The title of this story is not about someone who is exhausted and needs to sleep, but about an old farmer who murders his nagging wife. He’s had enough about her complaining about problems with the crops and the sickly animals. He wants to “return her to the land” when he “puts her to rest” and buries her in the barn. Later, two teenagers are making prank phone calls, and they call him with the message “You'll never get away with it.” They got a grand chuckle about it and had no idea that the farmer had done anything; it was just a prank because most everyone has something they regret doing in their past. When the farmer hears it, however, he gets worried because of what he just did, and that someone might actually know about it. He orders lye for his farm, ostensibly to condition the soil, but he wants to use it to help hide the body. The delivery is made by the teenager who works at the local farm supply business, and he is the same young man who made the phone call. When the farmer recognizes the voice as that on the phone, and that this might be the person who knows about the killing, the story takes an ominous turn. Parallel to what is playing out at the barn, the young man’s father is in his last hours in the hospital, and he longs to be with him. He pleads with the farmer to let him go. How he manages to get free of the farmer’s ire is a surprising twist to the story.
This is Berel Firestone’s only Suspense script, and he also performs in it. Firestone was an actor and writer, blacklisted in the 1950s. He was on radio, often not receiving on-air credit, for some of the “Hummert Factory” shows such as Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons and soap operas. He was an actor in early television, often uncredited until his blacklisting. He kept writing for magazines through the blacklist period, but under pseudonyms. No listing of those names can be found at this time. He was civil rights activist, participating in many of the marches with Dr. Martin Luther King in the early 1960s, and created an organization in New York City to assist and promote minority authors. In the late 1960s he left New York and moved to New Hampshire. After working there in advertising as a copywriter. In 1971, he was appointed to the leadership of the state’s Human Rights Commission. He passed away in 1981, after a severe and long illness, taking his own life at age 57.
The program was recorded on Thursday, September 1, 1960. Rehearsal began at 4:30pm and ended at 8:00pm. Recording was done from 8:00pm to 8:30pm.
Two recordings have survived. Most of the network recordings in circulation have been heavily edited airchecks in low sound quality. Now, there are two very pleasing recordings. A network aircheck from a station in Springfield, Massachusetts is intact with its announcements and commercials and in very good sound. The better recording is from the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS#800) that is in excellent sound. It has not been available until recently. Both recordings are substantial upgrades that allow greater appreciation of the story and the performances.
At the conclusion of the program, the tease for the episode for the following week is announced as “A Grave is for Sleeping” by Edna Rowe. No such script, broadcast, or newspaper listing can be located. The name is, of course, close in spelling (but not pronunciation) to “Edna Rae,” the name Ellen McRae (the future Ellen Burstyn) used for her scriptwriting. The script and the identity of the author is a Suspense mystery that may never be solved.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP600904
THE CAST
Abby Lewis (Emily), Larry Robinson (Ted Loper), Ralph Bell (Mr. Loper), Lee Graham (Mary Lee), Bill Smith (Orin), Berel Firestone (Dr. Murray)
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