Joan Lorring stars as a young British woman named Sharon. She and her father, believe they know a young man who might be London’s infamous Daisy Chain serial killer. Things start to get strange when they take in a mysterious woman boarder into their London home. She’s been widowed for over three decades. While boarding, her son Jimmy comes to visit, and Sharon suspects that he is the serial killer the police are hunting for. The killer leaves a “daisy chain” at the scene of the murders, a string of daisies threaded together by their stems. When he is with his mother, he asks her to tell him about the Sharon. The mother is dismayed with the idea that she might be hurt by him. Sharon’s father is suspicious of the woman and of Jimmy. Sharon and Jimmy become friendly. As the story moves along, it is clear that the son is not the killer, but, surprise, it’s Mom! This is not the best of scripts, with one of the problems being that there are not enough characters to spread healthy servings of suspicion and doubt to keep listeners engaged.
This is the second John R. Forrest script on the series. The first was the superb Mission Completed and starred Jimmy Stewart. These may have been the only scripts written by this Seattle radio personality to have been performed on network radio, or any radio format.
The program was recorded on Tuesday, June 21, 1960. Rehearsal began at 3:00pm and ended at 6:30pm. Recording was done from 6:30pm to 7:00pm.
Two recordings have survived, and both are listenable but have narrow range and minor problems. The network aircheck recording from WROW is the better of the two and includes the five-minute 7Up soda program with the Kingston Trio follows the show. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#791) has some audio defects and some tape wow and flutter especially at the conclusion of the recording during the “Suspense March” filler music.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP600626
THE CAST
JOAN LORRING (Sharon), John Clark (Jimmy), Jane Rose (Mrs. Grimes), Bret Morrison (Mr. Pittsfield), Marvin Peisner (Bobby), Mercer MacLeod (Inspector)
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