Don McLaughlin stars as a crime witness who insists, against his wife’s objections, on volunteering to identify a racketeer under indictment for murder. The plotline is predictable if you listened to enough radio detectives and watched TV detectives and police procedurals. They send a special officer to escort him to the hearing, and someone knocks that officer out and impersonates him. The proof of credentials for officers today would make the situation in the story highly improbable with photo IDs, data bases, and digital fingerprint or other biometric recognition. Some of the scenes as the real officer tries to convince others of his identity are drawn out, but it finally resolves itself in a moderately amusing scene. The ending, which takes place at an airport, redeems some of the flaws of the storytelling. The wife was right about being worried.
The script is by Harold Huber, and this is his final acting performance before his unfortunate demise a few weeks later.
No script can be found to identify the actors and their roles, or with program recording information.
The recording is likely a network aircheck that was heavily edited and has no open or close. It has low sound quality. Some previous copies had the opening of a different episode a patched to the beginning of the recording. That has been removed.
Don McLaughlin was one of radio’s New York regulars, and was best known for his portrayal of “David Harding” in the espionage series Counterspy. He was on the television soap opera As the World Turns for 30 years, one of many New York actors who found success in that genre after radio drama left the airwaves.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP590313
THE CAST
Don MacLaughlin (Ed), Elspeth Eric (Jan), Bob Dryden (Capt. Hale), Joseph Julian (Lt. Payne), Harold Huber (Lt. Neal), Larry Haines (Officer #1 - Tom), Leon Janney (Sgt. Burns), Maurice Tarplin (Officer #2), Ian Martin (drunk)
(Many thanks to classic radio researcher Karl Schadow for identifying the cast.)
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