This broadcast is the classic story by Elizabeth Bowen, stars Antony Ellis, who also adapted it for the series. This the final Elliott Lewis Suspense production.
Ellis plays Terry, an insecure young man who has returned home after being in Ceylon. No one seems to take him seriously about any of his feelings or ambitions. He has great desire for a young woman, Josephine, but no one seems to take his interest seriously. In his strange mental state, he comes to a conclusion that she must be murdered. He is jealous of her interest in another man. While on what seems to be an innocent walk with Josephine in the garden to the chapel on the property, they arrive at a quiet, private place. After she laughs at him in some light conversation, he suddenly strikes her down, killing her. He takes away some evidence of his presence, but leaves her lifeless body in the chapel. He returns to the others, and attempts to tell individuals what he has done, but they are more concerned about other things. By the end of the story, his terrible act is quite clear when Josephine’s body is discovered.
The story requires close attention, and that effort may feel unsatisfying by the time it concludes. This show is more important in the series as the end of the Lewis era and not as better entertainment.
Ellis may have seen Elizabeth Bowen’s story when it was published in the October 1948 edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It is also possible that the first saw the story in a short story anthology published in London in 1927, The Black Cap The Black Cap: New Stories of Murder & Mystery. It can be viewed at The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/blackcapnewstori00asquuoft/page/250/mode/1up The Ireland-born Bowen was a highly regarded novelist in Britain and Ireland. Her stories about life in wartime London were particularly notable for their realistic portrayal of the period. Bowen’s work was popular in the years before this broadcast. Her acclaimed book The Heat of the Day was published in 1948 in the UK and in 1949 in the US. A Wikipedia page about her is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen
No news coverage of this episode could be found. It is the summer when there are vacations for staff and listeners, but this is an obvious sign of what happens when as sponsor leaves a program to become sustaining. Suspense newspaper and magazine coverage is very haphazard, and often nil, for about the next 27 months until William N. Robson becomes the producer.
Norman Macdonnell takes over as producer of the series with the next broadcast. His “placeholder” tenure lasts until near the end of December. Macdonnell was “trained” in Suspense by William Spier in the 1949-1950 Suspense season, and made his own significant mark in radio with Escape and Gunsmoke.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP540720
Download recordings from MediaFire
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/lm49lbc6bhgfu/Suspense_-_Telling
THE CAST
Ben Wright (Narrator), Antony Ellis (Terry), Herb Butterfield (Father), Ellen Morgan (Josephine), Betty Harford (Catherine), John Dehner (Derek / John), Richard Peel (Charles), Florence Walcott (Cook), Larry Thor (Suspense narrator)
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Keith Scott notes that there were 170 Suspense shows produced and directed by Elliott Lewis. After completing his two remaining radio series in the early Fall of 1954 (Broadway Is My Beat on 1954-08-01 and On Stage on 1954-09-30), he transitioned from radio production into television assignments. He returned to radio once for the 1957-05-05 CBS Radio Workshop edition Nightmare, which he wrote, produced and directed. In 1973 he would return with the syndicated The Zero Hour, and from 1979 Sears Radio Theatre, which became Mutual Radio Theatre in 1980.
The ratings for Suspense declined significantly in Lewis’ time. The shift of media use from radio to television was significant and unstoppable. His tenure was one of significant experimentation in an attempt to maintain Suspense as appointment listening. It cannot be determined if that experimentation made the ratings decline steeper or slowed its pace down. Lewis believed that radio drama could have great power and effectiveness, but he knew that when sponsor dollars exited the medium his range of creative opportunities would be exiting with them.
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