Agnes Moorehead stars as a cunning and despicable mother who is attempting to control all aspects of her 25-year-old son’s life. He is asserting himself, to her dismay, and soon gets married. She strives to undermine him and his wife through lies, innuendo, and imposition of guilt. The wife is loyal, and despite the effort to drive her away, she stands with the son. She decides the only way to gain control of her life and her son is to plot the murder of her daughter-in-law. The play is by William N. Robson. Moorehead is excellent in this role and as annoyance with her cascades in almost the same manner her “Mrs. Stevenson” does in Sorry, Wrong Number. This is not a classic script, but if you like Moorehead’s work, you will like this production.
The program was recorded on Friday, January 2, 1959. Rehearsal began at 1:00pm, with recording and in-studio edits beginning at 4:30pm. Production edits began at 5:00pm and concluded at 7:00pm. Music was added on Saturday, January 3.
Two recordings of the episode have survived. The network recording is complete and in good sound. The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) recording is much preferred for its fuller sound.
The working title for this story was ‘M’ is for the Million Things. The title was in CBS publicity, and the phrase would have been recognizable to listeners as a line from a 1915 song, played and performed mainly on Mothers’ Day. There is much more to the song, but this is the most famous portion:
“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means
only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears were
shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E”
is for her eyes, with lovelight shining,
“R” means right,
and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell
“MOTHER,”
A word that means the world to me.
The 1915 song can be heard from an Edison disc at The Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/78_m-o-t-h-e-r-a-word-that-means-the-world-to-me_george-wilton-ballard-theodore-moor_gbia0083449b
This script may have an interesting foundation from 1948 when Robson was producer of The Whistler series non-CBS Pacific Network run for Household Finance Corporation (HFC). Early in the company’s sponsorship, there was dislike for some of the plotlines or conclusions of the Signal Oil productions. Robson was brought in as producer-director to revise or re-write scripts and then make new productions for HFC that often had different casts. The final HFC broadcast was on 1948-09-15 of a Robson script that was not used in the Signal series. CBS publicity explained this episode, Boy of Mine, as follows as it appeared in Florida’s Orlando Evening Star that day:
Producer William N. Robson of The Whistler show, doubles as author when the Wednesday night thrill drama series presents Boy of Mine, tonight at 10pm one WBDO (CBS). This is the story of a selfish mother. After her daughter escapes the mother’s cruel control by marriage, the woman turns all her energies to molding her son into the man she always wished her husband had been. When he finally finds a romantic interest, she tries to oppose the love affair with every resource.
This episode of the HFC Whistler is not available, but the script is. There are elements and subplots of Boy of Mine in Don’t Call Me Mother. The Boy script is an indicator if Robson’s interest in exploring dysfunctional family situations in the scripts he would write for Suspense for this episode and also for the 1959-08-09 Everything Will be Different. Robson would use personal experiences for his script ideas (such as in Nobody Ever Quits/Night on Red Mountain and Date Night). It makes one wonder about his life and marriages and relationships and of those he knew and if they played a role in Boy of Mine and this very episode.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP590104
THE CAST
AGNES MOOREHEAD (Laurie Ryder), Cathy Lewis (Roberta), James McCallion (Larry Ryder), Barney Phillips (Stern the butcher / Lt. Ross), Norm Alden (Sergeant Adam [Abbott]), George Walsh (Narrator)
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