This is the second performance of an Antony Ellis script. The first performance is a missing episode and was produced as A Misfortune in Pearls on 1951-11-26 and starred Frank Lovejoy. It is not considered a “truly missing” episode because this second broadcast of the same script is a surviving recording. For some unknown reason, however, Ellis attributed this 1956 performance to a pseudonym, “David Williams.” It’s a good story, not planned to be comedic, but it does elicit smirks of the kind that B-movie stories with outrageous schemes often do. It’s light, and entertaining.
This rendition of the Ellis story stars Stacy Harris as a dealer in cheap costume jewelry named Mark Hendricks. When visiting the office of a wealthy jeweler-friend, there is a delivery by registered mail. It is a package that is claimed to contain a pearl necklace worth a million dollars. In US$2025, that’s about $12 million! That sealed package, however, when it is opened, is empty... well, not really… there are eight cubes of sugar! Now what? The jeweler collapses in shock and the police are called. A reward is offered for the item, $60,000 ($720,000 in US$2025). We learn that it was Mark who stole the necklace with some careful planning and bribery. He decided to recruit his jeweler-friend’s assistant, Jean, with a cut in on the deal. They’re hoping to sell it… to someone… but they don’t know to whom. By the time they try to find a buyer, every fence had heard about the pearls. They considered them too hot to handle because of the police attention they would get. They soon decide it may be a better idea to… say they found them and collect the reward for their recovery. Mark has a plan… to find the pearls in a locker at the bus station, and claim that he got a tip about it because of his own investigative work. He even says he paid $50 to a tipster to beef up his story. When the jeweler, police, and Mark get there… the locker is empty! Mark tries to act nonplussed, like it was just a bad tip, but he thinks Jean ran off with them. Jean had placed the pearls in there, but decided to retrieve them when she overheard a conversation in the office that made her think that the others might start realizing she and Mark had been spending a lot of time together, and perhaps they were involved in the heist. When they meet later, she gives it to him, and he thinks he has yet another plan… but that one won’t work either. Thievery doesn’t pay… it went from a $1 million set of pearls that would make them rich even though a fence would pay a lesser amount in cash, then they’d be a little less rich by pretending to solve the theft and get a $60,000 sure thing reward, and then it was so frustrating that they’d find a way to just turn them in and then walk away. Not even that worked!
There are two surviving recordings. The network recording is in excellent sound and is the preferred one. There is a recently found Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#566) that is also in very good sound, with very minor flaws, that can also be enjoyed.
The only known surviving copy of the initial broadcast of 1951-11-26 A Misfortune in Pearls is an Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#389). It is not available at this time, but is known to exist. It was sold to a private collector on eBay, on April 21, 2014 for $710.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP560117
THE CAST
Stacy Harris (Mark Hendricks), Benny Rubin (Sam Heiler), Mary Jane Croft (Jean Cummings), Larry Thor (Officer Collie), Jim Nusser (Mailman / Man), Jack Kruschen (Mr. Larkin the Fence), George Walsh (Narrator)
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