Herbert Marshall stars in the second broadcast of a Harold Swanton script. Swanton wrote for many series and television, but best known in radio for his scripts for The Whistler. In this story, an Englishman places an ad in the newspaper hoping to find a fellow countryman to drive from New York City to San Francisco. Marshall plays the down-on-his-luck gambler who answers the ad in the hopes of escaping the debts he’s piled up. Ben Wright plays the boring Britisher who is constantly asking questions about London to keep the conversation going in all the hours of driving. Is that what he’s doing? Or is he prepping himself for his own escape to get away with his own problems or encounters with the law?
George Coulouris starred in the first broadcast with Joe Kearns as the annoying Britisher. Details about that broadcast and writer Harold Swanton can be found at:
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/07/1946-01-31-long-shot.html
https://archive.org/details/TSP460131 is where the recordings can be downloaded or streamed.
This episode was recorded on Thursday, January 30, 1958. Rehearsal began at 2:00pm and concluded at 5:00pm, which is when recording began. That session and in-studio edits continued until 7:00pm. Production edits continued in another studio until 9:00pm.
No network recording has survived. Advertisers on the broadcast were Kent cigarettes, Grove Laboratories, and Ex-Lax. An additional spot was not assigned until closer to the broadcast day.
Two Armed Forces Radio Service recordings have survived (AFRS#668 and AFRS#967). The recordings can be identified by the announcement after the Robson opening monologue:
AFRS#668: Attorney General and the Department of Justice
AFRS#967: Joe & Daphne Forsythe skit about US Savings Bonds
Of the two, AFRS#967 is the better recording.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP580209
THE CAST
Herbert Marshall (Kelly Raymond), Florence Walcott (Marguerite Stoddard), Ben Wright (Walker Hendricks), Joe de Santis (Tommy DeWitt / Lieutenant Mack), Norm Alden (Highway Patrol Officer), George Walsh (Narrator)
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