Actor John Dehner created this script for Escape in 1953, and it is newly produced on Suspense. British personnel in Kenya are seeing the start of the Mau Mau uprising. It began in 1952 and ended in 1960, with Kenya becoming independent as a British commonwealth in 1963, and becoming a republic in 1964. Actors Ramsay Hill, John Alderson, and Paula Winslowe are superb together.
A young British lieutenant, Charles Temple, is sent to deal with the dangers of the uprising. In the process he encounters the strange Colonel Julian Abernathy and his wife, Lily. She is so unhappy with life there, and her long marriage to the Colonel, that she retreated into alcoholism. The new threats to their safety only made it worse. Lily hopes that Temple can rescue her from the entirety of her situation. Events play out in such a manner that the Colonel finally realizes that the house servant is sympathetic to the Mau Mau. Temple was suspicious about it from the start. The Colonel’s harsh treatment of him and others native to the land sets up a sad ending to the story. There is a sense of comeuppance to it. The only suspense in this story is how badly it would end for the mostly despicable Colonel and the wife who suffered from their circumstance and his terrible demeanor. Temple is essentially a bystander to it all.
Historical context of the Mau Mau rebellion can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_rebellion
Escape went off the air in 1954. From that point on, Ellis had no qualms about using stories that would have been more appropriate to that series for Suspense. Internal to CBS, the differentiation of the two series disappeared and Suspense started to be considered general adult drama. Since Escape was off the air, and much of the Suspense audience shifted to television in their media habits, along with a turnover of listeners, there could be repeated scripts that individual listeners had never heard before. On one hand, that would make the accountants happy as the payments for re-use of scripts was lower than new scripts, but it also highlighted the better stories to a new audience and often delighted longer-term listeners who could hear their favorites once more.
There are two surviving recordings of this Suspense broadcast, the network recording and an Armed Forces Radio Service transcription (AFRS#533). Both recordings are very good, but the AFRS recording has richer sound which is most obvious in the musical bridges. The AFRS recording has some minor disc noise.
This script was originally on Escape on 1953-05-03. That surviving recording is a narrow range aircheck. Both Suspense recordings have better sound quality than the surviving Escape broadcast.
This script was originally planned for broadcast on 1955-05-03.
LISTEN
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https://archive.org/details/TSP550517
THE CAST
Ramsay Hill (Colonel Julian Abernathy), John Alderson (Lt. Charles Temple), Paula Winslowe (Lily), Dave Young (Ng Umbwe), Joe Du Val (Man / Voice), Larry Thor (Narrator)
Carl Harboard was originally cast as Charles, but was replaced by John Alderson.
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