Writer Hank Searls offers a fine example of a Suspense story of people in danger not of their making and a race against time. The story is of its broadcast era. It had to be unsettling to listeners in 1955 when the premise was more prone to happen than it is today. The story was frighteningly plausible then, thankfully almost implausible 70 years later unless there is severe negligence. Pharmacies are far more regimented today, with vigilant automatic tracking of what is dispensed, and procedures to validate identities and match them with prescriptions and insurance coverage before handing them to the customer. Much of the drama’s duration is spent trying to find someone. This, too, might be unlikely in today’s world of smartphones, text messages, and GPS tracking. It is hard to imagine what life was like without such technologies, and this story gives a glimpse into those times, and the trouble it was to communicate in stressful emergencies.
The story stars Harry Bartell and Charlotte Lawrence as husband and wife who have a family-owned pharmacy, which is far less common today, as well. At the end of a day when the have an urgency to leave, a prescription is filled for a child. A mistake at the counter resulted in the child’s mother picking up the prescription intended for someone else, a heart medicine. It would be very dangerous if given to the child. The plot involves the tremendous effort to gather the resources of police and others to find the mother and child before an accidental and fatal event.
The working title was “To None a Deadly Poison.” The title comes from the Hippocratic Oath, and it can be translated into English as “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.” The change in wording of the title made it better and more ominous. Of course no one would want to administer a deadly poison unless they intended to commit an evil act. But changing it into “drug” made it fit into the storyline, a pharmacy, and that prescription drugs are intended to restore health. So “deadly drug” can evoke some listener curiosity.
The program was pre-recorded on Tuesday, October 18, 1955. The session begat at 11:30am and ended at 5:00pm. The recording commenced at 5:00pm and concluded at 5:30pm.
There are two surviving recordings, and the network recording is the much better of the two. The second recording is a very low quality Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) recording.
Classic radio enthusiast, researcher, and modern day performer Patte Rosebank noted at the Old Time Radio Researchers Facebook group page that the story idea may have come from the Elixir Sulfanilamide Disaster of 1937, which would still be in the public memory at the time of broadcast. The Food and Drug Administration has a magazine article from one of their 1981 publications that describes the events. It can be downloaded at https://www.fda.gov/files/about%20fda/published/The-Sulfanilamide-Disaster.pdf The document details the efforts to track down the shipments of the drug and includes an example of one incident that has some resemblance to this storyline:
Many doctors and pharmacists did everything in their power to recover the elixir. One physician postponed his wedding to help an FDA chemist search for a 3-year-old boy whose family had moved into mountain country after obtaining a prescription.
The story idea may have been sparked by a more recent incident, reported by United Press. This clip is from the 1954-12-24 Waco TX Times-Herald:
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP551025
THE CAST
Harry Bartell (Cal Foster), Charlotte Lawrence (Marion Foster), Eve McVeagh (Mrs. Smith), Virginia Eiler (Operator / Waitress), Sammy Ogg (Tippy Smith), Hy Averback (Al the Disc Jockey), Larry Thor (Narrator), Jack Kruschen (Sheriff Gibbs), John Stephenson (First radio announcer / Dr. Peters)
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