William Bishop stars in a thrilling John Maller story about a runaway truck down a steep mountainside that poses great peril to others, the occupants, police, and the cargo. The story was adapted by William N. Robson.
The truck is carrying chickens stored in ice, ready for delivery to Los Angeles supermarkets. The truck would therefore be very heavy, more from the ice than the chickens. This sets up the runaway truck theme of the story, as 10 tons of weight would gather great speed on the downside of their trip down the mountain. At about 8:15 the brakes fail, and the truck can’t be stopped by downshifting because the gears won’t engage. They’re headed downhill, on a narrow road with no way to pass, and nowhere to make an emergency stop. There are no runaway truck ramps like some highways have, where trucks can veer off the road into a ramp made with sand and rocks that can slow down the vehicle and minimize dangers to life and property. Police start to get involved thinking the truck is recklessly speeding, but they learn the difficult facts of the situation, and clear the way for the speeding truck to protect other drivers. It’s a dangerous ride that may not end well, as the dialogue says “…there comes a time when you just can’t keep going straight… the road ends.” The production is well done, though some might consider it predictable, or link it with the earlier episode about a speeding car, 1955-04-19 Speed Trap.
The script is by John Maller. He is one of the Suspense “one-hit-wonders” as this is his only radio script (another is Walter Bazar of On a Country Road fame). Maller has no entries in IMDb or any other resources for novels or short stories, and there are no indications that the name is a pseudonym.
Three recordings have survived. The surviving network recording is complete but is in low quality sound. There are two Armed Forces Radio Service recordings, AFRS#704 and an AFRS recording with an unknown number. “AFRS#unknown” is the best of the recordings. The two AFRS recordings can be differentiated by the announcement that follows
AFRS#704: UNESCO
AFRS#unknown: Joe and Daphne Forsythe skit about US Savings Bonds
Cajon Pass is a real place, noted as such in the Robson monologue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajon_Pass
There is no single incident that inspired the story. In the late 1950s, there always seemed to be a newspaper story somewhere about runaway trucks or other vehicles.
For those whom the geography of Suspense has some meaning, Cajon Pass is 77 miles south of Red Mountain. That name was used in Nobody Ever Quits and its appropriately renamed Night in Red Mountain.
This was William Bishop’s only series appearance. He died about nine months later on October 3, 1959, at age 41. His final film, Oregon Trail, starring Fred MacMurray, was released just weeks before his passing. His acting career began in New York’s off-Broadway theaters and earned his first major role in 1933 and in the 1942 revival of Tobacco Road. He was also in Mercury Theater stage productions. He was a busy supporting actor in western films and early television. He was not often in radio productions. More details can be found at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bishop_(actor)
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP590118
THE CAST
WILLIAM BISHOP (Andy), Bill Quinn (Phil), Joe de Santis (Dave), George Walsh (Narrator)
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