Victor Jory stars in a William N. Robson script about a man who has been told by his doctor that his life may end at any minute. The man considers himself as having a life of constant pain of one type or another. Now that he knows it is coming to a close, he becomes determined to live each day to the hilt. He has great difficulty bridging the gap between worldly materialism and spiritualism as he re-examines his values, but he finds them empty. He has been having an affair, and had a strained relationship with his son. He wants his son to have some values and dignity, and respect for him and his wife. He realizes, however, that he has none for himself or for her. As he nears his end, he becomes more aware of his loneliness and his emptiness, and rejects the attempted comfort and encouragement of a clergyman at a church he had wandered into.
The story is a downer, for sure, but it is a product of its times that reflected the Cold War, nuclear threat, social unrest, and other issues that weighed heavily on society at the time. Jory’s character is devoid of all optimism, likely that way for a long time. There an old saying about spirituality and faith that people die the way they lived. That’s certainly the case for this character. Materialism really brought him no joy, and neither could anything else. He was living life to the hilt before, and the hilt he tried to increase was not much of a hilt in the end.
The 1950s was a time when doctors and families or both would conceal terminal conditions from patients. It often became a charade between them all, with patients realizing it but reluctant to admit that they knew. In this script, the patient demands the truth of a full diagnosis. The terminal condition in the story is leukemia, which had a progression of improving treatments through the first half of the Twentieth Century. The second half of the Century saw more success of new chemotherapy drugs, bone marrow transplants, matching of donors, and other modalities. Childhood leukemia treatment made massive strides after 1970. At the time of this episode, it was commonly accepted that leukemia had no certain or long-lasting cure.
No script cover with the dates and times of pre-recording is available at this time.
A complete network recording of the episode has survived. It has somewhat narrow audio range but is very listenable. It is likely the best recording available to Suspense fans until an Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) transcription disc might be found.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP590208
THE CAST
VICTOR JORY (Charlie Slade), LEE PATRICK (Mildred), Brook Byron (Sandra), Peter Votrian (Chuck), Barney Phillips (Doctor / Priest), George Walsh (Narrator)
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