drive away. He runs into the store, sees that the proprietor is has been murdered. As the police get involved, he finds himself under arrest as the murderer. The dead man's friend, present during the argument with the victim, is a powerful witness against him. Even his own public defender attorney admits that his case looks pretty hopeless. Hoping to get a sympathetic jury selection, he tells the attorney he sees the killer in the jury pool! He demands his lawyer to make certain that the man is selected as a juror! But how does he turn his situation around? He runs away from the courtroom… surprises his lawyer at his office... and in their secret meeting they realize who the real culprit is… and he goes to confront him.
This is another interesting story by sound effects artist Ross Murray. Howard McNear is marvelous as the public defender.
LISTEN
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https://archive.org/details/TSP540308
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THE CAST
RONALD REAGAN (Frank Thompson), Charles Calvert (Sam), Clayton Post (Eddie), Kurt Martell (Officer / Voice), Howard McNear (Ernest Gibbons), Vic Perrin (Charles the Killer), Hal Gerard (Irv), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), unknown actor (Charlie, the Nash dealer)
GUEST FOR THE AUTO-LITE CHARITY PROMOTION: General George Kennedy, President of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. The Foundation was relatively young, founded in 1948. General Kennedy became the president in 1951. He was commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific area during WW2. He was head of Strategic Air Command until 1948, and retired from the Air Force in 1951. The organization is now known as the Arthritis Foundation.
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