Frank Lovejoy stars in the second Suspense production of this Graham Doar story that set the pattern for science fiction stories, movie, and television depictions of UFOs and space travelers from distant worlds. The story was adapted by Fine and Friedkin.
Lovejoy plays the Colonel in charge of sending an Air Force pilot (played by Stacy Harris) who was selected for the first test flight in a rocket-jet plane designed to reach further away from the Earth’s surface than ever before. Reaching maximum altitude, he sees another ship coming towards him. He soon awakens in an alien ship and has the experience of telepathic conversation with its occupant. He receives an ominous message, and is returned to his ship to resume his flight. He returns to tell his story about which all are skeptical, especially Lovejoy’s character, but the circumstances and details of the pilot’s return corroborate his strange story.
The program was recorded on Tuesday, March 12, 1957. Rehearsal began at 12:00pm and finished at 5:30pm. Recording started at 5:30pm and ended at 6:00pm.
The 1954 production with William Holden is documented at these two resources:
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2024/10/1954-02-15-outer-limit.html
https://archive.org/details/TSP540215 offers access to the recordings for download or streaming.
Those resources also have background about Doar’s story and how it affected the print, audio, and visual media depiction of UFOs, space travel, and the nature of creatures that may be in the universe, for better or worse.
There are two surviving recordings of this episode. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording is the better of the two (AFRS#926). The network recording has narrow range and background noise. The network recording, however, is complete; many previously circulating copies had clipped closings.
A portion of Robson’s opening monologue in the AFRS recording has been edited out. This is the missing piece at the very end of it:
Is the shiny electronic basketball, the soon-to-be-launched satellite, the answer to mid-Century man who proposes without consulting him who disposes? We do not know, nor do we presume to guess. But we do make so, bold, as to give you pause for thought.
In 1956 and 1957 there were regular newspaper stories about launching satellites. Sputnik was launched by the USSR a little over five months after this broadcast. It was a surprise not because the idea that man-made satellites was a new idea, but because no one in the US had realized that they had reached that stage of development. Why was this edited out of the AFRS recording? The AFRS number of the episode is 926, indicating a disc release probably about three years after the original broadcast. It could have been edited out because the event had already happened, or because it was still a sore point among the military… even among the editors in the AFRS production department. We will never know the exact reason.
Classic radio researcher and international voice artist Keith Scott notes an unfortunate milestone with this episode. This was the final Suspense production with original music played by a CBS studio orchestra. CBS moved fully to recorded music starting with the next broadcast.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP570317
THE CAST
Frank Lovejoy (Colonel “Hank” Henry), Stacy Harris (Major Bill Westfall), Barney Phillips (Joe), Jack Kruschen (Pete the Sergeant), Larry Thor (Hargrove), Sam Pierce (Sergeant / Tower), Jay Novello (Crew Chief / Guardian Xeglon), Hans Conried (Alien Zzyl), Joe Kearns (Countdown P. A. / Major Donaldson), George Walsh (Narrator)
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