Virginia Christine stars in a story of an angry Hollywood actress whose casting in a new film was spurned by a big shot producer. She stalks him and invades his weekend retreat, threatening to harm him unless he changes his mind. She’s deadly serious about it, too. People come to the door for various reasons, but she has him restrained so they can’t see him and he can’t call for help. She even pretends to be the housekeeper, providing assurance that all is fine, speaking with a Swedish accent (which is somewhat of an inside joke to the story). Her revengeful scheme does not work out as she intended. She’ll never get the part she so desperately wanted because she goes just a bit to far with the scheme. This is a good story with fine performances, with another great Joe Kearns portrayal. He plays the narcissistic movie mogul she targets.
The script was by Ruth Bourne, a freelance writer for radio in the 1950s. This was her only Suspense script, and it’s quite good.
Virginia Christine worked in radio for many years. This is her sole Suspense performance. She was doing some work on the Gunsmoke and Romance series around the time of this broadcast for Macdonnell. She would later appear in Have Gun -- Will Travel radio episodes. The role she was most famous for, in a career filled with successful supporting big and small screen roles, was in a series of television commercials. She was “Mrs. Olsen” in the 1960s for Folgers Coffee. YouTube has several of the commercials, such as this one https://youtu.be/TfD6fstnfQA?si=8a_eENG13ZA5RsjT
Christine was married to Fritz Feld, who also did some 1950s Suspense work, but they never appeared on the series together. Christine had a sideline career to tutor actors in Swedish accent (and likely others). She was one of those actors who always seemed to be working on something, with less downtime between gigs than most. She had a long and highly successful career in TV and movies, and voice acting, but never made it big in terms of achieving highly recognizable stardom. She was one of those actors for whom the audience muttered “I’ve seen her before… but I don’t know when… she’s so familiar…” but might never recall her name. Her active career spanned almost 40 years. Wikipedia has an overview of her career and life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Christine
This episode was pre-recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 1954. in the Macdonnell period. Rehearsal began at 11:30am on. The show was recorded from 4:15pm to 5:00pm.
No network recording has been located. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#508) has survived. It circulated for many years in below average sound, but this recording is a major improvement and adds greatly to the enjoyment of the episode.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP541125
THE CAST
Virginia Christine (Gay Lansing), Joseph Kearns (J. D. Zimmer), John Dehner (Bennie), Sam Edwards (Ed the Delivery Boy), Michael Ann Barrett (Iris), John Larch (Miles / Dave), Jill Jarmyn (Secretary), Larry Thor (Narrator)
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