Seventy-four-year-old Francis X. Bushman, famed film star of the silent era, makes his only appearance on Suspense. It was insightful casting for Robson to select him for this role. This story is about an early 1930s Hollywood murder that threatens the career of an actress and her fiance. An actor decides to get some revenge for the threat of being fired from picture. The director is murdered and he frames an actress for it by arranging her to find the body. Police wrongly accused her of the murder because she was at the scene. She arrived after the shooting. Remember what might be called the “clue of the cloves” early in the production. They play a key part in the story.
Richard Weil wrote this story, it is claimed, especially for Bushman. Robson had expressed such things before for publicity purposes. It can be understood in many ways: Weil actually did write the story for Bushman’s appearance, or he wrote the story with Bushman in mind, or he submitted the story and someone realized Bushman would be good in the role. That is the role was “written for Bushman” in the same way one shops for a new suit and the sales person says “it fits so well, it’s like it was made just for you.” We’ll never know. The plot is relatively simple, but it’s the swirling aspects of old Hollywood that make it more interesting than it would otherwise be. It is not a Suspense classic by any means, but it is an entertaining listen.
In a somewhat amusing that the real killer and his accuser get into a fight on the movie set. They are scuffling so feverishly that they start filming it for the movie they were making!
The program was recorded on Sunday, November 10, 1957. The rehearsal began at 2:00pm and ended at 7:00pm. The recording started at that time and concluded at 7:30pm.
No network recordings of this broadcast have survived. There are two Armed Forces Radio Service recordings (AFRS#657 and AFRS#959). The better recording is AFRS#959. The recordings can be differentiated by the announcement after Robson’s opening monologue:
AFRS#657: World Bank
AFRS#959: Military campaign medals (Vin Scully)
Working titles for this script were “The City” and “The City that Never Was.”
Francis X. Bushman was a major star in silent movies, but he did appear in sound movies and television. His radio appearances are not always recalled because of his blockbuster status in the silents. He was, however, a regular on the soap opera Those We Love from 1938 to 1945 and was in the Ziv syndicated western series Lightning Jim. It was early Hollywood where he made his mark, and became wealthy, only to lose much of it in the 1929 stock market crash. His later work did not have the same notoriety as he had early in his career, but he often had supporting or guest roles in movies, radio, and television through later years. Wikipedia has an overview of his life and career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_X._Bushman
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP571117
THE CAST
Francis X. Bushman (Himself as Narrator), Norma Eberhardt (Rena Chalfont), Chet Stratton (Sergei / Alec), Ben Wright (Tony Kendall), Jack Kruschen (Fritz / Sam), Joe de Santis (Bart Mallory / Benson “Kesselring voice”), Norm Alden (Sergeant Marty Kaye), George Walsh (Suspense Narrator)
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