June Lockhart, beloved by nostalgia fans as portrayer of the mother in the wholesome television series Lassie and the light science fiction Lost in Space series, stars in the second broadcast of this engaging Ruth Borne script. She plays an angry Hollywood actress whose casting in a new film was spurned by a big shot producer. She stalks him and invades his weekend retreat, and threatens to harm him unless he changes his mind. She restrains him and holds him hostage in his own house. It is a script with many surprises and is less predictable than other Suspense entries.
The original broadcast starred Virginia Christine; details and recordings can be found at:
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2024/11/1954-11-25-shooting-star.html
https://archive.org/details/TSP541125 which is where recordings can be downloaded or streamed.
The program was recorded on Wednesday, March 20, 1957. Rehearsal began at 1:00pm to 6:30pm. Recording began at 6:30 and concluded at 7:00pm.
This recording is a home aircheck made using consumer recording equipment. It is possibly from WGBI in Scranton, Pennsylvania. There are other episodes in circulation of this period in the series from this station. This recording does not have a station ID. It is only because there were listeners who wanted to record for listening later that some of the 1957-1959 Suspense programs (and others such as Gunsmoke) have survived. The recording is noisy and has narrow range. It has been edited down. It there is a small possibility that it is an edited-down AFRS aircheck.
Important Suspense Production Changes
Music: This was the first Suspense show with music cues assembled from a recorded track library. They were recorded in Europe. Many of the bridges and background tracks can be heard on Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
Pre-recorded narration: This was also the first episode that used pre-recorded announcement by George Walsh He was previously recording his segments with the cast of each episode. Now he was recording his announcements in batches of three or more, for use in future shows.
Sponsorship: It is also the first time that Robson concludes his opening monologues with some version of “which starts in exactly one minute.” This indicates that CBS may have changed the nature of the sales of its advertising time. The first minutes of a broadcast are considered to be prime positioning for an advertiser’s message as the size of audience decreases throughout a broadcast. Listeners decide they are not intrigued enough, or their listening is interrupted and they abandon their session (how lucky classic radio enthusiasts are to be able to go back to the recordings as often as they desire).
By this time, CBS would had ratings information from the start of the Robson era, the return of bigger-name guest stars, and also the shift to Sunday evenings. They could bring to ad agencies and marketers who could determine if the “new” Suspense audience fit their needs. The show did not have “sponsors” in the way the word meant in the 1940s. Billboard and other magazines of that era referred to sponsors as “bankrollers.” That is, the sponsor was responsible for all of the costs down to the last penny, plus the fee for airtime, plus the ad agency commission. By this time, advertisers were buying network “time” only. Networks would propose buying ad time for certain programs at a particular part of those programs. They would also “package” ad time across multiple programs. Local stations would usually be selling ad time that occurred before and after each of the network programs, but not inside the network program.
June Lockhart and her father, Gene, are among the few parent and child actors who each had appearances on the series. Gene starred twice, June, once. She had a career beyond Lassie and Lost in Space that included Broadway and film. That career is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Lockhart
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP570324
THE CAST
June Lockhart (Gay Lansing), Ellen Morgan (Secretary / Iris), Joe de Santis (J. D. Zimmerman), Hans Conried (Director / Freedle), Dick Crenna (Ed the Delivery Boy / Dave), Shepard Menken (Bennie), George Walsh (Narrator)
###
