Leon Janney stars in a Robert Arthur script about Daniel, a diving champion, who is $10,000 in debt to two racketeers (that is almost $110,000 in US$2025!). The hoods demand repayment from the diver, now performing in an amusement park act. He has a week to get the money, or he will be killed. He begs his wealthy uncle to lend him the money out his inheritance. The uncle refuses, because he had helped the diver out of previous financial difficulties, had even forged one of his uncle’s checks, and had not learned his lesson. He told him to never visit him again. He tries to get his uncle's secretary to intercede on his behalf. She has eyes for the diver, and invents a story that a relative needs the money. The uncle sees through the story, and her request is unsuccessful. Daniel knows that the uncle is staying at on a high floor of a resort hotel. The uncle’s hotel room has a clear view of the swimming pool. Daniel disguises himself as a bellhop and slips into the hotel room overnight, confronts his uncle, and demands the money. He refuses, and Daniel overpowers and strangles him. He sets the room up so it appears the uncle committed suicide by hanging. He changes the clock in the room to be stopped at a time when Daniel will be out drinking with the uncle’s secretary. With the room locked, Daniel climbs out a window to a building ledge… and dives into the pool below. Meanwhile, Betty and the Barker are waiting in the bar for Daniel, but he does not arrive. We soon learn that Daniel’s plan did not work.
The script is attributed to “John West,” a pseudonym of Robert Arthur. He seemed to use that name often for original short stories and stories based on scripts for the short-lived publication The Mysterious Traveler magazine. Using his pseudonyms in the contents made it appear that they had many different writers while most of the stories were written by him and David Kogan.
The script was originally performed on the 1950-05-09 The Mysterious Traveler. No recording of that broadcast has been found.
The program was recorded on Thursday, August 4, 1960. Rehearsal began at 4:30pm and ended at 8:00pm. Recording was done from 8:00pm to 8:30pm. Ira Ashley substituted for Paul Roberts as director.
There are three surviving recordings. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#796) is the much superior recording with rich sound quality. This recording has only recently become available and makes the listening very enjoyable. For many years, the only network recording that was available was missing its opening section and all of its commercials and the network ID edited out; this recording has narrow range and is in low quality. The other network recording that is most complete with commercials is in very low sound quality; its show opening is also missing.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP600807
THE CAST
Leon Janney (Danny King), Rosemary Rice (Betty), Sam Gray (Mike Brogan), Mandel Kramer (Charlie), Ralph Bell (The Barker), Bill Smith (Uncle Horace)
Summertime in New York meant that many performers were not available or changed their plans on short notice for getaways. The part of “The Tailor,” assigned to Sam Raskyn was cut from the story, either for time constraints or for lack of his availability. Paul McGrath was originally cast as “Uncle Horace,” replaced by Bill Smith. The script cover sheet has two performers cast as “The Barker,” Joe Julian and Bob Dryden. Ralph Bell, originally cast as “Charlie,” took over “The Barker” role. “Charlie” was assigned to Mandel Kramer, who was not in the original cast. Many of the replaced actors had been included in the CBS publicity information sent to newspapers.
###
