Van Heflin returns to the series in a script by Morton Fine and David Friedkin about the brutal, blood-soaked career of John Dillinger. He was one of the nation’s most-wanted criminals until the much publicized “lady in red” put the finger on him to the FBI. The episode begins with Dillinger's prison break. He takes one of the guards as a hostage, and Dillinger’s innate brutal nature is quite clear in the scenes. He goes to a backwoods retreat, where he escapes from an FBI trap, and then heads to a plastic surgeon. The mob doctor gives him a new face and even removes the skin from his finger tips to blot out fingerprint identification. Dillinger then lives quietly in Chicago as he plans his next moves. One hot summer evening, his girlfriend persuades him to take her to an air conditioned movie theater and get out of the sweltering apartment. It’s a trap; the FBI was waiting for him.
Van Heflin gives another fine performance in a rather weak B-movie style script. At about 12:20 Heflin screams when a mob doctor has Dillinger put his hand in acid to alter his fingerprints to evade detection. This was after they were musing about how the plastic surgery went and how Dillinger nearly died on the operating table.
There are times the episode sounds like a Jimmy Cagney gangster movie, but the characterizations here are much better than those offered in the most recent “gangster” episode, Dutch Schultz. This is an entertaining episode. The Heflin scream going into the mid-show commercial is worth the listen by itself. It would have been really something to see and hear him do it in the studio.
The dramatic portion of the broadcast was recorded on Wednesday, May 5, 1954. Rehearsal began at 11:00am and recording commenced at 3:30pm. The session concluded at 4:00pm.
Dillinger paid $5000 for the facial plastic surgery in 1932, which would be about $110,000 in US$2024. The hands were a separate fee of $500 each, or about $11,000 for both in current 2024 terms.
Dillinger was at the Biograph Theater in Chicago on July 22, 1934. He was viewing Manhattan Melodrama, and was killed by FBI agents in a nearby alley after exiting the building. The movie may be viewed at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/manhattan-melodrama-1934_202201
For more information on Dillinger, the Wikipedia profile is quite extensive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dillinger
One character is named “Paul Harvey” and is played by Sam Edwards. Paul Harvey? The famous newscaster and commentator’s national career was just beginning. He had a national newscast on ABC television starting at the end of 1952. Very few people in the Suspense listening audience knew the name, otherwise the writers would have selected a different one for the character,
Three recordings have survived and the network recording is the best. The two AFRS recordings, one contemporary to the network broadcast, and another released in the late 1970s or early 1980s, are in low quality sound.
Network: 1954-05-10 The Last Days of John Dillinger NETWORK.flac
AFRS 1950s: 1954-05-10 The Last Days of John Dillinger AFRS LQ.flac
AFRTS 1980s: 1954-05-10 The Last Days of John Dillinger AFRTS80s LQ.flac
For many years, the network recording was not in very good sound. This recording is a big improvement compared to what was originally circulating.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/tsp540510a
This is the alternative page to download the FLAC and mp3 files while the Internet Archive works to restore services after its DDoS attack:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rkdhg4bmduf7f/Suspense_-_Last_Days_of_John_Dillinger
Stream the episode from YouTube
https://youtu.be/iVG73sgAi8s
THE CAST
VAN HEFLIN (Dillinger), Cathy Lewis (Woman / Anna), Michael Ann Barrett (Molly), Joseph Kearns (Rowley the Cop), Roy Glenn (Herbie), Parley Baer (Ernie / Voice 2), Sam Edwards (Paul Harvey), Joe Granby (Doctor), Larry Thor (Narrator), Tom Brown (Nelson), Jimmie Eagles (Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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