This Charles B. Smith story is claimed to be based on fact, and it may very well be on a particular incident in Ohio, but only a few facts of that story. The plotline is of its time in the early years of post-WW2 atomic science which had heightened the fears of radioactivity. Stacy Harris narrates, Harry Bartell plays a local man with a Geiger Counter, and Richard Beals plays his son, Johnny.
This particular story is set in a hospital where there are small capsules of radium stored away in a safe. When a nurse goes to retrieve two of them, she realizes that two of them are missing. Where are they? We soon learn that an eleven-year-old boy has them, with 100 milligrams (mg) of radium in each capsule.
The nurse tells the head of the hospital, Dr. Hutter, that the capsules may have been taken by a doctor who is starting his own practice. He considers her suggestion to be cynical. The fact is that the capsules may be lost because an error she made. At one point in the story, the doctor actually starts to reconsider her suggestion as possibly true.
Luckily, there is a person in town who has a Geiger Counter. (Oh, it is such an amazing coincidence that he’s the father of Johnny, the boy who found the capsules in the local dump!) He is a “uranium hunter” seeking to find deposits out in the desert that might be mined. As he and the doctor walk through the building, they get a strong reading near the room where the radium was stored, to be expected, but nowhere else in or near the hospital. A little detective work leads them to a dump, where the hospital’s garbage is dropped. After some prodding, the attendant remembers two boys playing, Johnny and his friend Peter, and having something like the capsules. The father heads home, and sits down for dinner, hoping that someone finds those boys. It just so happens that Johnny is fascinated with the new Geiger Counter and wants to turn it on. The father tells him it’s not a toy, but he finally turns it on. The Counter gets very loud, registering the presence of the capsules. He’ll be okay. And that nurse? She’s the evil one in the story, hoping that the missing capsules would be blamed on an employee she did not like.
Charles B. Smith was a radio and television scriptwriter who also had a long acting career from the 1930s through the 1960s in films and television. He won many awards through the years from the Screen Writers Guild and other organizations. He played “Dizzy” in 1940s Henry Aldrich films. He had eight Suspense scripts produced, six under Antony Ellis and two under William N. Robson.
There are three surviving recordings of this episode. There is a new Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#565), that has been freshly transferred from disc and is in superb sound. It is the preferred recording for listening. There is a complete network recording that is in very good sound. Finally, the third available recording is a low quality aircheck of unknown origin. It is not clear whether that recording is an edited network recording or an AFRS one. It has flaws that imply that it is an aircheck from either origination. It could be a network home recorded aircheck with the mid-show break edited out and the closing music shortened, or it could be an edited home aircheck from an Armed Forces Radio Service station by someone stationed there or living nearby.
The young boy whistles The Ballad of Davy Crockett from the 1955 5-part ABC TV series Davy Crockett. Episodes were combined to make a theatrical release in the Summer of 1956. Walt Disney used the fees from ABC and the movie to help finance the construction of Disneyland.
It is considered that 100mg of radium as described in the story, the amount in each capsule, should be in a lead container with 2-inch walls. So when they are in the young boy’s pocket, it is considered very dangerous exposure. They explain the potentially dangerous outcome away in that the capsules were moving about in his pocket and he did not have them for a long period of time.
