Vivian Smolen stars in a Marianna Norris script about a serial killer in a small town. She plays “Kay,” a woman who meets a very strange man on a commuter train becomes suspicious of a strange gentleman, named Jenkins, who sits next to her. She is innocently reading a newspaper, and finds a story about a killer who is in her town, Roseville. She finds the story disturbing while he finds it fascinating, especially how the killer was able to escape detection. He knows the story made her worried about her safety, and offers to get off at the Roseville stop with her to make sure she is fine. His offer makes her even more concerned, and discouraged, he goes elsewhere on the train. Another man, Bill, comes by and is concerned about how the man approached her. He argues with him, and Jenkins goes away again, angry that his good faith offer and support was misinterpreted. Bill expresses interest in Kay, and their chat implies that they might go on a date. He gets off the train at his stop. Jenkins remains on the train as his stop is Roseville, just like Kay. Surprisingly, she sits down next to him and apologizes about the mix-up. Jenkins accompanies her off the train and they start walking to her car and a nearby wooded area. It is at this point a listener would expect Jenkins to pull out a knife, but there’s a surprise. Another man is in the woods, has a gun, and tells them to stop. The story plays out in a very unexpected way.
It is believed that the script was used on The Mysterious Traveler, but with a different title. The title and date are not known.
Marianna Norris started her writing career as a freelancer in the early 1950s. Her mother was also a writer. Marianna was trained as an actress, and sold some radio scripts to Mutual and then began working in the CBS script department. Norris also became a radio reporter, and had a radio series Jazz is My Beat on WCBS in New York. She later wrote five books and developed an interest in documentary films. She won an Emmy, a Peabody, and other awards for her work. Her films were shown on CBS, ABC and Public Television. She worked on documentary projects for the United Nations, NASA, and other agencies.
The program was recorded on Thursday, November 10, 1960. Rehearsal began at 4:30pm and ended at 8:00pm. Recording started at 8:00pm and concluded at 8:30pm.
There are two surviving recordings. The network aircheck from WROW is listenable but has narrow range. The first three seconds have very low volume because the station engineer was late in turning up the volume of the network feed. The rest of the program is fine. The better recording is from the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS#810) and is preferred for its richer sound quality.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP601113
THE CAST
Vivian Smolen (Kay), George Petrie (Jenkins), Alan Manson (Bill), Maurice Tarplin (The Conductor)
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