Ellen McRae plays a woman visiting a downtown hotel with her husband for a relaxing stay. It doesn’t last long: she insists that she witnessed a murder, and it was not a hallucination. She tells her husband a secret that she withheld from him: she was once treated for mental illness. This casts doubt on what she saw. Her husband doubts her, but she goes to the police station and cannot pick anyone of of their mug shots file. The detective confirms with the hotel that no one was registered in room 203 for the day of the claimed murder or the day before. When she and her husband leave the police station, she confides that she knew who the killer was: the detective assigned to the case! She was too scared to say that while he was there beside her. She is certain it was him. The story moves to a dramatic conclusion. This is the first of the 1959 New York Suspense productions to rise to the level of production that long-time Suspense listeners had come to expect.
Milton Lewis wrote for radio and television. This episode was adapted from his script for Philip Morris Playhouse that aired on 1953-10-08 and starred John Beal and Nina Foch. No kinescopes of the program are available.
Program recording date and related information is not available.
Ellen McRae and producer Paul Roberts were married about 18 months prior to this broadcast. She was a rising star and had the lead role in the Broadway play Fair Game that ran from November 1957 to May 1958. Roberts was director of that play. The marriage, unfortunately, did not last. She would marry again and become better known as Ellen Burstyn. She is one of the few performers to have received Tony, Emmy, and Oscar awards and has had a very long and successful career.
There are three surviving recordings of this episode. One network recording is in fine sound but has been edited down to the drama only. A second network recording is missing the show’s opening but does have the closing announcements and the tease for the following week’s program. The recording, however, is in low quality sound. The best sounding program is the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS#755) recording that is complete. This recording is new to circulation.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP591004
THE CAST
Ellen McRae (Toni), Bernard Grant (Chris), Ralph Bell (Detective Green), Eric Dressler (Mr. Spencer), Joseph Julian (Dr. Barnes), Edwin Wolfe (Night Editor), Charles Colman (bellboy, taxi driver)
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