Frank Lovejoy stars in an E. Jack Neuman story about a murder at a carnival fun house. Lovejoy portrays a tough guy who can’t seem to stay out of fights. The story begins the morning after one of those altercations with his released from a jail cell at the sheriff’s office. He was kept overnight for punching a stranger during an argument. A woman involved in the altercation is waiting outside, and she thanks him for intervening on her behalf. He doesn’t even remember it – he just wanted to fight. She soon realizes that he wasn’t defending her at all. Realizing that he’s kind of a heel, she tells him to leave. But in the process of their discussion, he learns the name of the person who hit him, Tim Bennett, her date for the night. He’d like to take another shot at him. She tells him that Bennett is at the amusement park, of which he was part owner. She tells him to leave after some unsuccessful advances toward him; he’s more interested in drinking and getting some revenge against Bennett. He decides to go to the amusement park to take another punch or two at him. He goes to the park and learns he is in the fun house. There he runs into the surprise of his life: the attraction has a 9 foot tall giant mechanical man that blocks the exit and spooks the customers and they run out through the front door. And it gives a sense of being alive, but the whirring and the clanking and the cycling of the actions makes it clear that it’s not. He knows Tim Bennett is working the mechanical man… but when he goes looking for him, he finds Bennett’s body. He has four stab wounds, and has been murdered. He tries to escape after an altercation with a carnival employee that they realize that the giant was bleeding and screaming. Was that real? Lovejoy’s character is convinced it was. He suddenly wakes up back at the sheriff’s jail… and we learn what really happened.
The sound effects for the giant and the production are superb. They are provided by Suspense regulars Gus Bayz and Gene Twombley. This is a good and entertaining story, and the effects are a key element to the enjoyment.
The mid-show commercial is a little later than usual (17:30) to allow for development of the storyline.
The drama portion was rehearsed and recorded on Sunday, April 25, 1954. The session began at 11:00am with recording starting at 3:30pm and ending at 4:00pm.
At 29:05, Wilcox delivers a public service announcement for the YMCA. He slightly stumbles over the word “recreation.”
The script does not spell “Thermopylae” correctly, but it was correct in all of the show publicity. The script has it with an “o” instead of a “y.” Thermopylae is in Greece, and is famous for a battle there in 480 BCE as part of the Greco-Persian wars.
At one time, this episode may have originally been scheduled for 1954-05-10. Suspense often shuffled its broadcast plans because of changes to the availability of the guest star. Pre-taping the dramatic portions made it easier to get the guests onto the program and it eliminated much of the chaos involved in adjusting to changes in their movie (and now TV) obligations.
Recordings of this broadcast circulated for many years in lesser than average sound, had disc surface noise, and a clipped opening. Somewhere along the line, the disc must have be re-transferred or a different set of discs was found. While the recording has very minor defects (minor sibilance in some places), it is now in very pleasing sound.
An Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#485) recently became available. It has not been in circulation for decades. It is in excellent sound. The network and AFRS recordings are in equivalent and sound quality. The network recording may be preferred as it offers the full network broadcast. and is in better sound than has been circulating in the past.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP540503
This is the alternative page to download the FLAC and mp3 files while the Internet Archive restores services from its DDoS attack:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/n270owa88a64v/Suspense_-_The_Giant_of_Thermopylae
Stream the episode from YouTube
https://youtu.be/zpto2e2Lx3E
THE CAST
FRANK LOVEJOY (James Bernard Walters), Charlotte Lawrence (Mary Jane Kennedy), Joseph Kearns (Sheriff), Jerry Hausner (Hot Dog Vendor), Paul Frees (Ticket Seller 2 / Giant’s Laughter), Herb Ellis (Barker / Owen), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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