Geiger counters were available in 1955 for $50, about $600 in US$2025. https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/survey-instruments/1950s/shelby-instrument-company-gammascope-geiger-counter.html
The title was changed from the original “Two Platinum Needles,” to “Two Platinum Capsules.” Note that the description the boy uses in the story says “two little pieces of metal.” Both phrases can be accurate. Newspaper readers and radio listeners seeing or hearing the “needles” title may have mistakenly assumed the story might be about drug addiction. Hypodermic needles were often made of platinum. Drug addiction was in the news a few weeks before broadcast with the release of the film The Man with the Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra. Because needles could be associated with drug use, it seems reasonable that they decided to change the episode title since they did not want a story about radiation casually confused with that topic. The “needles” title was announced at the end of The Eavesdropper. Not a single newspaper timetable had the new title in its listings.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP560110
THE CAST
Stacy Harris (Narrator), Harry Bartell (George Murphy), Richard Beals (Johnny Murphy), Edgar Barrier (Dr. Karl Hutter), Peter J. Votrian (Peter), Virginia Gregg (May Murphy), Jeanne Bates (Helen Webster), Junius Matthews (Henry the Watchman / Mailman), Helen Kleeb (Nurse Burton), Tom Hanley, Bill James (Ad-Libs), George Walsh (Suspense Narrator / Mailman)
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Madame Curie, a pioneer in the study of radiation, died of an anemia from long term exposure. The story of “the radium girls,” who painted watch faces and other products that allowed one to see the time of day in the dark, experienced severe medical issues, including death, from working with the product. https://explorethearchive.com/the-radium-girls The danger of direct exposure to radium was well known, and the aftermath of the atomic bomb explosions in Japan heightened the concerns of exposure. Like other Suspense episodes about fire and rabies, this storyline would seem more concerning to the listeners of 1956 than it would be today. Modern handling of radioactive materials is much different than it was then with rigid procedures and more effective containers. This site about jewelry has some very good background, too https://www.vintagegoldwatches.com/2023/09/are-radium-dial-watches-dangerous/
The story that may have been a springboard for the plotline got national news coverage in July 1955. In 1951, an x-ray company in Cincinnati had a tiny platinum capsule of radium, just 50mg, that exploded. The workers were decontaminated quickly, but it was only realized later on that the workers were spreading radium dust from the explosion throughout the building. In July 1955, the building was still closed. In December 1955, the landlord sued the x-ray company for their negligence since they could not have access to or rent the building. The legal issues took years to resolve, but the building likely had to be destroyed… and buried. It was finally settled with the insurance companies for $104,000, or about $1.25 million in US$2025 in July 1956. Newspaper stories kept referring to the building as being haunted by an “atomic-age ghost.” The settlement was appealed, but the court upheld it in 1957, six years after the incident.
As late as 1987, there was a platinum capsule incident in Brazil that was analyzed in a publication of the US National Institute of Health. The abstract of the report is as follows:
The Goiânia incident: In September 1987, two men in Goiânia, Brazil, discovered an abandoned international standard capsule containing less than 100 g of cesium-137 chloride. The material was unguarded, and the warning systems were inadequate and inscrutable. The men took the capsule and sold it for scrap, and within days the city would be contaminated with highly radioactive material. Within weeks, 112,000 individuals would be screened for radioactive contamination, 249 would be exposed to radioactive materials, 46 would receive medical treatment for radioactive contamination, and four would die from acute radiation sickness. The citywide radioactive contamination occurred, in part, due to arbitrary and unfamiliar written warning systems. The individuals who discovered the cesium-137 capsule were illiterate and unfamiliar with the radiation trefoil logo, which was first used in 1946 in California, United States of America. As a result, written language and visual symbols were useless warnings against the dangerous contents of the capsule.
The NIH report is at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37535035/#:~:text=The%20goi%C3%A2nia%20incident%3A%20In%20September,systems%20were%20inadequate%20and%20inscrutable
Another report about the Brazil incident has more details...
...the workers thought it was harmless “glitter” used in decorations, and they brought it home. Some applied it to their bodies, just for amusement. “Thinking that the substance was similar to carnival glitter, several people took the magical powder home. Reports said that some children rubbed the powder all over their bodies. One man slept with the powder under his bed and another carried it around in his pocket. A woman slept in clothing that was dusted with the powder.
On September 28, the scrap dealer went to a public health clinic complaining of severe vomiting and blistered hands and skin. Radiation sickness was correctly diagnosed. In the days that followed, 244 persons were found to have been contaminated, and 54 required hospitalization for test and treatment. Four people subsequently died and more than a dozen were seriously ill. The eventual toll of the accident will include hundreds of increased cases of cancer and genetic defects.”
This report is at https://www.scienceteacherprogram.org/physics/Garcia00.html
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