Ellen McRae and Richard Holland portray a married couple stranded in a desert. They encounter two old prospectors who are willing to let them die in the hot sun, deprived of water, to steal their car. The story is by Peter Fernandez.
McRae and Holland play Lester and Sheila, happy to take a long drive in the desert, and anxious to stop for a picnic in a shady spot to lessen the scorching 130 degree heat. They get off the main highway, drive a while, and stop to take in the sights. While they do so, a pair of despairing old men, prospectors named Bates and Granby, sneak up and grab the car keys out of the ignition. They run away and hide where they can keep an eye on the couple. Sheila nearly passes out from the burning sun and the heat. When Lester tries to take her back to the car and turn on the air conditioning, he realizes the keys are gone. They are stranded, and Lester decides to head back alone for help once the sun starts to set. Sheila will stay with the car. Before he can start the walk back, Bates rides up on a burro and pretends to be interested in helping them, saying he will ride out to the highway and find help, instead. It doesn’t take long for Lester to get suspicious and they realize that Bates and Granby have no intention of helping them. They discover their tent and decide to take their water and go back to the car. There is a confrontation between all four of them, but Bates literally holds onto the keys to how it will end. There’s not enough water for the four of them. Bates threatens them with a gun, but it’s clear he has no bullets. The standoff continues until Lester promises to drive to get water and then return with it. Bates surrenders the keys, but Lester leaves with Sheila and has no such intent… but it’s clear as they drive away he’ll keep his word despite how badly they were treated. Lester and Sheila will not leave them to die the way that Bates and Granby would have done to them.
It is odd to hear the suave and sophisticated Mandel Kramer play an old prospector. Many listeners were probably surprised to realize it was him in his role.
No script cover is available at this time to provide production date and time, or complete cast information.
Three recordings have survived. There are two network airchecks, one from WROW in Albany, New York and the other from WBBM in Chicago. The WROW recording is the preferred of the three recordings; it is in rich sound, and is the way the program was first heard by listeners. The WBBM recording is in very low sound quality. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#806) is in excellent sound, virtually equivalent to the WROW recording.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP601016
THE CAST
Mandel Kramer (Bates), Ellen McRae (Sheila), Robert Dryden (Ganby), Richard Holland (Lester)
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