Virginia Payne stars in a Walter Black script. Payne plays a frail elderly woman sitting out a severe storm with her married daughter and a hired companion. The daughter did not feel comfortable staying with her mother while her husband was traveling, which seems to be often. She believes the marriage is slipping away. The daughter seems obsessed with fear of being robbed or attacked. The companion, Miss Lord, is hired to assist in the mother’s care and with household duties. The mother does not like her from the start. The daughter is a panicky sort, and begins to distrust the companion when supposedly strange things start occurring in the house. During the storm, the daughter finds that the wires that bring phone service to the house have been cut, and she is certain that Miss Lord did it. They are locked in the house, and can’t get out. The daughter takes a gun and confronts Miss Lord, accusing her of having an affair with her husband. She hired Miss Lord in an attempt to stop the affair and possibly even kill her. It seems to be taking a terrible turn, but the husband comes home to bring an end to this terror-filled version of a soap opera. It is clear that the wife has serious psychological issues, and that there was no affair at all.
Virginia Payne was one of radio’s most successful performers, especially for one continuing character. She started playing the elderly Ma Perkins when she was 23 and continued in the role for 27 years.
This is the first of ten Walter Black scripts for Suspense. He was an actor and a writer, mainly for 1950s television, but he also wrote for the legendary Jonny Quest animation series and other 1960s Hanna-Barbera properties. His 1960s and 1970s writing included comedies such as Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, and Family Affair and mystery-adventure series Hawaii Five-O, Mod Squad, Rawhide, and others. He acts in this episode and most of the other Suspense he authored.
No script can be found to identify the program recording date.
For many years, this program circulated in very low quality sound, and there are now two highly listenable recordings available. Two recordings have survived. The network recording is an aircheck from WROW in Albany, New York. It is in very listenable sound. The close of the recording is slightly clipped. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#761) is the much better of the two. It has a rich, clean sound. The recording is new to circulation among hobbyists.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/tsp591115a
THE CAST
Virginia Payne (Mrs. Stinson), Elizabeth Lawrence (Lois Hughes), Rita Lloyd (Miss Lord), Walter Black (Kent Hughes)
###